Will building sand berms in Gulf of Mexico reduce amount of oil reaching coast?

credit: President of Plaquemines Parish

I wanted to take this opportunity to point out and direct you to the first-rate blogging on this subject by Michael Welland at his blog Through the Sandglass. Michael has three posts about the potentially ill-conceived geoengineering idea to frantically construct artificial barrier islands offshore of the Mississippi delta wetlands.

• May 23rd, 2010 — 80 miles of sand berms?? Experts express doubts …
• May 28th, 2010 — Gulf sand berms: a massive and risky experiment
• June 1st, 2010 — Berms continued: what exactly is the plan?
• June 4th, 2010 — Of berms and bacteria: a few updates

These posts are required reading for anyone desiring to cut through all the chatter flying around the news about this idea.

And I hope Michael continues to blog about this topic in the coming days (weeks? months?) as oil continues to gush out of the Gulf of Mexico sea floor.