Cleanup crews paid from the $20 billion seized from BP by the Obama administration for Gulf of Mexico restoration have been digging up oil and sifting sand from the beaches along the Gulf in the effort to deep clean them in the wake of the largest and worst environmental disaster in U.S. history when BP’s well blew up and sank April 20 of last year.
Now there’s a research effort ongoing to assess the results of that cleanup effort.
“We’ve been interested in the impacts of beach systems since the oil spill,” Auburn Civil Engineering Professor Joel Hayworth told a local television news station. “We’ve been looking at various aspects of those impacts from a research standpoint. At the end of this what we would like to say is if this beach is cleaner or not cleaner and here is the data to support that statement.”
Lannie Smith with the city of Orange Beach said now that BP is saying that they are coming to the end of the cleaning process, “that question needs to be answered.”
To what extent have they cleaned the beaches? Is it adequate? What are the long term effects of the oil that’s left on the beaches?
© 2011 – 2015, Glynn Wilson. All rights reserved.
