By Eileen Fleming
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wwno/local-wwno-987008.mp3
New Orleans, LA – The Coast Guard says 22-hundred gallons of crude have been recovered from north Barataria Bay, where almost 14,000 feet of boom has been deployed. No estimate yet on how much has spilled. The Coast Guard says it is now working on a plan to remove oil from the piping system in the abandoned oil field. Garret Graves of the state's Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority says a few oiled pelicans were picked up in the area over the weekend and sent for cleaning and rescue. Graves says that while the current cleanup is under way, oil from the Deepwater Horizon well continues to surface.
"We're picking up tar balls. We're removing the tar mats. So, how long we're going to be seeing this - it's very difficult to say. You know, this has been very much a tug of war between the Coast Guard and BP on one side trying to remove, or pick up efforts to - let me use a different word, I think - to cease response operations, and the state and the parishes have been pushing to continue those because of conditions like we saw Tropical Storm Lee, where additional tar balls and additional tar mats were exposed."
The Coast Guard says it has nine vessels and about 60 people working on cleaning up the spill in Bayou Dupont.
For WWNO, I'm Eileen Fleming.