NEW ORLEANS – More than 6,000 gallons of oily water have been recovered at the site of a spill near Louisiana's Bay Long that has covered dozens of birds in crude, the Coast Guard said Sunday.
Workers were repairing the damaged section of a pipeline that discharged an estimated 5,300 gallons of crude oil on Sept. 4, the Coast Guard said in a statement.
Crews also were trying to safely capture and treat roughly 200 oiled birds around the Cheniere Ronquille Barrier Island and East Grand Terre Island. At least 11 birds and one sea turtle had been collected as of Sunday, the Coast Guard said.
The spill was caused by a contractor working on an environmental restoration project funded after BP's massive 2010 oil spill.
NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune reported that an excavating marsh buggy operated by a subcontractor for Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. accidentally cut through a pipeline owned by Harvest Pipeline Company.
The $36 million barrier island reconstruction project is funded by part of the $1 billion that BP made available for early Natural Resource Damage Assessment projects a year after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig caught fire and sank in April 2010, releasing millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
The Coast Guard says more than 150 people, 25 boats, seven skimmers and more than 12,000 feet of boom have been deployed to contain and recover oil.
The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality is leading efforts to assess the spill's shoreline impacts.
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