Military in battle to protect oil-threat wetlands

Helicopters have peppered Louisiana's barrier islands with sacks of sand to bolster crucial wetlands against the huge Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

As the sandbags were put into place, workers further inland are used pumps and other structures to divert fresh water from the Mississippi River into the marshlands, hoping it would help to push back the oily salt water lapping at the coast.

In Grand Isle, at the tip of the Louisiana boot, a small army of heavy machinery – civilian and military dump trucks, United States Army jeeps and Humvee vehicles, front loaders and diggers – has been working to fortify a breached section of beach.

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National Guard Black Hawk helicopters – the armed forces' medium-lift utility helicopter – dropped sandbags on the breach yesterday and later piles of dirt were being pushed together to make a dam, keeping oil from reaching the marshes.

The floodworks were being installed to help to rebuild Louisiana's shrinking wetlands by injecting sediment-rich water from the river.

Chett Chiasson, executive director of the Greater Lafourche Port Commission, said: "We're trying to save thousands of acres of marsh here in this area, where the shrimp lay their eggs, where the fin fish lay their eggs, where the crabs come in and out.

"We're trying to save a heritage, a way of life, a culture that we know here in recreational and commercial fishing."

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At the site of the ruptured well a mile underwater, a remote-controlled submarine has been shooting chemicals into the massive leak to dilute the flow.

Crews using the deep-sea robot are attempting to thin the oil – which is rushing up from the seabed at a pace of about 210,000 gallons a day –after getting approval from the Environmental Protection Agency, BP officials said.

Two previous tests were done to try to decide on the potential impact on the environment, although the EPA said the effects of the chemicals were still widely unknown.

BP engineers were casting about for solutions after an ice-like build-up thwarted their plan to siphon off most of the leak using a 100-ton containment box. They pushed ahead with other potential short-term solutions, including using a smaller box and injecting the leak with material such as golf balls and pieces of tyre to plug it.

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If it the plugging works, the well will be filled with mud and cement and abandoned.

None of those methods has previously been attempted so deep. Workers were simultaneously drilling a relief well – the solution which is considered to be the most permanent – but that is expected to take up to three months.

BP chief executive Tony Hayward said in Houston, Texas: "This is the largest, most comprehensive spill response mounted in the history of the US and the oil and gas industry."

At least four million gallons of crude oil are believed to have leaked into the Gulf of Mexico since the blast on the Transocean drilling rig Deepwater Horizon, which was leased to BP, killed 11 people on April 20.

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If the gusher were to continue unabated, it would surpass the Exxon Valdez disaster as America's worst spill by June 20.

About 11 million gallons leaked into Alaska's Prince William Sound

after the tanker grounded on a reef in 1989.

The new containment device it is hoped to fit over the Gulf of Mexico leak is much smaller than the earlier device, about 4ft in diameter,

5ft tall and weighing just under two tons.

Unlike the bigger box, it will be connected to a drill ship on the surface by a pipe-within-a-pipe when it is lowered, which will allow crews to pump heated water and methanol immediately to prevent ice building-up inside it.

Bp picks up bill of 236m so far

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BP – which has taken responsibility for the clean-up – said the spill had cost the company 236m so far for immediate response, containment efforts, commitments to the Gulf Coast states, and settlements and government costs.

Analysts expect the final bill to run into tens of billions.

As efforts continue to plug the leak, executives of the three companies involved in the drilling have been trying to shift responsibility to each other. The cause of the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon

drilling rig 50 miles off the Louisiana coast and the resulting spill have still not been decided yet.

Rig workers said the blow-out aboard the rig was triggered by a bubble of methane gas which shot up the drill column.

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