In fact, the most common type of T. gondii found to be infecting otters off the California coast is the Type X strain (Conrad et al., 2005), which has yet to be traced to domestic cats (Miller et al., 2008).
The BP spill on the U.S. Gulf Coast was a different type of environmental disaster but conservatively was no worse than what happened in Ecuador and arguably much less impactful because it was cleaned up so quickly.
Environmental groups are right to use the Arkansas spill as a cautionary tale -- as one of many reasons that the Obama administration should reject a proposed pipeline, called the Keystone XL, which would carry this risky type of crude from Canada to the Gulf Coast of the United States for processing.