We started out in Orange Beach, Alabama--a place that would have been a lot like Cancun, Mexico if it weren't for the oil. The white sand beaches were gorgeous, but the miles of high-rise hotels and condos were not. After quickly checking into our ugly, high-rise hotel that was actually across the street from the beach and behind a strip mall we decided to go for a stroll along the water. It was the most depressing beach experience of my life. The only people were clean up workers or other people like us taking pictures of the disaster.
There were two types of clean up happening along this section of beach. The first went something like this. A boat would come close to shore pulling a long stretch of fabric or rope with pom poms attached (the oil clings to the fabric and pom poms). A dozen or so workers (wearing minimal protective gear) would rush into the water, grab hold of this fabric, and bring it to shore. They would then separate each section, put it in a plastic bag, duct tape the bag shut and throw it on a trailer to be dumped into a landfill down the road. Then they would wait for the boat to return with another strip. Pictures of this process can be seen here.
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| Mopping up oil |
The second type of clean up involved smaller teams of workers digging and sifting in the sand. Team of 2-6 people were spread out along the shore line--probably one team every 20-100 feet. Each team was responsible for picking up the oil that they found in their little area. Some people were digging down into the sand to find oil that was below the surface. Others were sifting through top layers of sand. In either case, the workers were maybe working in a 4 foot area and were picking up quarter size drops of oil. Stop for a minute and think about how many gallons of oil have been and are being pumped into the gulf. Each team may pick up the equivalent of one gallon in an entire day. This is how we're dealing with things?
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| Sifting thru sand |
Our walk along the beach was cut short by our growing depression over watching the clean up and also the headaches we were developing due to smell of the oil.
We explored a few other areas of the coast over the weekend. Gulf Shores, just a few miles down the road from Orange Beach, had warning signs about water quality, but no clean up crews on the beach and many more typical summer beach goers. The local state park had a nice nature walk where we saw a lot of big spiders, a large bird we can't identify, some very beautiful flora, and gorgeous dunes. Of course, after crossing the dunes all we saw were more clean up crews, but we did have an hour or so outside where we didn't want to cry. Finally, we took a ferry to Dauphin Island, a stopping point for migrating birds and the site of an old fort, and then took the long way home driving along the Alabama and Mississippi coasts looking at boom surrounded marshlands and bemoaning the combination of old hurricane damage and new oil damage. Pictures from these places can be seen here:
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| Around the gulf coast |
