Corexit found in Orange Beach Waters

Debbie Williams

 

ORANGE BEACH, Alabama - If tests results are true, the absorbent boom being brought to Margaret Longs house on Cotton Bayou may already be too late.

**My chemist found the corexit," she yells to a neighbor. She first got suspicious when she saw something in the water she had never seen before. She even took photographs, "Some times it's about the size of a half dollar. Some times it streams along and its like floating sand."


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When the opportunity arose she took some samples. "It was floating in the water. A boat goes by making a bigger wake than its suppose to and it came over the seawall and I had puddles of water along here."

She got samples and sent them to chemist Bob Naman in Mobile whose tests results show 13 point 3 parts per million of the chemical dispersant corexit.

"I knew I was right," she says was her first reaction. "I knew that this that I had seen floating was something I had never seen before."

Margaret Longs tests results of sand and water at Cotton Bayou will not be the last word. The city of Orange Beach, who is already doing their own independent studies, now has more incentive to find out what really in the water.

"It concerns me," says Orange Beach Mayor Tony Kennon. "And what it means is that we're going to aggressively go and try to find that corexit. We're going to start more aggressive testing in Cotton Bayou and other places and we're going to up the number of tests we run. Our job is going to be go find it, if it's there."

Long has no doubt it is there. "There is an anger yes, very much an anger. I fear what the long term affects are going to be." Her only question now is what will be done about it.