Tar Balls Galore on Alabama Beaches

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Gulf Oil Spill Links

by Debbie Williams

Published: Tue, September 28, 2010 - 6:27 pm CST Last Updated: Tue, September 28, 2010 - 6:35 pm CST

GULF SHORES, Alabama - After hearing reports of more oil off the coast of Gulf Shores we took to the air again to see what might be out there.
The first area we wanted to check was Little Lagoon Pass. We had seen a video that looked like oil coming out of the pass. Its more like algae discolored the water that is flowing into the Gulf.
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All along the coast a non-metallic sheen. In places four miles off shore.
Clean up crews sporadically dotted the beaches. There were crews near Laguna Key on West Beach. A large group of workers at the Bon Secour Wildlife Refuge but it was the oil in plain sight that got our attention.

When we were up in the air we saw several clean up crews all along the surf line all up and down the coastline and we wondered why they were cleaning there when up on the beach there are all these tar balls, little pieces of oil, almost any where you look you can find them and nobody is cleaning them up.

"They"re down to I'd say couple hundred people they need thousands of people to get it cleaned up." A man who identified himself as a worker for BP but wanted to remain anonymous says he has been working on those clean up crews since June.
"The beaches are not clean, they've just been covering it up. There's oil everywhere. It's below the sand up to six foot."

Using shovels, buckets and fishing nets they sift through the sand but there is so much more he says, beneath the surface.
"Dig down about four foot there are actually layers about four inches thick. There's just tar close to the pier just tar, tar, tar solid layers of tar,"

News Five spoke with one of the supervisors of the crew working in Gulf State Park. He didn't want to appear on camera but says it is a slow process. They know