Oil spill on nearly 100 miles of Mississippi River

Crews are struggling to contain and clean more than 419,000 gallons of fuel oil from an 80 mile closed stretch of the Mississippi River that extends from New Orleans downstream to the Gulf of Mexico. The thick industrial fuel pouring from the barge could be smelled for miles in city neighborhoods up and down the river. Some environmentalists worried about reports of fish and bird kills in sensitive marsh areas downstream, though officials said they had so far heard of only a handful of oil-covered birds. Booms to protect areas richest in wildlife, at the river's mouth, were being deployed, officials said. The oil spilled on July 23 near downtown New Orleans when the 600-foot Liberian-flagged oil tanker Tintomara collided with an American Commercial Lines barge that was being pushed by a tug, the Mel Oliver. The collision split the 61-foot barge in half and the oil spilled from the barge into the river. The tanker was not damaged. "We've had a number of large spills in the New Orleans area, but this is a heavy, nasty product, problematic in the cleanup," said Lt. Cmdr. Cheri Ben-Iesau of the Coast Guard, adding that it is of the sort normally used to fire up boilers at power plants. "It's a significant spill, if for nothing else because of its impact on the water supply," Commander Ben-Iesau said. "We've got a lot of commerce dependent on this water supply, so we're scrambling to get it cleaned up." Coast Guard officials said the tugboat operator pushing the barge, from the local DRD Towing Company, was improperly licensed, possessing only the equivalent of an apprentice certificate. They said the incident was being closely investigated, though no blame had yet been assigned. Laurin Maritime of Houston owns the Tintomara, which was carrying styrene and biodiesel fuel in separate compartments. The picturesque walk along the Mississippi at the French Quarter, normally full of tourists and pedestrians, was nearly deserted on July 24 as a pungent chemical stench wafted up from the oil-covered water. A few skimmer boats, deployed to suck up the oil, constituted the only traffic on the nearly half-mile-wide river; a plastic boom to contain the fuel hugged the rocky shoreline, and the seagulls had disappeared. "It's going to take a good couple of weeks to get it all off," said Petty Officer Jesse Kavanaugh of the Coast Guard, surveying the oily muck. Officials were unable to predict how long the river might remain closed, however. "We're hoping days, not weeks," Commander Ben-Iesau said.