EXXON Has Solution to Arkansas Oil Now in Wetlands: PAPER TOWELS

[freethought]

23. Not meaning to applaud Exxon but this is quite typical

We used to call those things 3-M pads. As the article says they look like a big paper towel but they are especially made for absorbing up oils and other organic liquids. I've worked on diesel and fuel oil spills and I hate to say in such situations there really are not any other good options.
If oil spills in a body of water the usual approach is to set out something called a "boom", it looks like that big white sausage in the bottom photograph. The boom is set out and moved to corral and concentrate the oil where it can be soaked up by the pad or sucked up by pump trucks.
Other options? Well, during the Valdeez spill they used pressurized steam to clean rocks and shoreline of the crude oil, however it raised absolute havoc with local ecology. The other option is to used detergents and or dispersing agents which can cause more problems than they solve. Corexit anyone?
The 3-M pads are widely used because they are cheap. Companies I worked for bought them by the truckload. Once they have absorbed their share of oil they can be easily gathered up, drummed and then sent off to be incinerated. If oil gets on the ground, the best option is often to come in with a backhoe or something an scrape an inch or two off the top of the afflicted area.
I would be interested in who is supervising the spill response. In some of the spill I worked on, nobody seemed to know who was in charge.
These photos don't surprise me a bit. It's what I expected for the most part.