Why would they clean up fictitious oil? - - - BP Reimbursement?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Well we just got back from our week long vacation to the shores of Alabama, referenced earlier here. The house we rented was actually west of Gulf Shores, AL in the Fort Morgan area.

We were very fortunate that while we were there, we never saw any oil or tar or other substance that looked like it came from the spill in the water or the beach where we were staying. Our kids and the people several hundred yards on either side of us were in the water all week long. There were reports that the beaches in Gulf Shores and the western portions of the Florida pan handle were seeing large chunks of oil wash up on the beaches. We didn’t.

We did however see cleaning crews on the beach right in front of our house several days. When we asked them what they were picking up they said, “oil”. My sister asked, “where?” They pointed at the shell line on the beach. This was in the afternoon after high tide. There was no evidence of any oil or oily based substance in the shell line that they were cleaning up. The people that were on the cleaning crew, didn’t appear to really know much except that they were told to pick up the dark objects in the shell line. They appeared to be supervised by a guy standing close by just watching but doing no work, similar to a guard overseeing a chain gang. It took them at least 8 hours with approximately 12-15 people to go about a 1/4 mile.

The next day they came back and were picking through the sand at least five yards above the tide line, meaning no water ever got that high, and impossible for there to be any oil or tar balls in that part of the beach. Again a full days work for a large crew.

I’m sure the state of Alabama will be requesting reimbursement for all of this cleaning.

Why not actually clean some of the real mess up?

2

Maybe this is “make work” for fishermen and others who are out of work due to the spill. Even if there’s no oil on that stretch of beach, there’s probably stuff to clean up.

3

Thats part of it. And they can only clean the stuff that actually GETS here. And “they” have been thinking large quantities of that stuff will be onshore anyday now for like a month or more. It IS out there, it just seems to be staying just offshore for various reasons.

Werent you the guy we gave vacation advise to a month or two ago?

How was it?

4

There’s always some ‘tarballs’ on those beaches, from the rigs off of Dauphin Island and from ship bilges getting flushed going in and out of Mobile Bay. Just because you didn’t see any doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. Plus, Mobile Bay at one time was really filthy and the bottom is still pretty nasty. Usually at the tideline there is some sort of muck that can be cleaned up.

5

There was someone on NPR earlier talking about how some crews and volunteers had been sent to clean up the beaches before the oil made it to the shore. They weren’t very detailed, but my assumption was that they cleaned up any debris and the like off the beach that might get in the way of devices that would later be used to clean up the actual oil when it finally came ashore.

6

Ah, googling reinforces the idea that thats what they were doing. See here