First, it helped to have a fresh recommendation handy when, on Monday night Ros and I overheard a bartender suggest Cochon to a pair of tourists. I actually think Cochon is pretty okay but Ros has made it something of a whipping boy as of late. She thinks of it as a kind of scam to sell cheap homey food to tourists at fine-dining prices. Tuesday morning, she still hadn't let it go and so was sending me random comments on the menu via text message.
Ham hock, sweet potato, greens, black eyed peas $18 No. Fuck them.
Oysters and bacon on toast $14. Fuck off!
I think she's got a point but I haven't been turned off enough by the food there to get all bent outta shape over it. Still I'm glad I was able to suggest Coquette as an alternative. Something tells me it probably didn't matter, though.
The second reason I'm glad to have had this trip to Coquette has to do with the fresh seafood on the menu that day. From what I understand, the menu changes frequently with whatever happens to be in season and that definitely seems to be the case as neither of our entrees appears on the website's sample menu here.
Here's what I had.
That's a fresh Louisiana softshell crab perfectly fried and served over a tasso and lemon Hollandaise like emulsion with fresh vegetables.
And before that came, there were these.
Roasted oysters in a fennel bacon sauce. Not my favorite oysters I've ever had but very good. And, more importantly, they could be the last Louisiana oysters I get a hold of for quite some time given the circumstances.
Underwater vehicles have not been able to stop the flow of oil from a damaged pipe more than a mile below the surface of the Guilf of Mexico after the explosion of an oil rig.. U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry said today that authorities are considering a controlled burn of the oil floating on the Gulf's surface.
The oil is coming from two damaged sections of pipe from the Deepwater Horizon rig which exploded and collapsed into the Gulf last week. The damaged pipe is more than 5,000 feet under water. The underwater vehicles have been trying to trigger the well's blowout preventer, a 450-ton device resting on the seabed that is intended to prevent such leaks.
But so far efforts to trip the blowout preventer have been a bust.
Landry and other officials who spoke during a Tuesday news conference said the controlled burn has been used before on spills. Crews would light the oil on fire within containment booms.
There are risks, notably air pollution and ash clouds. Those risks will be weighed in tandem with the benefits of preventing the oil from coming ashore, officials said.
The article didn't go too far in the direction of spelling out what those "risks" might be so I googled up this NOAA document which generally recommends the technique but also paints a messy picture of its application.
In-situ burning of oil is going to generate waste. Even the most efficient burning will leave a taffy-like residue that will have to be collected and treated or disposed of. Burning the oil at sea will not be as efficient as burning it in engines, furnaces, or power plants, and will generate a substantial amount of particulates. However, by minimizing the solid and liquid waste generated by beach cleanup, and by reducing the energy required to support the response operation, burning even some of the oil at sea is likely to reduce the overall waste generation of a spill.
The article is pretty fuzzy on the hazard posed by gasses and particulates released during the process. Mostly it suggests that they will not exist in high enough concentrations to threaten the health of the general public although, if I am reading it correctly, this would depend on 1) most of the "plume" of smoke dissipating without returning to ground level and 2) the general public not being too immediately downwind of the event.
I also found this interesting.
A point to keep in mind is that leaving the oil in place will have a deleterious effect on air quality. Spilled oil left untreated would evaporate at a rate that depends on the type of oil, time elapsed from release, wind, waves, and water and air temperatures. The amount evaporated is substantial. For example, 32 percent of spilled Alberta Sweet crude would evaporate after 24 hours in 80 degree water, and after five days 42 percent would have evaporated. This evaporation pattern, similar in other oil types, emphasizes the need for quick action if in-situ burning is selected as the response tool.
The decision whether to burn or not to burn involves a tradeoff: burning the oil would reduce or eliminate the environmental impact of the oil slick and convert most of the oil to carbon dioxide and water. Burning, however, would generate particulates and cause air pollution. Not burning the oil would enable the slick to spread over a large area and impact the environment. Particulates would not be produced, but up to 50 percent of the oil would evaporate, causing a different kind of air pollution.
So, yes, there will be some sort of air pollution no matter what they do. Ultimately, what difference does it make? This evening, we learned that the amount of oil spilling into the Gulf could be as much as 210,000 gallons per day or five times the previously announced estimate. I know people are tired of hearing these Valdez comparisons but it's worth pointing out that the burn technique only managed to remove at most 30,000 gallons of oil in that event. Burning oil isn't likely to prevent a major catastrophe in this case either.
Kerry St. Pe, program director of the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program, worked for years doing oil-spill cleanup with the state Department of Environmental Quality. He said the burning method is a worthy and well-tested approach, although it is not in any way a panacea.
"I don't think this is the solution to this spill. I think it's a solution that they should try, and if they do get it cut off then the burn has been a great success," St. Pe said. "When you have a spill like this, you try everything. You use all the cleanup methods you have at your disposal, and if the burn gets rid of even 5 percent of the oil, it's 5 percent that wouldn't have gotten rid of otherwise."
So the risks of burning are a definite but indeterminate negative effect on air quality which may or may not be much worse than the effect of doing nothing. Meanwhile the benefit could be as little as a 5 percent reduction of the total hazard. Looks like the risk of having to settle for more nights of $18 black eyed peas in the future is getting bigger every day.
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