Officials: Plan in place if oil hits Texas beaches

By T.J. Aulds
The Daily News
Published June 2, 2010

The fish still are biting, the skies are clear, and beaches of Galveston and the Bolivar Peninsula are free of any oil residue from BP’s Deep Horizon spill off the Louisiana Coast. Still, worried about perceptions the entire Gulf of Mexico is coated in oil, federal, state and local officials gathered to announce that, should the slick move this way, they were ready to respond.

“In my business, perception is more important than fact,” Galveston County Judge Jim Yarbrough said during a news conference that included top officials from Harris and Brazoria counties, as well as representatives from the U.S. Coast Guard, Texas General Land Office and the ports of Houston and Freeport.  The reality, Yarbrough said, was that none of the oil from the massive oil spill 400 miles away was headed toward Texas, and none was expected to.   There is, however, a comprehensive plan that calls for setting up booms along sensitive ecological areas along the coast, including estuaries and some beaches.   The more likely local consequence of the spill would be tar balls, not a top-water sheen such as is being seen in Louisiana.   Booms would be ineffective in stopping that threat, U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Marcus Wooding said.

The plan includes provisions to apply oil dispersing chemicals, as well as burning off oil, should the spill approach the state coast in any form other than tar balls.  The leaders pointed out this area had experience with past oil spills from sources closer to the Texas shore.   Wooding and the county leaders promised the 153-page plan, which has been tweaked because of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, should cover any contingency.  “We want people to be assured if things change we will be one step ahead if the oil starts to come to our coastal area,” Brazoria County Judge Joe King said.   Already the land office has positioned some booms along Bolivar Peninsula beaches, Richard Arnhart, regional director of the land office’s oil spill response division, said.  Those booms are catching little more than seaweed at this point, Arnhart said, but are providing a good test run should any surface oil drift this way.

For now, not even the seafood caught in the coastal waters near Galveston County is at risk, Kurt Koopmann, of the county’s health district, said.  Koopmann said the state was conducting regular tests of seafood and no health warnings had been issued.  The biggest risk of any of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill making its way to the Texas Coast actually is by ship. Wooding said a tanker that was to make port in Port Arthur last week went through some of the leaking oil, which coated the hull of the vessel.  He said when the captain realized what had happened, he reported the incident to the Coast Guard. The ship anchored off the coast while booms were placed around the vessel and its hull cleaned before the ship made its way to the port, Wooding said.

There have been no other reports of ships having their hulls coated in the spilled oil, Wooding said.

(News Media: For more information contact Kurt Koopmann, GCHD Public Information Officer, 409-938-2211 or kkoopman@gchd.org)