As an alternative to dam removal, the BPA is required by the current federal biological opinion on salmon recovery, to provide minimum flow and spill levels to help salmon survive the dams.
At its current flow, the spill would take more than 260 days to rival the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, when about 11 million gallons spilled into Alaska's Prince William Sound.
Mix had been assigned to estimate the size of the spill, and one of the messages investigators recovered "includes real-time flow-rate analysis" during an effort to plug the damaged well.
Mix and other engineers had worked tirelessly to calculate the flow rate of oil from the Macondo Well in order to develop a means of stopping the spill.