Our Views: Spill means little silence
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In “Silent Spring,” her classic 1962 book warning of the perils of environmental degradation, the late author Rachel Carson envisioned a world polluted into quiet, silenced by the absence of birds and wildlife that could no longer live in the poisoned landscape.
We wondered what Carson would have thought about the response to a recent oil spill in the Mississippi River in New Orleans that resulted in about 419,000 gallons of oil flowing into the waterway.
Officials with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have posted 100 propane cannons near the spill. They will be used to scare birds away from the contaminated marshes and swamps along the Mississippi. So we have an alternative but equally sinister vision to put beside Carson’s silent sprint — a noisy summer in which birds must be shooed away, with explosive blasts, from ground too tainted for them to inhabit.
We don’t fault the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for installing the cannons. The cannons might be one of many imperfect bargains required in the wake of environmental accidents such as this.
Birds, of course, are not the only creatures threatened by the oil spill. During the days when the river was fully closed to traffic because of the spill, one official estimate placed the economic damage at $275 million a day. Oil spilled into fragile marshes will inflict human misery, too.
We hope that state and federal officials work together with due speed to limit the contamination from the oil spill, and we also hope that they exercise due diligence in monitoring any long-term environmental effects of the spill.
The spill occurred when a barge and tanker collided, breaking the barge open. Can more be done to prevent such accidents? We hope an investigation of the accident yields some answers.
We wondered what Carson would have thought about the response to a recent oil spill in the Mississippi River in New Orleans that resulted in about 419,000 gallons of oil flowing into the waterway.
Officials with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have posted 100 propane cannons near the spill. They will be used to scare birds away from the contaminated marshes and swamps along the Mississippi. So we have an alternative but equally sinister vision to put beside Carson’s silent sprint — a noisy summer in which birds must be shooed away, with explosive blasts, from ground too tainted for them to inhabit.
We don’t fault the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for installing the cannons. The cannons might be one of many imperfect bargains required in the wake of environmental accidents such as this.
Birds, of course, are not the only creatures threatened by the oil spill. During the days when the river was fully closed to traffic because of the spill, one official estimate placed the economic damage at $275 million a day. Oil spilled into fragile marshes will inflict human misery, too.
We hope that state and federal officials work together with due speed to limit the contamination from the oil spill, and we also hope that they exercise due diligence in monitoring any long-term environmental effects of the spill.
The spill occurred when a barge and tanker collided, breaking the barge open. Can more be done to prevent such accidents? We hope an investigation of the accident yields some answers.
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