Thaindian News

By Gina Gomez
Louisiana, July 6, (THAINDIAN NEWS) The country may be vacationing, but the oil is not! The oil which had gushed out into the Gulf of Mexico from a leak in one of the oil wells more than two months back, is still gushing out and has now reached Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana. The latest reports claim that tar balls have been spotted in Lake Pontchartrain and have also been seen on the Galveston shores of Texas.

The most dangerous part of the story is that the oil has been spilling for more than 70 days and it still shows no sign of improvement. The BP oil leak has thus affected almost every state bordering the Gulf of Mexico. While people on holiday in the Lake Pontchartrain area had chosen the spot in the hope of spotting and catching some beautiful fish from the Louisiana’s Sportsman’s Paradise which is often referred to as a fisherman’s paradise, the vacationers came back with tar balls in their hands instead.

If reports from the Coast Guard are anything to go by, close to five gallons of tar balls have been collected from Lake Pontchartrain and the Galveston island. The tar balls were first seen by the Coast Guard on Monday while they were going past the Rigolets, a waterway which connects the Gulf of Mexico to Lake Pontchartrain. One tar ball was the size of one silver dollar coin reported Ann Rheams, a representative of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation, the organization observing the spread of oil and tar balls in the lake. The tar balls have initiated the closing of all fishing activities in Lake Pontchartrain.