Oil Spill Goes From Bad to Worse

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I haven’t verified these numbers myself, but the friend who sent them to me is a trustworthy sort. Experts now estimate that five times more oil has been spilling into the water from that oil rig explosion off the coast of Louisiana than they thought before:

Okay. Here’s how much they estimated was leaking before this evening: 42,000 gallons a day.

Five times that amount means approximately 210,000 gallons a day have been leaking into the Gulf.

If this spill continues unabated for two months — and that seems to be the most likely time frame at this point — we’re talking about 12.6 million gallons.

Exxon Valdez? That was 10.8 million.

Enjoy your evening.

But even that might be low. SkyTruth.org estimates that the spill rate is 20 times higher than initial estimates and that 6 million gallons of oil have already spilled into the Gulf. An Exxon Valdez size spill might only be a few days away.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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