Torrey Canyon Oil Spill
By: Joah Rehmert
Water for life
Water is a need. No doubt, people cant survive very long without it. Water is wasted in many ways, leaky faucets, just dumping it out, and many other ways. We as an economy need to save it, we don't have an unlimited amount of freshwater. If we continue to take billions of gallons a day out of aquifers we wont have any water left to drink, or use for agriculture. In affect of that we will not have enough food to feed the worlds population and it will cause a World War III.
What happened?
On Saturday March 18 1967, the Torrey Canyon oil spill was the worst in history. 119,328 tonnes of crude oil was deposited into the Atlantic. A 300 meter long supertanker broke in two, that is how it all began.
Cause and Effect
The spill caused over 15,000 birds to die from trying to land on the oil thinking it is a solid surface. It effected many people, the government had a solution, drop bombs. 42 of their bombs missed the tanker while they were trying to sink it and its deadly cargo.
The Reaction
The population of Cornwall were not happy at all. They started riots because of how many birds had been killed, in the incident. They hoped that the oil would be cleaned up soon..... That didn't happen. The spill effect was still in play until 2010 when the government started to pump microorganisms into the water to eat away the remaining oil.
This is how much of land the oil covered right after the spill, 120 miles. Hundreds of thousands of tonnes traveled through the channel to France. The population did not agree with how long it was taking to clean up the oil. They started to rant and begin to riot, they wanted their beaches back!