A summary of May 9 events related to the vast oil spill from the Deepwater Horizon

Some oil spill events from Sunday, May 9, 2010

Events May 9, Day 20 of a Gulf of Mexico oil spill that began with an explosion and fire on April 20 on the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon, owned by Transocean Ltd. and leased by BP PLC, which is in charge of cleanup and containment. The blast killed 11 workers. Since then, oil has been pouring into the Gulf from a blown-out undersea well at about 210,000 gallons per day.

NEW PLANS

A day after icelike crystals clogged a four-story, 100-ton box that workers had lowered atop the main leak, BP was considering a new, smaller box in the hope that it would be less likely to be encrusted. Officials said the new box could be in place by midweek. The company was also considering cutting the riser pipe, which extends from the mile-deep well, undersea and using larger piping to bring the gushing oil to a drill ship on the surface. If they doesn’t work, crews may shoot mud and concrete directly into the well’s blowout preventer.

ALABAMA WALL

Alabama officials believe they’ve found a solution to protect the tricky Mobile Bay, the nation’s ninth-busiest seaport. Drawing on a concept that goes back to the early days of river navigation, Alabama officials are using oil-blocking booms to construct what amounts to a lock system at the bay’s mouth, which is four miles across.

Pilings are being driven into the bay’s squishy bottom, and two gates will be attached once they’re in place. If oil gets to the mouth of the bay — and officials believe it will if the spill isn’t plugged off Louisiana’s coast — ships will enter through the first gate, get a scrubbing, and exit through the second.

BEACH CLOSED

In Louisiana, truckloads of sand were being delivered and put in sandbags to be dropped by National Guard helicopters along Fourchon Beach, which is southwest of New Orleans. It’s one of the few beaches along the Louisiana coast, with about two miles of public sand and another seven miles that is privately owned.

Officials declared a state of emergency and closed the beach until further notice.

“We decided our best option right now is to use our sandy beaches as a natural barrier to protect our wetlands from the oil,” Lafourche Parish President Charlotte Randolph. “It’s a lot easier to clean oil off the beach than out of the marsh, so we are working to close off all breaches along our coast where the beach has been washed away.”

CLEANUP

Boom put out to protect estuaries, marshlands and coastlines has been put out across the Gulf Coast, from west of the Mississippi River to points as far east as Panama City, Fla.

At Dauphin Island, Ala., a line of materials that resembled a string of pompoms were positioned on a stretch of the shore after dime- to golf ball-sized tar balls were discovered there.

About 3.4 million gallons of an oil-water mix has been collected so far. Crews have also used nearly 309,000 gallons of chemicals to break up the oil on the water’s surface.