NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Wildlife rehabilitators are decontaminating dozens of alligators, brushing their pointy teeth and scrubbing their scaly hides in the weeks after a pipeline rupture dumped 300,000 gallons (1.1 million liters) of diesel fuel into a New Orleans area wetland.
Diesel poured into the area outside the New Orleans suburb of Chalmette on Dec. 27 after a severely corroded pipeline broke, according to federal records.
Seventy-eight alligators have since been rescued, and 33 of them had been cleaned and released by Friday into a national wildlife refuge located in New Orleans and about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the spill site in St. Bernard Parish, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries said.
Cleaning a six-foot-long (2-meter) alligator on Thursday required eight people: four holders, two scrubbers, one person with a hose for hot-water rinses and one to change the wash water, said Laura Carver, who became the department’s oil spill coordinator in February 2010, less than three months before a massive BP oil spill off Louisiana in the Gulf.
Carver said the impact of December’s diesel spill on wildlife was relatively high compared to most spills in Louisiana.