Persuasive Essay On Clean Up

Off the coast of Santa barbara, California yet alone 20 to 25 ton of oil leak into the ocean in a day. Oil spills need to be stopped because they cause billions of dollars to clean up. Some possible solutions for these problems are have more special groups dedicated to oil spill cleanup and make oil rigs less possible to break and start an oil spill. Oil spills need to be lessened because they cause are harm to wildlife, their habitats, and cause economic trouble for fishing and tourism businesses.

Oil spills cause lots of harm to wildlife. When an oil spill occurs it take a little while for the oil to reach the shore but marine life will be affected. Marine life gets slowly poisoned by long term exposure to the oil in shallow waters and beaches.

Usually fish and whales swim away from the oil and that lowers their exposure to the oil and lowers the amount of death for those animals. Birds are usually the ones most harmed because when the oil gets on them their fur and feathers get matted and they fall off, so their ability to float becomes damaged. This can also happen to otters. All of this marine and land animals can be effected by the oil vapors. The oil vapors affect the animal's central nervous system, lungs, and liver. Once they ingest the oil it reduces the ability to eat and digest food by damaging their cells. There is also a chance they can have reproductive problems from long term exposure to oil.
Oil spills can also harm the wildlife habitat. Coral reefs are at risk of oil smothering. Exposed sandy, gravel, or cobble Beaches can have oil soaked into them and have a mess up the food chain there. Sheltered beaches can have oil stranded on them for years if cleanup efforts do not begin in a timely manner. Tidal flats have huge animal communities and when oil gets into their muddy bottoms of the flats can cause harmful effects on the animals in the area. Salt marshes can have vegetation destroyed by fresh light oils. Mangrove forests in tropical regions have mangrove trees roots sticking out of the ground and the water so if oil gets on the roots it will slow the growth of the tree and to replace the tree would take decades.
Oil spills can ruin fishing and tourism businesses in an area where an oil spill has affected.
Fishing businesses can be ruined by oil spills because the oil kills the marine life in the area and their habitats. Once the oil is cleaned up the fish might not return to the area because their homes were destroyed. The oil affects the tourism businesses in the area affected by an oil spill because people stop traveling to the area. Also the oil will ruin beaches, maybe affect natural landmarks. Even after the oil spill in contained it will still take month, maybe years for the oil to be cleaned up and wildlife to return to the area, most likely cause the business to leave the area or go out of business.
There have been many very deadly oil spills in the past 30 years. Six years ago BP’s oil rig Deepwater horizon exploded off the coast of louisiana. One of the ways they cleaned up the oil was that they 1.8 million gallons of chemical dispersants into the gulf of mexico. Surprisingly the petro geyser (the machine that suck oil out of the sea floor) is still leaking oil. Another bad oil spill was the exxon valdez oil spill in 1989. The ship the exxon valdez struck a reef of the coast of Prince William Sound, Alaska dumping 11 million gallons of crude oil into the ocean. They ways they used to clean up that oil spill was using high pressure fire hoses straying hot water and bioremediation. Bioremediation is the use of either naturally occurring or deliberately introduced microorganisms or other forms of life to consume and break down environmental pollutants, in order to clean up a polluted site.
There are many laws on oil spills and pollution already.

After the Exxon Valdez oil spill, Congress passed the oil pollution act of 1990. According to the EPA “The Oil Pollution Act (OPA) of 1990 streamlined and strengthened EPA's ability to prevent and respond to catastrophic oil spills. A trust fund financed by a tax on oil is available to clean up spills when the responsible party is incapable or unwilling to do so. The OPA requires oil storage facilities and vessels to submit to the Federal government plans detailing how they will respond to large discharges. EPA has published regulations for aboveground storage facilities; the Coast Guard has done so for oil tankers. The OPA also requires the development of Area Contingency Plans to prepare and plan for oil spill response on a regional scale.”(EPA)

A possible solution for stopping oil spills could be having more safety tests and oil rigs own cleanup teams. The bp oil spill of 2010 was caused because of faulty equipment, if they had done more tests they could've found the faulty equipment and fixed it. Imagine oil rigs with cleanup crews on the ready if disaster strikes. That would keep the oil in a contained area until the rest of the cleanup crews got there. If that would happen oil spills would be cleaned up very fast. Very little marine life would be harmed and no businesses will be

harmed.
Some possible solutions could be more groups that could help marine life affected by an oil spill or More cleanup options. Even though there are already groups dedicated to helping out with oil spills but, we need more. If there was two times more people helping with oil spills less animals would die. Same with cleanup crews beaches and the water would be cleaned up a lot faster. Businesses would also be back up and running and getting money quicker too.
Oil spills need to be lessened because they harm wildlife, their habitats, and they cause economic troubles for fishing and tourism businesses. Terrible oil spills in 2010 and 1989 have created new laws about cleanup companies and options. Possible solutions if oil spills like this happened again could be more groups that could help marine life affected by an oil spill, More cleanup options, safety tests, and oil rigs own cleanup teams. Every time an oil spill occurs it kills thousands to hundreds of thousands of animals to die and millions of gallons have oil into the ocean. The ocean is already polluted enough, Something must be done to save it well there still is time, so will the ocean be filled with oil and pollution or clean and have a happy planet.