Oil on beach at Fort Morgan, 1/20/2011

Weathered oil, partially buried in sand. This photo was taken at 3pm the day the Coast Guard promised to have clean-up crews on the beach. We originally found this oil on Friday, 1/14, and reported it on Tuesday, 1/18.

We did see evidence of clean-up crews in the form of equipment and a dumpster (which was already on location at the time of the first sighting of the oil on 1/14), however, the oil had not been touched since we first observed it.

Work crew vehicles ahead.

 

Dumpster for oil-contaminated waste.

Tarballs. Note ATV tracks on the right.

When we were at Fort Morgan the first time (1/14) we saw a few people in reflective vests driving along the beach in golf carts--presumably BP workers. On no occasion did we see anyone physically cleaning up the oil on the beach. On the upper right-hand side of the above photograph you can see the atv tracks made by the BP workers traveling back and forth between their stations on the beach. The tracks we found yesterday afternoon were fresh, and later that day a tractor came along to rake the path.


For those who are new to the Gulf Coast, here are some pictures of the view of the offshore rigs from the beach:

Offshore rigs off the coast of Fort Morgan, AL. (1/19/2011)

Offshore rigs off the coast of Fort Morgan, AL. (1/19/2011)

Offshore rigs off the coast of Fort Morgan, AL. (1/19/2011)

Here is a selection from the journal I am keeping about my internship:

Fort Morgan is on a peninsula which sticks out into the Gulf, and it has repeatedly been in the news lately for the tarballs that continue to wash ashore. Its beaches resemble the nice white sand seen further east in Gulf Shores and Western Florida, and the eastern stretch of the area is heavily colonized by beach condos. However, the very tip of the peninsula is barren and abandoned, and fittingly was the only public access we could find to the beach. We got out there, after parking on a sketchy and poorly maintained road, walked by a large dumpster which had some sort of oil-waste-related label, and walked onto the beach. We immediately realized that what we had assumed was seaweed was in fact a swath of slabs of weathered oil buried in the sand. It stretched in both directions quite a ways, including quite far up towards the vegetation line. The tar had clearly been there for at least several weeks, quite possibly longer than that. What was also very interesting is that if you were to stand next to a tar slab and look straight ahead out over the water and pan to the right (clockwise), the horizon is dotted with at least twenty off-shore rigs. If you turn the opposite direction however, there is not a single one to be found. If you were to take an aerial view of the area, you would see that at a certain point on the peninsula, the barren, abandoned beach ceases suddenly at a certain point and from there eastward it is peppered with little beach houses and villas. If you draw a line from that point out into the Gulf, that is the point at which the off-shore rigs cease. This is not terribly surprising based on what I have learned and observed so far, but it is a good example of the influence of commercial interests on the land, and the power of the tourism industry when faced with the oil and gas industry. It also makes me wonder what power an eco-tourism influence might have in this area.

I hope all is well where you are!

Bethany