Spill Shows Little Impact on Wildlife

NEW ORLEANS – A large fuel spill that has shut down 100 miles of the Mississippi River for four days has had a limited effect on wildlife so far, but officials are worried about fragile wetlands downstream.

Almost 800 cleanup workers used containment booms, vacuum skimmers and other equipment Saturday to continue scrubbing oil- coated riverbanks along the nation’s busiest inland waterway.

A tanker and a barge collided early Wednesday, spilling about 419,000 gallons of fuel oil from the barge, closing the river from New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico and temporarily idling about 200 oil supertankers, grain barges and other ships.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Ser-vice had reports of almost 60 animals coated with oil, mostly ducks and wading birds, regional spokesman Tom MacKenzie said Saturday.

Officials said they had reports of only limited impact on stretches of the winding river. But Mr. MacKenzie cautioned that canvassing such a vast area was a tall challenge and probably only a fraction of the affected wildlife had been spotted.

State and federal officials were waiting to see whether any of the oil heading down the fast-moving river would reach the wide marshes teeming with wildlife near the river’s mouth.

“When it hits those grassland wetlands, that’s when it becomes a problem,” said Bo Boeh-ringer, a spokesman for the state De- partment of Wildlife and Fisheries.

Roland Guidry, a state official coordinating the cleanup, said currents might push the oil to the banks before it reaches wetlands including the federal Delta National Wildlife Refuge.

Originally published by Associated Press.

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