Oiled Coast

Conflicting Thoughts About Encouraging People to Visit

I am sitting in Starbucks on Highway 98 in Gulf Breeze watching bumper-to-bumper traffic heading toward Pensacola Beach for the annual Blue Angels air show. [I’m here instead of at the show because I am putting some finishing touches on my dissertation and now allowing myself to do anything else until that is done. Hence, the lack of posts and real reporting on this blog. I’m making an exception for a quick post here.] 

Since returning home, I have noticed that the chief concern here seems to be the affect of the oil spill on local businesses. This is supposed to be the peak of tourist season and tourism is one of the area’s two main economic pillars. My conflict comes from the fact that the health implications of the oil spill remain to be seen. So how do we encourage people to visit and support the economy when doing so might place them at risk?

I am happy to see so many people heading to the beach for the air show. During the show, people are not allowed in the water, anyway, so my reservations about people swimming are not an issue. The main viewing area for the show is Casino Beach, which is the most visited section of Pensacola Beach and the first place that gets cleaned when oil washes up. Since the oil has been blown westward for the past week, that section of sand is clean and ready for visitors.

So this is a good weekend… but what about the rest of the summer? For one, I think we need to focus more attention on what there is to do on the beach and in Pensacola that is not affected by the oil spill. First, there are plenty of swimmable bodies of water around here that are not risky. Santa Rosa Sound, on the opposite side of Pensacola Beach, is one. Boating is still fine. Going tubing and canoeing in the rivers in the north part of the county is fine. Going out to the beach to enjoy the local entertainment, restaurants and bars is fine. And often, visiting Casino Beach to enjoy the sun and sand, is safe. I stop at suggesting that getting in the water of the Gulf is safe. I simply don’t believe it is. 

What we need to focus more energy on, however, is forcing BP to make this situation right. No business should go bankrupt because of this. No beach should be left dirty for long enough to present an image to the world that we are closed for business completely. We need MORE clean-up crews out there and we need faster compensation from BP. They are simply not doing enough and our government is not holding their feet to the fire.

Notes on a Beach: What You See & What You Don’t

Oil dominates conversations in the Pensacola area - at least the conversations I have had since arriving home Thursday evening. I can see oil fatigue setting in, which concerns me on several levels. For one, I fear we will become accustomed to this way of life and lose the energy to fuel the outrage necessary to clean up and hold BP responsible. I fear defeat. At the same time, I know that we can’t stop everything else to become obsessed with the oil spill. That’s not healthy or productive. People have lives to continue.

I drove out to Pensacola Beach yesterday and spent only about 10 minutes looking around and gathering some first impressions and photos. I saw the offending oil, but didn’t notice a smell. Still, when I left, my sinuses and throat were burning a bit and I had a dull headache for the rest of the day. It could be oil fumes, it could be the heat, or it could be my imagination. 

A few initial thoughts:

• Where are the birds? It is typical to drive across Pensacola Bay Bridge and see plenty of seagulls and a few pelicans. When I made that drive yesterday, I saw one bird. The same story when I crossed the beach bridge. There were no seagulls on the beach that I visited, either, and that’s just bizarre. Normally, there are flocks of the foul fowl. (Seagulls are pretty from a distance, but up close, they are rats with wings.) We’ve seen the pictures of oiled birds, but this is not being reported in numbers that explain the birds’ absence. Are they migrating to unaffected areas or are they dying out at sea? Or both?

• Where are the clean-up crews? There are workers at the beach, but not as many as are needed to remove the oil. The section of beach I visited, east of Casino Beach and behind a residential section, had oil scattered all over it, creating a minefield to walk through to avoid stepping in the mess. Yet, there was no one there to clean up. Volunteers are not being used in the clean-up, and BP is not sending out enough paid workers. This is infuriating. Plenty of locals would be happy to help. There are non-profit organizations, churches and schools around the country that would be willing to organize service trips just like they do after hurricanes. There would need to be training to make sure it is safe, but currently, the beaches are not closed. The authorities have deemed it not so harmful as to keep civilians from visiting the beach, so why is it unsafe for people to help clean up?

•  The problems are also beneath the surface. Look out over the beach and there are three levels to the problem. From a few hundred feet away, things look fine. The dark patches running the length of the beach at the tide line could be seaweed, a typical thing to see. Up close, you find that some of it is seaweed, but much of it is the black/brown toxic goo that looks like chocolate syrup on sugar. Dig a few inches below what appears to be a clean section of sand and you find more oil and tarballs. With every tide and every wave, sand is layered on top of the previous day’s deposit of oil. Obviously, this makes the clean-up even more difficult and complex. According to a story by WEAR Channel 3, BP is full of BS about cleaning this up properly.

A clean section of sand, followed by that same spot after digging a few inches to reveal tarballs underneath. 

• The tourists are still there, if only a few of them. This is one of the controversies on the beach. Last week, authorities closed the beach to swimming. Then they reopened it. Then they closed it. Then they reopened it. With local businesses suffering, no one wants to be responsible for sending away visitors on what would be two of the biggest weekends of the year: Fourth of July and the Blue Angels air show. But there are serious concerns about the safety and health implications of visiting these beaches and swimming in the water. People have reported getting sick. Parents are letting their children swim. Granted, most people are staying away, exercising good sense, in my opinion. On a Friday before a summer holiday weekend, the beach normally would have been packed and the parking lots full. Instead, it looked like a Tuesday in January. The affect of the spill on tourism, one of Pensacola’s two main economic supports, the other being the military, is devastating. But how devastating is the affect on people’s health and safety?

Oil Impact Notices went up on Pensacola Beach, advising visitors to avoid oil and stay away completely if they are in high-risk groups.

Casino Beach and its parking lot at 3pm on Friday, July 2. 

At this point, I have more questions than answers, but these are a few of the topics I want to gather more information about while I’m here. I plan to post more about them in the coming days and weeks.

The Plan for this Blog

Next Wednesday, June 30, I will go to Florida for a month. I had planned this trip before the oil spill. I’m transitioning from graduate school in North Carolina to a job in Illinois, but I don’t start work until August 16. I had planned to spend the month of July visiting family and friends in Pensacola, prepping the courses I’ll teach in the upcoming semester, and spending a fair amount of time lazing on the beach reading very non-academic books. 

Then the oil spilled. Gushed. Spewed. And continues.

My new plan still involved the first two items - visit and prep classes - but I switched the lazing on the beach idea to a hope that I could volunteer to help clean up. The situation on the Gulf Coast is worse than I imagined, but not just in regards to the actual oil — Volunteers are not being used in the clean-up efforts. 

When I go to Pensacola next week, I will volunteer if I can. What I have found myself doing more and more since the spill began, however, is sitting on Twitter venting my anger and grief while scouring for information. In truth, there’s not much I can do to help this situation, but I need to feel like I’m doing something.

The one thing I can do is help tell the story of what is happening on the Gulf Coast. So, while I’m home, I plan to take pictures and video and talk to people. I’ll post what I collect on this site. 

I suppose you can call this personal journalism because I make no claims of objectivity in this project. It would be impossible to be objective about this story. This is my home. I am inextricably connected to everything there and I will undoubtedly interject my opinions periodically. I must also warn you that I’m flying without an editor. Typos and mistakes will happen. I’ll do my best to correct them quickly. 

I invite anyone who ends up on this site to clue me in to any information you have or comment on what I post.