The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is now a full-fledged environmental disaster, the magnitude of which the U.S. has never seen.
Even with the new containment cap in place, anywhere from 35,000 to 60,000 barrels of oil are still spilling into Gulf waters every day. And although new estimates from BP put a long-awaited relief well, which should finally stem the leak into action in the first half of July, that still doesn’t solve the problem of the millions of gallons of crude oil already released into the Gulf since the rupture began leaking in late April.
The disaster is affecting Floridians and Gulf Coast residents from all walks of life. Although fishermen and small business owners are the hardest hit, they’re not the only ones who are impacted.
“For many students like myself, going to the beach is not just a summer pastime, it is something we have literally grown up with for our entire lives,” said Florida State University student Bridgette Balderson, who lives in Pace, just miles from Pensacola Beach. “Knowing that this whole incident could have been avoided is extremely frustrating. It’s infuriating that residents of the Gulf Coast even have to be dealing with this. Visiting the beach is now quite a departure from the norm: Instead of beautiful beaches, I have to watch BP-contracted workers shoveling oil and tar balls off the sand into garbage bags.”
Some FSU students are also stepping in as part of the cleanup solution. Two students who identified themselves as being from FSU are employed by BP to clean up tar balls from Pensacola beach. The students were unable to give their names because of restrictions placed on them by BP. Wearing white hazmat suits and carrying shovels and white trash bags full of tar, they stood out among the throngs of tourists who were trying to soak up the last rays of sun on the still-white beaches. However, the students couldn’t say much more about the situation, and neither could most of the rest of the cleanup crew.
Such cold-shouldered responses are not uncommon. Along the entire Gulf Coast, journalists and media have been complaining that BP, with the help of local law enforcement, has been keeping tight security on the beaches that have been tainted by its oil. The head of cleanup operations on Dauphin Island, Ala., wishing only to be called Jerry, had little to say about this during an interview. When asked about a security checkpoint denying access to press further down the island, he said that it was intended to protect those not trained in cleanup.
“It’s a liability issue,” Jerry said. “We can’t have people without training in the cleanup areas potentially hindering operations.”
Many of the journalists on the beach were frustrated by the tight security.
“It’s public beach, isn’t it?” said Swedish journalist Michael Winiarski. “What right do they have to keep anyone off it? Where’s the legality? Their lack of transparency is only going to make matters worse for them because, in the long run, the images and the stories and the devastation will come to light. And [BP] is only going to look worse for not having shown it all along.”
Many of these images have already made their way to the public. Images of oil-soaked birds and sea turtles, tar suspended in waves crashing onto beaches and aerial views showing plumes of crude oil looming just miles off coastline are now commonplace in papers across the country.
Jerry, however, voiced a more optimistic view of the cleanup operation.
“We’re receiving 4,000 feet of boom every other day,” he said. “And, although you won’t see it on the water right now, we’re waiting until we know where the oil is to make sure the boom’s deployment is as effective as possible.”
He explained the detailed workings of the shoreline and the offshore operations of the cleanup, and how each section of beach from Louisiana to Florida is partitioned into a hierarchy for efficient central command.
On Dauphin Island, for example, there are 400 workers on the beach combing the sand for oil and tar, along with at least two vessels in the water at all times monitoring for oil slicks. When one is found, the command center is notified and skimming vessels are launched to skim the oil out of the water. Booms are then deployed along corresponding coastline to protect it.
Onshore, things are organized as well. There’s even a man whose sole job is to ensure that all vehicles are being parked correctly to avoid traffic congestion in and around the cleanup compound. When BP cleanup crews got to Dauphin Island weeks before oil started hitting the beaches, they even went into the community to help.
“[We] went through the local neighborhoods and repaired houses,” Jerry said. “Heck, we even rebuilt a deck for one lady. We want to show the locals that we’re here to help them in any way possible. And everyone’s gotten along really well. They’ve been hospitable to us, and we’ve been as respectful as we can be to them […] I don’t know anything that’s going on on the bottom of the ocean floor, but I know that this operation is as efficient as I can make it. And that’s pretty efficient.”
Despite a seemingly organized and systematic cleanup process, however, the fact remains that miles of sensitive ecosystems and once-pristine coastline, potentially including beaches at popular spring break destination Panama City, have been damaged and irreversibly changed.
“No amount of cleanup crews can make me feel better about this,” said Balderson. “I, like everyone else, want to see some results, and I want to be assured that BP will be held entirely responsible for its mess. These Gulf beaches are never going to be the same again.”