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Fox News is being told by the Homeland Security director for Jefferson Parish, La., that a new oil leak has sprung up in the Gulf of Mexico after a boat struck an oil well in the early morning hours on Tuesday.

A tugboat or other workboat collided with the well near Bayou St. Dennis, La., shearing off its valve structure and releasing pressurized natural gas and light oil, DHS official Deano Bonano told Fox News.

Cleanup workers are currently booming off the area and the scene at sea has been taken over by federal agents. The U.S. Coast Guard, Jefferson Parish police and fire officials, as well as Vessels of Opportunity boats have all been dispatched to the scene.

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Floodwaters covering the Chicago area were receding Sunday, as damages surfaced and communities began the clean-up process.
Ten towns in Cook County have declared their communities as disaster areas, said Dave Ramos, executive director for Cook County Emergency Management.

Friday night’s heavy rains hit Westchester and Melrose Park the hardest, filling some Cook County basements with up to four feet of water, Ramos said. He said he will recommend to the county’s president that all of Cook be declared a disaster area Monday.

Of the 50,000 ComEd customers who were without electricity Saturday morning, 3,000 remained without power Sunday, said Laura Micheli, a spokeswoman for the utility.
“There is still a lot of flooding obviously,” Micheli said. “In some areas they need to wait for water to recede before they’re able to restore power.”

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A dam on an eastern Iowa lake suffered a “catastrophic” failure Saturday, sending a massive amount of water into nearby communities and forcing residents to flee, officials said.

The Lake Delhi dam, about 45 miles north of Cedar Rapids, failed as a result of “massive rain — a very unusually high amount this season,” according to Jim Flansburg, communications director for Gov. Chet Culver.
Culver told CNN that nearly 10 inches of rain had recently fallen in a 12-hour period in the area and was “too much water for the dam to hold.”

The roads on either side of the dam — which were part of the dam’s containment measures — apparently gave out as a result of the rainfall, Flansburg told CNN.
The National Weather Service reported a 30-foot-wide gap in the berm alongside the dam.

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Day 68…and the oil still floods the Gulf!

When a little-known federal agency with just 14 investigators joined the growing list of government probes into the Deepwater Horizon disaster, it renewed cries from the Gulf of Mexico — and beyond — that no one seems to be in charge.

The Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board’s sleuthing brings the count of federal investigations to six — and that’s not counting the probes under way by a half-dozen congressional committees. Or the investigation being conducted by Robert Bea, a University of California, Berkeley, engineering professor who has assembled a 66-member team to assist the various investigative efforts.

“It’s hard to see who’s in charge. The answer is: nobody,” said Lee Hamilton, who co-chaired the 9/11 Commission’s investigation into the 2001 terrorist attacks. “The president can’t control Congress. He can’t control BP. He can’t control the states, which are doing their own investigations. All he can control is what the executive branch is doing.”

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More than two months after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, Pensacola awoke Wednesday to the largest onslaught of black crude on Florida’s coast, as more than nine miles of white shoreline and beaches were soaked with syrupy oil.

A health advisory has been issued by Escambia County for parts of Pensacola Beach and Fort Pickens.
“It’s pretty ugly. There’s no question about it,” Florida Gov. Charlie Crist said. “It does break your heart.”

Oil also washed up on nearby Perdido Key, where workers cleaned up 8 tons of tar balls.

Offshore, several shrimp boat skimmers could be seen fairly close to shore, near the Pier at Casino Beach.
“You’ve got a lot more aggressive work skimming now,” said Florida Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Mike Sole.
“There’s more skimmers coming in to be able to keep it offshore, so I’m hoping they will be able to go ahead and continue that robust effort offshore so that we only see very little onshore.”

But to continue the fight against oil, Florida’s Gulf counties say they need money, and they say BP isn’t returning phone calls. County representatives are meeting Wednesday with the U.S. Coast Guard and BP to make sure the checks get in the mail.

CNN

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