The 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil-well blowout caused dramatic, widespread shoreline loss along Louisiana’s coast, says a new study by the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The study revealed that oil-coated wetland margins in Barataria Bay, the site of the heaviest Deepwater Horizon contamination, suffered greater land loss than the bay’s non-oiled shorelines exposed to just normal wave action.
A hurricane that struck about six months after the study was completed provided further measurement of the damage caused by oiling: The oiled shorelines suffered much greater loss than marshes that had not been oiled. “There was broadly dispersed erosion due to oiling from the Deepwater Horizon spill and more severe, but localized, erosion from Hurricane Isaac,” said Amina Rangoonwala, USGS geophysicist and lead author of the study.