Cleanup Continues After Oil Spills From Golden Ray

OIL SPILLS AT THE GOLDEN RAY

Crews have been working since Saturday to clean up oil from the capsized Golden Ray off St. Simons Island, a spill that has prompted concerns from environmentalists about the potential impacts on the coast. The discharge occurred after demolition crews finished separating the ship’s sixth of eight sections on Friday. The spill isn’t the first from the cargo ship since it toppled while carrying 4,200 vehicles in September 2019, but Susan Inman, coastal advocate with the environmental nonprofit group One Hundred Miles, said this is the biggest discharge so far. Here’s an update on the current oil cleanup efforts, the potential health and environmental impacts and where the Golden Ray removal process stands today.

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BEACH ALERTS: The Georgia Coastal Health District is warning beachgoers on St. Simons and Jekyll Islands to watch for any signs of oil and to use their best judgement before swimming due to the oil discharge. There are also beach water advisories unrelated to the Golden Ray for Polk Street Beach on Tybee Island and South Beach at the 4-H Center on Jekyll Island.

Before you head to the beach, check the link to see current notices.

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LEAD REMAINS A CONCERN FOR SOME

Lead in drinking water is a known hazard, yet it still pops up as a problem in older cities and homes in Georgia. A non-profit is taking applications from up to 800 schools across the state for water tests, but Savannah-Chatham schools won’t be applying for the grant because officials say they are already monitoring the older buildings in the system. Over the past decade, Education Special Purpose Local Option Sales Taxes have funded new buildings and renovations for a large percentage of the district’s aging facilities. And new pipes mean less danger from lead, even in Chatham County which tops the state in lead poisoning cases in children. Research that studied 1.5 million people before and after the Clean Air Act of 1970, which effectively stopped the use of lead in gasoline to take the poison out of the skies, found that childhood lead exposure can cause personality disorders in adults.

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$1 TRILLION INFRASTRUCTURE BILL: CLEAN ENERGY FUNDS

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, known as the bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure bill, may come to a vote in the Senate chamber this week. It includes billions for pandemic relief, broadband access, roads, bridges and transportation programs. It would also designate billions to climate change resilience and clean energy, the New York Times reports.  

Climate resilience: Part of the money would fund efforts that are already underway, but experts say the country needs more of. For example, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would get $11.6 billion for projects like flood control and river dredging and the U.S. Forest Service would get billions to remove flammable vegetation in order to make wildfires less damaging. The other portion would go to new efforts, including $492 million to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to map and predict inland coastal flooding. The bill would also provide $216 million to the Bureau of Indian Affairs to help tribal nations that are disproportionately impacted by climate change become more resilient to impacts from climate change. More than half of that money would go toward moving groups of Indigenous Americans away from vulnerable areas. 

Clean energy: $73 billion would go toward modernizing the electric grid so that it can carry more renewable energy, the largest federal investment in power transmission ever. It also includes $7.5 billion to develop electric vehicle charging stations, half of what President Biden requested. That number came after legislative negotiations and a compromise to tag some money for more propane and natural gas infrastructure. So while the bill will lay the groundwork for pivoting away from fossil fuels, it includes nothing that would immediately require reducing fossil fuel emissions.

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SHIP WATCH: What’s arriving and when. This week’s lineup includes the COSCO Shipping Orchid, arriving on Aug. 7. It’s 1,201 feet long and 157 feet wide, and it carries 13,500 TEUs, aka containers, according to VesselTracker.com.

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MAPPING GEORGIA’S RIVERS

Georgia River Network is partnering with Earthviews to create 360-degree maps of Georgia’s waterways, WABE reports. 300 miles of Georgia’s rivers have been mapped since February, just a small dent in the state’s 70,000 miles of rivers and streams. GRN’s Paddle Georgia Coordinator, Joe Cook, says that 400 to 500 miles of rivers will be documented by the end of the year. The maps will join Earthview’s digital collection, and will be used to develop an app that can highlight local points of interest and potential hazards. “Our main goal is to fill the gaps in the maps,” Brian Footen, president of Earthviews, told the Atlanta NPR station. “Google isn’t mapping these waterways all over the world, and no one else really is.”

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