Oil Spill Update

This is an excerpt from a lead article in the Tampa Bay Newspapers headed
“Oil spill update, Pinellas County prepares to wait” by Suzette Porter;
I hope it might be of assistance to you with buyers and sellers who might be concerned about the effects of the oil spill on local property value

According to Kelli Hammer Levy, division director for Pinellas County's Watershed Management Department…
"The county's emergency management department and the environmental management department keep in touch with the U.S. Coast Guard incident command center (in St. Petersburg) to keep track of where the oil is and projected to be so we stay in the best position to protect the local environment," Levy said.

She said NOAA was aggressively tracking the different areas of oil and releasing trajectories of its movements on a daily basis.

"Thus far there have been no signs (of oil), nothing," she said. "It's all hundreds of miles away from here."

She confirmed that researchers at the University of Florida believe that Pinellas County and much of the west coast of Florida will be protected from any major impact due to the loop current, which should take the oil south of the keys.

According to NOAA, the loop current is an area of warm water that travels up from the Caribbean, past the Yucatan Peninsula, and into the Gulf of Mexico. The current is also known as the Florida current as it flows through the Florida Strait, into the Gulf Stream, and heads north up the eastern coast of the U.S.

Experts with the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies report that the loop current is variable in position and can occasionally reach as high as the Mississippi river delta or the Florida continental shelf.

Levy said any oil that makes it to Pinellas County would be heavily weathered.

"Sun breaks it (oil) down and weathers it," she said. "If any comes here, we can expect it in the form of tar balls or tar mats."

As of June 11, Levy said the closest oil was 150 miles away.