subject: Clean Up 101: Miles of Shoreline and Hardwood Mats [print this page] Clean Up 101: Miles of Shoreline and Hardwood Mats
With crude oil making landfall across the entire gulf coast, the focus of the nation, and the world, is quickly turning to clean up efforts and the environmental impact on the coastline. Over a month and a half ago the deep ocean mobile drilling platform, Deepwater Horizon, exploded and sank, taking with it the lives of ten people. The environmental and economic toll of this disaster is still unfolding as oil continues to pour from the damaged well nearly a mile under the ocean. As continuing efforts to quell the flow of oil are making a dent in the total amount of leaked into the sea, the gulf coast states are ramping up efforts to prepare for the clean up effort and move forward into the implementation of the clean up process. Dixie Mat is becoming a major player in this component of disaster relief as the value of hardwood mats and swamp mats is being revealed. The ability of swamp mats and crane mats to provide access to some of the more inaccessible and remote areas along the coast has boosted the clean up effort and helped facilitate the recovery that will dominate the next several months along the gulf coast.
There are several methods to cleaning the oil burdened areas along the gulf of Mexico, most of which definitely stand to benefit from the capabilities offered by hardwood mats and all their multifaceted forms. As engineers work to seal the source of the oil bubbling up from beneath the ocean floor, volunteers and hired hands work to offset the damage to the beach and the environmental consequences of oil drilling gone wrong. Hardwood mats are being purchased in large quantities to help gain access to wetlands that have borne much of the brunt of the oil as it has made landfall in the costal region. It is these environmentally sensitive areas that have been on the frontlines of the oil onslaught and are, unfortunately, often quite inaccessible. This inaccessibility is largely offset by the hardwood mats, crane mats, and swamp mats supplied by Dixie Mat. In our next blog entry we will dig a little deeper into this issue and Dixie Mat's role in the clean up process and how hardwood mats and swamp mats are helping facilitate the clean up efforts.
