He CNN headline would appear to be entirely accurate in the sense that a larger area of contamination is indeed typically worse for the environment, not to mention the operator too. Containment is always the primary strategic objective in minimizing the effects of oil spills, due to the possibility of damaging a disproportionately far greater area should the effective radius of the spill not be immediately controlled. Area affected increases by the spill's effective radius squared, and that is exactly what appears to be the case here. 10x more area affected indicates that the present effective radius is now (only) 3.3x the initial. That 10x increase in area has caused an additional and far greater ecologial hazard, as it now includes adjacent wetlands as well, and the entirely new, different and potentially much larger group of wetland inhabitant species that may now be at risk, plus it makes further containment even that much more difficult and more costly to clean up. So ya, maybe the CNN headline is inaccurate in that by simply mentioning the greater area effected, it didn't include any mention of the disproportionate and potentially far greater environmental damages and clean up costs that may be occurring as a result. Could it be that damages might noe reach 10x area, 4x species, 5 x wetland cleanup costs, might we say, for lack of anything better at this time, maybe ballpark 200X the original estimate??? Obviously subjective, but it illustrates how things can get rapidly out of hand as radius and area increase by just a little bit.
