On 11 April 2001, the Unified Command received permission from the Regional Response Team (RRT6) to conduct a series of in-situ burns at an oil spill site in a remote coastal marsh adjacent to Mosquito Bay, Louisiana. Approximately 12 acres of marsh were contaminated with an estimated 1000 bbl of condensate crude oil. Because the spill was largely contained in low areas of remote interior marsh, conventional oil recovery techniques and mitigation would have caused unacceptable physical marsh impact; therefore, in-situ burning was considered the most environmentally friendly approach to minimize impact from the spill. Overall, the application of in-situ burning was considered a positive environmental trade-off since any manual response in such a sensitive marsh would involve greater negative environmental trade-offs. This paper focuses on an overview of the incident and the scientific and environmental issues that were evaluated and presented to the Unified Command in making the final decision to use in-situ burning as a mitigation technique.

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