Fight against oil leak becomes 'war'

By Frank Brandmaier Jun 5, 2010, 12:16 GMT

   Dauphin Island, Alabama - The sea around the holiday resort of Dauphin Island, in the southern US state of Alabama, is grey and quiet, but dolphins still play there.

The scene would be idyllic, were it not for scores of workers collecting ever-larger, ever-more-frequent clumps of oil. And yet anyone listening to Pete Capelotti aboard his boat, as he talks about the fight against the leak, would think they are at war.

'This is the second Battle of Mobile,' the Coast Guard's Master Chief Petty Officer Capelotti, a reserve officer now working as a spokesperson, somberly declares.

The first Battle of Mobile, over the strategically important sea access to Alabama's major port city, took place in 1864, during the American Civil War.

Strong words and historical comparisons seem appropriate in the face of the growing drama around the worst oil leak in US history. On Thursday alone, scores of boats collected about 3,000 tonnes of oil from the water barely 40 kilometres off Dauphin Island.

'This is a massive operation,' Capelotti noted.

'The oil moves clockwise,' he said. So it's getting closer to Florida's resort towns.

Tourism is a billion-dollar industry which provides jobs for 1 million people in the Sunshine State of Florida alone. Clumps of tar have been found as far east as the Florida Keys, a major tourist magnet in their own right.

Alabama's eastern coast also cherishes tourist dollars. Anger and frustration are growing, and not just against BP, but also Washington.

Some feel they can't take it anymore.

'Obama, stop talking! We need action now!' shouts a banner trailing behind an airplane cruising low along Alabama's Gulf Shores resort area.

   Capelotti speaks of 'defence lines' in the fight against the poisonous soup now brewing in the Gulf of Mexico - referring to the line of barges, motorboats, cranes and floating booms intended to collect the reddish brown slick off Dauphin Island before it makes landfall.

   'We try to kill as much as possible offshore,' Capelotti says.

That's 'where the battle goes on right now.' One thing seems clear: Once the oil heads to the idyllic beaches, it will be nearly impossible to prevent its arrival.

In Capelotti's mind, it's 'foolish' to think that the entire 1,500 km of Gulf coast from New Orleans to Florida's southern tip could be protected with oil barriers. The wind only needs to whip up a little bit, and the oil skips over them.

'The Gulf is like a huge washing machine. They would be destroyed,' Capelotti notes.

That is why there is a three-stage plan. First, to collect or to burn as much oil as possible out at sea. Second, to corral whatever starts heading to the coastline. And finally, to scoop up the tarry mess once it makes landfall.

Fear is growing, not just in the tourist and fishing industry. Environmental protection officials worry that the wildlife that manages to escape the oil slick further inland will be pursued by its effects wherever they go.

Nonetheless, Tom MacKenzie of the Media and Tribal Relations External Affairs at the US Fish & Wildlife Service says: 'We're ready for it.'

For weeks, they have been drafting emergency plans for further inland. And what if it comes to the worst? Nature is resilient, MacKenzie says, it will survive.

Capelotti speaks of a moving target when he thinks about the fight against the oil.

'Who knows how much oil Mother Nature put down there?' he wonders.

In real life, Capelotti is a professor at Pennsylvania State University, in the north. He knows his way around historical dimensions.

The original Battle of Mobile, this anthropologist recalls, was won by the northern states. Who will win this time around?