How you can help repair the oil spill catastrophe

One of my favorite activities during a recent family vacation in St. Augustine, Fla., was sitting in a lawn chair on the white, sandy beach and watching flocks of pelicans streaking above the Atlantic Ocean like squadrons of jetfighters.

One bird would swoop toward the water to grab a fish, and the others would follow in tight formation. They looked so clumsy waddling on nearby docks, but in flight, they were masterful hunters — fast, stealthy, precise in their movements. They were majestic.

That’s why I’m beside myself to see so many pelicans smothered in crude oil in and around the Gulf of Mexico, unable to fly, trapped, waiting helplessly. Worse still, it just kills me to see the small birds and sea turtles submerged in pools of oil, with only their tiny heads sticking out above the surface, gasping their last breaths. They did nothing to deserve this awful fate.

British Petroleum has said for weeks that it will make this right, that it will clean up the mess and repair the damage it caused. But how? How does a company that can’t fix a leak at the bottom of the ocean restore vast natural habitats spanning multiple states to their once pristine state? How many years will be needed until the Earth is returned to normal? Will it ever go back to the way it was?

WKRG television in Mobile, Ala. — wkrg.com — is a nerve center for reporting on the worst environmental disaster the U.S. has ever seen. WKRG created a ticker to track the estimated number of gallons of crude oil spilled by BP after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded more than a month and a half ago, killing 11 and setting off an uncontrollable oil gusher a mile deep in the ocean.

As of last Friday, day 52 since the spill, the estimated number of gallons of oil released stood at 109.5 million and counting, according to WKRG. That translates to more than 110 trillion — that’s trillion — gallons of seawater poisoned by the spill, as one quart of oil poisons 250,000 gallons of saltwater for all life in its path, according to the Coastal Bays Program, a Maryland-based nonprofit environmental group. BP will likely need at least another month and a half to drill a relief well and stop the gusher entirely.