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Dr. Oscar Garcia-Pineda, who authored the DOJ's commissioned analysis, citing ongoing litigation.
A community called to action
The Taylor spill started when an oil rig was born in 2004. However, it was not until 2010, after the oil spill, that people really started to notice something wrong. . According to local activists, the warnings did not come from the Coast Guard, the government, or any oil company. They came from people around the Gulf who just saw it with their own eyes.
"They said it was coming from the BP spill, and sure enough, it was not," she told CNN. "It was coming from the Taylor Well."
"We had to do a lot of research ourselves to find out about it," she says. "How long is it?" "How are we doing?"
"In 2010, nobody really knew, and no one would know, if they were not citizens and non-profit organizations who were just trying to be good stewards," she says.
A problem floating right under the radar
John Amos, the founder of SkyTruth, says the oil spill is a problem that has been well known to the national conversation.
"This is one of those dirty little stories that have been hidden for too long," he says CNN. "That's the problem with these chronic, slow-moving things." "They do not slap you in the face like the BP oil spill did."
The way it works, Amos explains, is that companies who are responsible for significant spills the spill to the National Response Center, which is operated by the Coast Guard. The company then submits mandatory reports of regular aerial measurements of the spill, which appears to the naked eye as an iridescent sheen on the water.
To get a general idea of how to measure all of these measurements, Amos and his team combines the measurements with the minimum required thickness. That number, they decided, was one micron: One one-millionth of a meter.
That estimate, Amos says, is almost assuredly too low.
"The key weakness in our estimates is based on the reporting of the company," he says – reporting that the Department of Justice has said it was extremely under-representative.
Amos is acquainted with the Department of Justice's report and says the analysis of estimates of the Taylor oil spill on satellite imagery, as opposed to Taylor Energy's submitted reports. The discrepancies were severe. Some of the resulting measurements of oil leakage were 17 times larger than Taylor Energy's initial estimates.
An impact that's hard to measure
Whereas the oil spill is approaching, if not exceeding, the volume of the oil spill, that does not mean the environmental impact is the same.
"Amos says," This is the oil that's leaked out slowly and steadily over time, so the impact on the environment is very different. "One of the vexing things about the Taylor spill is that the consequences of this has been kept under wraps. leak. "
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