BP Reverses Course, Admits There’s Oil in Local Waters
August 31st, 2010Despite persistent denials from BP officials, thousands of pounds of weathered oil is being pulled from under the surface of Pensacola Bay every day, according to the Pensacola News Journal.
“During more than a dozen interviews last week, BP officials and spokespeople for a number of government agencies working on the Deepwater Horizon Oil spill response denied knowledge of oil in the bay,” the paper reports.
But on Friday, Coast Guard Lt. Stephen West with the Incident Command Post finally confirmed an area of oil a quarter of a mile long and up to 50 to 60 feet off Barrancas Beach at Pensacola Naval Air Station, and admitted that buckets of sunken oil were being pulled up in another area of Pensacola Bay, near Fort Pickens at Gulf Islands National Seashore. Then on Saturday, Scott Piggott, who heads the Escambia and Santa Rosa cleanup operation for BP, said cleanup workers began noticing the submerged oil at Barrancas Beach.
