Oil From Massive Spill Begins Lapping Louisiana Coast

BATON ROUGE, La. (April 30) -- Fingers of greasy sheen from a massive oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico have reportedly begun lapping the Louisiana shoreline, the first salvo in what could become the nation's worst environmental disaster in decades.

Crews in boats were patrolling coastal marshes early today along the coast looking for areas where the oil has flowed in, the Coast Guard told The Associated Press.

The AP said the oil slick could become the nation's worst environmental disaster in decades, threatening to eclipse even the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in scope. It imperils hundreds of species of fish, birds and other wildlife along the Gulf Coast, one of the world's richest seafood grounds, teeming with shrimp, oysters and other marine life.

"It is of grave concern," David Kennedy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told the AP. "I am frightened. This is a very, very big thing. And the efforts that are going to be required to do anything about it, especially if it continues on, are just mind-boggling."

President Barack Obama on Thursday pledged "every single available resource" to plug the leak, dispatching "SWAT" inspection teams to the rigs in the area and three top administration officials to oversee the response.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has declared a state of emergency, and the state moved up the start of the white shrimping season to help fishermen in the Louisiana's $2.6-billion-a-year seafood industry get a jump on the spreading spill.

Obama, who called the leak a "spill of national significance," said he also might send military vessels to the region in the wake of news that the leak at the Gulf's seabed could be five times worse than previously thought, gushing up to 5,000 barrels of oil, or 210,000 gallons, every day.

"While BP is ultimately responsible for assuming the cost of the cleanup operations, my administration will continue to use every single available resource at our disposal, including potentially the Department of Defense to address the incident," Obama said at the White House.

He has ordered Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson to visit the site Friday. He also said the Interior Department is sending SWAT teams to the Gulf to inspect all platforms and rigs.

"We are being very aggressive, and we are prepared for the worst case," Coast Guard Rear Adm. Sally Brice O'Hare told reporters at an earlier news conference in Washington.

The spill stems from the April 20 explosion of the massive Deepwater Horizon drilling platform, which burned for two days before sinking. Rescue crews saved 115 workers from the rig, but 11 were presumed to have died, probably in the explosion.

The Coast Guard began burning a portion of the spill Wednesday in an attempt to stop it from reaching sensitive environmental areas and the Louisiana shoreline.

Some have suggested the spill could ultimately eclipse the Exxon Valdez disaster, the worst oil spill in U.S. history. Some 11 million gallons of oil leaked into Alaska's Prince William Sound when the tanker Exxon Valdez went aground.

BP, the British oil company that operated the rig in Louisiana, is responsible for plugging the leaking pipe as well as cleaning up the spill.

Doug Suttles, a BP executive, said the firm welcomed an offer of help from the Pentagon. Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry said the military could supply higher-quality images of the leaks as well as subsurface vehicles, in addition to the six commercial submarines that have been monitoring the well area for days.

"We're going to turn over every single stone until we get this thing stopped," Suttles said.

He said the company has come up with a new idea for dispersing the oil: pumping chemical dispersants into the water near the leaks, 5,500 feet below the surface, in addition to aerial spraying of the chemicals onto the water surface. He said that plan could begin as early as tonight but still needs approval from Landry, the disaster's direct government overseer.

Landry hasn't OK'd the plan but called it "a novel -- absolutely novel -- idea."

Louisiana fishermen have begun turning their boats into oil cleanup vessels, hoping to protect their livelihoods by containing the slick with booms.

"We can draw a line in the sand, and the only people who can do that are people who know these waterways -- those people are the fishermen," said Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish, an area at immediate risk of getting hit by the slick. "We know it's going to come ashore, but how much? How thick will it be? We don't know."

Nungesser said he had hundreds of fishermen in his parish preparing to deploy boom in bayous, inlets and canals to block the oil from seeping too far inland.

Kim Chauvin, a shrimper from the town of Chauvin, said she and other fishermen are in talks with BP, arranging pay rates for use of the boats. She said the fleet should be ready to launch late Friday or Saturday morning.

"They're unloading their catch today. They're loading up the cleanup equipment," she said,

Before launching, fishermen must sign contracts with BP and allow their vessels to be inspected by the Coast Guard, Chauvin said.

The Times-Picayune of New Orleans reported that nearly 200 fishermen met in the town of Chalmette to coordinate with officials on how and where to deploy the booms.

Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee have asked BP and Transocean Ltd., the ruined rig's owner, for documents about what the companies knew about the risks of drilling at the site and the adequacy of their response plans.

BP is continuing efforts to seal off the pipe on the seafloor, using robotic submarines -- an effort that has failed for four days. The company is also planning to drill relief wells 18,000 feet into the earth, to intersect with the leaking well and divert the oil to containers aboard a platform on the water's surface.

Suttles said BP is constructing a large container designed to be lowered over the pipe's three leaks, then used to funnel the oil to a vessel on the water's surface. That vessel, which has arrived at the site of the leak, has the capacity to collect 20,000 barrels of oil per day, Suttles said. That container could be deployed in two weeks at the earliest, he added.