On March 22, 2014 a barge collided with a ship carrying 900,000 gallons of oil. Eventually, the ship ended up spilling up to 170,000 gallons of oil into the waters of South Houston. This is not the first time that an oil spill has taken place. Back in 1989, there was a huge oil spill in Alaska that resulted in the loss of 11 million gallons of oil. This oil spill affected the environment as well as the animals living in the ocean and around the shore. Many animals such as sea otter, fishes, birds, whales, and other aquatic animals were affected. That same oil that was dropped back in 1989 was never completely cleaned. Although, many people tried cleaning up the mess caused by the oil spill, people were unable to fully clean up the mess due to the large amount of oil that was spilled in the ocean. Some of these effects are still seen today. Due to the most recent oil spill, oil has been appearing on the shores of Texas, affecting any birds and wildlife that go feed in that location or live in nearby places. Due to the excessive amount of oil that was dropped, cleaning up the oil spill will be a difficult task.
When asked Animo Pat Brown teacher and Go Green Director Ms.Roach about her opinion on these recent and past oil spills her response was, “It was bad, I think that it is a scary thing when humans are in charge of a massive amount of such dangerous material that will end up hurting the environment. Humans are always going to make mistakes and end up harming animals and the environment.” When asked the following question that what should we do to prevent a disaster like this from happening again she stated, “We need to stop being dependent on oil and start using materials such as solar energy and wind energy which are both safe and clean.”
According to Josh Clark, agencies such as the Coast Guard and the Environmental Protection Agencies are responsible and have a few ideas for cleaning up the oil spills. These oil spills have affected the environment greatly, and will keep on affecting the economy if people don’t start being more careful.
