U.S. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, in charge of a presidential commission drawing up a plan for the long-term recovery of the Gulf of Mexico, comes to St. Petersburg tonight for a public hearing on the spill at the Florida Fish & Wildlife Research Institute auditorium on the USF-St. Pete campus (100 8th Ave. SE) beginning at 6:00 p.m.  Tampa area Congresswoman Kathy Castor will also be in attendance.

Environmental activists in the Bay area have been spreading word of Secretary Mabus' visit over the last week, and are directing citizens to insure that

  1. All environmental consequences of the Gulf Oil Disaster are addressed, and
  2. Everything is done that now can be done, through changes in procedures, regulation and legislation, to ensure this never happens again.

The hearing takes place a day after federal scientists say the BP spill is by far the world's largest accidental release of oil ever, eclipsing the estimated 3.3 million barrels spilled into the Bay of Campeche by the Mexican rig Ixtoc I in 1979, previously believed to be the world’s largest accidental release.  Scientists say the BP spill has released 4.9 billion barrels, or 205.8 million gallons.  The New York Times reports that:

the teams believe that the current estimates are accurate to within 10 percent. They also reported that of the roughly 4.9 million barrels that had been released from the well, about 800,000 had been captured by BP’s containment efforts. That leaves over four million barrels that gushed into the Gulf of Mexico from April 20 to July 15.

This article appears in Jul 29 – Aug 4, 2010.