by Jed LewisonThanks to Hurricane Alex and heavy winds pushing crude oil towards the Louisiana shoreline, tarballs from BP's deepwater blowout have now made their way from the Gulf of Mexico and into Louisiana's Lake Pontchartrain:
Showing just how unpredictable and all-consuming the massive Gulf oil spill can be, tar balls and small sheens of oil have entered Lake Pontchartrain and are hitting Texas shores for the first time.
John Lopez, director of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation's coastal stainability program, spotted the first tar balls in the Rigolets Pass on Sunday. By Monday, the blobs of oil had washed ashore as far west as Treasure Isle in Slidell.
Cleanup crews used nets to scoop up the tar balls throughout the day, collecting more than 1,000 pounds of oil and waste. BP also deployed 19 manual skimming vessels and four decontamination vessels to the area, and placed 600-feet of hard and soft boom at a choke point in the Rigolets to prevent more oil from entering the lake. Cleanup efforts are expected to resume today.
The oil that has reached the lake has been heavily weathered and officials predict a "modest" impact. Nonetheless, the state has now expanded the area closed to recreational and commercial fishing to include the southeastern part of the lake (the region southeast of U.S. 11 in the map below).
Lake Pontchartrain is the second-largest saltwater lake in the United States (Utah's Great Salt Lake is the largest). It connects to the Gulf of Mexico through an eight-mile long strait known as the Rigolets.
continued at Daily Kos....
