Oil Spill in San Francisco Bay

The Bay Area is in a funk right now, but soon it will have its groove back.

On Wednesday morning a container ship hit the Bay Bridge--which connects the East Bay (where Berkeley is) to San Francisco. The Coast Guard warned the ship's pilot of the impending collision but he said he had things under control.  The spill dumped 58,000 gallons of "bunker oil" into the San Francisco Bay. That's much more than the 140 gallons initially reported. Local officials are trying to discover why the initial estimate was so inaccurate.

Bunker oil is gross stuff--thick , oozy, very unrefined. It's probably what the Beverly Hillbillies stumbled upon when they made their TV millions forty years ago.  This year's bunker oil is collecting on duck beaks and sandy shores all around the Bay. Per Governor Schwarzenegger's declaration, the Bay is officially in a state of emergency.

The spill is nowhere near the dimensions of the Exxon Valdez disaster two decades ago. But it's bad enough, and a reminder of just how intricately  everything is connected.   A trivial example: because the ship's pilot had a lapse of judgment, kids in Albany, CA can't walk on the beach this weekend.  The kids are bummed out, but their parents are glad that the spill wasn't worse.