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Local Bloggers on the San Francisco Oil Spill

by Rob Peters | November 13, 2007 at 10:27 am | 263 views | add comment

Thought it might be interesting to hear from some local writers who have seen the recent San Francisco oil spill spill first hand.
See our additional coverage here.

The following is an excerpt from a couple who stumbled onto the oil spill yesterday (Monday).

The company behind this spill really isn't doing enough to clean up these beaches. There should be people being paid 24/7 to work on this. We didn't see a single person there that was clearly working to clean up the beach. It was all volunteers. Its really sad.

A look at some of some of the environmental factors unique to that area:

The San Jose Mercury News reports that, "by comparison, the Exxon Valdez spill was 11 million gallons." yet that "for years biologists have been concerned that a significant oil spill inside San Francisco Bay could cause major environmental damage. The reason? The bay has only one narrow opening at the Golden Gate, and the right combination of currents could push oil south, coating sensitive San Mateo, Alameda and Santa Clara County marshes, which are home to fish, birds and harbor seals."

And lastly but not leastly, a description of the clean-up effort:

The devastating San Francisco Bay oil spill brought out thousands of volunteers over the weekend eager to help clean up miles of beaches and shoreline contaminated with toxic bunker fuel and rescue hundreds of petroleum-coated birds. If ever there was a disaster area suited to exploit Internet technology to crowdsource an army of green berets and deploy them where they're needed most, it's this Twittering, Google map-mashing epicenter of Web 2.0, right?