PART ONE… http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/07/05/gulf.oil.disaster/index.html?hpt=T1 By the CNN Wire Staff July 5, 2010 6:52 p.m. EDT New Orleans, Louisiana (CNN) — Tar balls linked to the worst oil spill in U.S. history have reached into Louisiana's Lake Pontchartrain and hit the beaches near Galveston, Texas, authorities in those states reported on day 77 of the disaster. Easterly winds and high waves that hindered skimmers drove blobs of weathered oil up into the eastern end of the lake, which sits north of New Orleans, said Anne Rheams, executive director of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation. She estimated the amount of oil that has reached the lake at less than 100 barrels, with no hydrocarbon smell. “They are about the size of a silver dollar, maybe a little bigger, kind of dispersed in long intervals. It's not as dense as it could be, so we're thankful for that,” she said. The Coast Guard reported over the weekend that a shift in weather patterns could send more oil toward sensitive shores in Mississippi and Louisiana, and bad weather over the past few days has significantly hampered cleanup efforts. Rheams said that pattern was expected to persist for at least three more days. Rear Adm. Paul Zukunft said Friday that the prospect of oil reaching up into Lake Pontchartrain “is where I'm losing the most sleep right now.” “I'm going to look, and if I see even sheen, I'm going to push to make sure that we're moving every and all available resources to respond to this particular area,” he said. Tar balls had previously been spotted in Rigolets Pass, which connects the lake with Mississippi Sound. Officials in Orleans and St. Tammany parishes have been using heavy booms, barges and skimmers to defend Pontchartrain since the early days of the disaster, but Rheams said high waves and strong easterly and southeasterly winds have complicated the effort. “The main thing is that they are an indicator that it could be coming more so this way,” she said. State officials closed a swath of the southern part of the 630-square-mile lake to fishing following the discovery, but there was no sign of an impact on wildlife as of Monday, Rheams said. And in Texas, about 400 miles west of the ruptured offshore well at the heart of the spill, Coast Guard Capt. Marcus Woodring said the total volume of tar balls found over the weekend amounted to about five gallons. And while authorities weren't sure how they made it that far, tests confirmed that at least the first batch collected came from the Deepwater Horizon spill off Louisiana, he said. None were found Monday, and the area's beaches and waterways remained open, Woodring said. The tar balls were less weathered than researchers would expect, leading to suspicions that the oil was either stuck to the side of a ship's hull or mixed in with ballast water from a passing vessel, Woodring said. Tar balls are fairly common along the Texas coast, in part because of seepage from undersea oil deposits or from sunken vessels, he said. CONTINUED… http://media.nola.com/2010_gulf_oil_spill/photo/barges-rigoletsjpg-a6271db372480… added by: EthicalVegan
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