One
thing Bay County officials don’t want for Christmas is oil on local
beaches. It has been eight months since BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig
exploded and four months since it was capped. But the county continues
to deal with the aftermath.
Mark Bowen, Chief of Emergency Services, said crews are finding oil
product along Bay County beaches every day. “It’s been averaging about a
half pound, a quarter of a pound every twenty-four hour period,” said
Bowen.
When a condominium owner reported what looked like oil behind her
property Thursday, Bowen had a hazardous material technician on the
scene within an hour. Initial tests indicated the material in this case
was not oil but Bowen said further tests will be conducted to make
sure.
Bowen said BP’s subcontractor continues to conduct daily sweeps from
the west end of the beach to St. Andrews State Park, and also searches
for oil on Mexico Beach. Bowen said those efforts often go unnoticed.
“As long as BP can be out there and have that low profile but also
pick this product up… that keeps it from getting washed back out into
the surf and it’s just a good thing to do,” he said.
But the question remains: where did those millions of gallons of BP oil go?
“It could be floating around out there or it could be subsurface,” said Bowen, “...and it could make landfall on the beach.”
The National Response Center is the federal point of contact for
reporting oil and chemical spills, whether they’re related to the BP
incident or not. Bowen said he contacted the agency after learning of
Thursday’s report. Citizens can do the same by phone or internet.
“If somebody sees something they’re uncomfortable with, we want to
know about it [and] the Coast Guard wants to know about it,” said
Bowen. “Even if there’s a very small chance that it is oil, we want to
make absolutely a hundred percent sure that it’s not.”
Bowen said the amount of oil recovered from local beaches is
diminishing but the threat has not ended. The county has asked BP to
continue its search efforts… just in case.
