BARATARIA BAY, La. — As officials approached to survey the damage that the Gulf oil spill caused in coastal marshes, some brown pelicans couldn’t fly away Sunday. All they could do was hobble.
Several pelicans were coated with oil on Barataria Bay off Louisiana, their usually brown- and-white feathers jet black.
Pelican eggs were glazed with rust-colored gunk, and new hatchlings and nests were also coated with crude.
It is unclear if the area can even be cleaned. It is also unknown how much of the Gulf Coast will end up looking the same way because of a well that has spewed untold millions of gallons of oil since an offshore rig exploded more than a month ago.
A mile-long tube operating for about a week has siphoned off more than half a million gallons, but it began sucking up oil at a slower rate over the weekend. At its best, the effort did not capture all the oil leaking, and the next attempt to stanch the flow won’t be put into action until Tuesday at the earliest.
With oil pushing at least 12 miles into Louisiana’s marshes and two major pelican rookeries now coated in crude, state officials said they are taking part of the response to the Gulf of Mexico spill into their own hands.
Gov. Bobby Jindal, standing on a boat at the edge of one of the nesting grounds, said Louisiana is no longer waiting for the federal government to sign off on a plan for a makeshift chain of sand berms that would skirt the state’s coastline.
Jindal and officials from several coastal parishes say the berms would close the door on oil still pouring from a mile- deep gusher about 50 miles out in the Gulf. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is studying the environmental impact of the proposal and has yet to give its approval.
“We are not waiting for them. We are going to build it,” Jindal said.
Jindal said the state has already identified and started initial work on 40 sites for the berms but will keep pushing for federal approval, which would free up Corps-controlled dredges for the operation.
At least 6 million gallons of crude have spewed into the Gulf, though some scientists have said they believe the spill already surpasses the 11 million-gallon 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska as the worst in U.S. history.
In Barataria Bay, orange oil had made its way 6 inches onto the shore, coating grasses and the nests of brown pelicans in mangrove trees. Six months ago, the birds were removed from the federal endangered- species list.
The pelicans struggled to clean the crude from their bodies, splashing in the water and preening. One stood at the edge of the island with its wings lifted slightly, its head drooping — so encrusted in oil it couldn’t fly. Pelicans are especially vulnerable to oil. Not only could they eat tainted fish and feed it to their young, but they could die of hypothermia or drowning if they’re soaked in oil.
Officials have considered some drastic solutions for cleaning the oil — such as burning or flooding the marshes — but they may have to sit back and let nature take care of it.
Each day the spill grows, so does anger with the government and BP. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa P. Jackson was headed Sunday to Louisiana to visit with frustrated residents.
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano were to lead a Senate delegation to the region today to fly over affected areas and keep an eye on the response.
The head of the Senate’s environmental committee, Democrat Barbara Boxer of California, has asked the Justice Department to determine whether BP made false and misleading claims about its ability to prevent a serious oil spill.
