BP impressed with Horn cleanup
- dmelton@sunherald.com
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HORN ISLAND — On the sugary white beach on the south side of the barrier island, between crashing waves and sifting beach workers, BP’s top man for the Gulf Coast Restoration Organization inspected the progress and proclaimed it good.
This was Mike Utsler’s first time on Horn Island. Utsler, BP’s lead representative in the Unified Area Command, flew over the island by helicopter in early August, soon after he took over the job from Doug Suttles.
He said the island then was covered with black tar balls, but on Wednesday he was encouraged by the cleaner beaches.
He toured the 12-mile-long island with Bill Walker, director of the state Department of Marine Resources; Trudy Fisher, director of the state Department of Environmental Quality and George Malvaney, chief operating officer for U.S. Environmental Services as well as other BP officials, media and employees of the National Park Service, which oversees the Gulf Islands National Seashore.
Utsler met with workers who were sifting the sand manually with improvised tools that looked like minnow nets and metal fryer scoops duct-taped to long poles.
“We’ve got to get it cleaned for y’all,” said Kendrick Thomas of Natchez, a contract worker with four months experience as a beach cleaner.
Utsler said cleaning the barrier islands presents a challenge because of its ecological sensitivity.
The cleanup operations ramped up only recently because workers were waiting for the turtles and birds to hatch, Utsler said. The National Park Service recently gave permission for machine cleanup to speed things along, he said.
Five Beach Tech machines scour the beach at night, when lower temperatures make tar less gooey.
They clean about 20 yards of sand at a time. The workers go back over the areas with manual tools the next day.
What isn’t cleaned by man or machine will be eaten by microorganisms in the sand, Utsler said.
“Scientists are telling me in some cases microorganisms will be the best cleaner,” he said.
He said BP wants the beach clean-up to be “effective, efficient and long-lasting.”
He expects the cleaning to be completed in certain areas immediately, while others could take as long as a year. A team of federal, state and local scientists will sign-off on the areas after testing confirms the work is done, he said.
During the trip, which included a lunch of Bayou LaBatre shrimp po-boys from Bozo’s Seafood in Pascagoula, Utsler announced the opening of four state offices from Louisiana to Florida that will handle continued recovery operations.
The state offices will each be staffed with 50 to 100 local employees. Satellite operations offices could be opened in each Coast county. Utsler expected satellite office would open in Jackson, Harrison and Hancock counties sometime in October.
Read more: http://www.sunherald.com/2010/09/08/2462049/bp-impressed-with-horn-cleanup.html#ixzz0zPqmf4Tp
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