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I got into a discussion over at the other place (scary as it is) where ScottW's political leanings would be equivalent to Spence here....
The berms are a bad IDEA. bad, Bad, bad
From another thread. (Posted by me, so cut-pasted myself)
I can't believe how much play this idea has gotten... the reason they need to study and or NOT DO THIS (and this is just a few off my head as a geologist)
1. There is NOT a huge surplus of sand down there to begin with, hence the severely eroding barrier islands. Just trying to find enough sand will be an issue
2. Dig the holes to get the sand in the wrong place, and you can and will severely increase erosion of the marsh/existing barrier islands in spots, often called erosional hot spots, and they do exist, naturally and from dredging elsewhere on the gulf and Atlantic coast. This will end up causing MORE impact for who knows how long (years) down the road.
3. After the fact you would have MILLIONS of cubic yards of contaminated sand to deal with, in addition to the oil in the marsh now, and oil will continue to get into the marsh, regardless. these berms will be low and will be overtopped by waves
4. it will take MONTHS to build. the time and effort will be better spend intercepting and cleaning up the oil not trying to build a giant 'berm' (they are actually building small barrier islands, not berms). The US estimate is 9 months, the Dutch 4. even if you split the difference and say 6months, and had started them May 1, they are done in NOVEMBER
5. It is foolish to think this is a catch all. all his talk about blocking the oil is BS. it will go over it, the berms will erode, the oil will still be transported, and what oil sits in the sand (sand is permeable after all) will just get moved onshore if there is a hurricane.
Focus on the the clean-up as much up and GET IT OUT of the ecosystem as quickly as possible, period!
clean it as best you can, contain all you can, but don't waste the time, money and effort on a BS design...
will parts of the marsh die, YES is that awful, YES! but will some, probably high percentage of it come back, yes! Will the marsh continue to degrade if these berms are built YES!
I have yet to see an expert come out in favor of it. Louisiana (LSU) has some of the brightest coastal geologists around, and if they were in support of it, I think Jihndal would be trotting them out to the press w/ his nifty pfd....
Just because it is less of a waste of time doesn't mean it is a good idea. put all the barges and personal he would be needing to run skimmers, booms, Costner's pumps, whatever.... the berms will do more long-term harm than good.
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