Oil spills are a terrible issue that continues to affect our oceans and land. Today’s oil industry has large scale oil production and transportation projects. The risk for oil spills has never been greater, and so too is our need for an effective oil spill response.
Cleveland is a city that has a number of assets going for it. It is active in many sports, it sits astride the blue stretches of Lake Erie, and it hosts the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame. But until recently, it held another, more dubious record. It’s river, the Cuyahoga, was once so polluted that is actually caught fire – not once, but multiple times.
When the Exxon Valdez struck a reef in Prince William Sound in 1989, it’s double hulls were penetrated almost immediately. The ship, stuck firmly on the reef, began to haemorrhage it’s cargo of crude oil in to the depths of the sound, where the strong tidal currents of the area quickly distributed it along the coastline.