Oil Continues To Wash Up On Northwest Florida Beaches

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.