BP, and the US government, have decided that beaches in Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi are clean enough now compared to just after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, and that BP no longer needs to send out regular patrols to clean the tar from the coastline.
But Louisiana is another story. Three years after one of the worst environmental disasters in history, workers have dug up a massive chunk of weathered crude from the shallows off a Louisiana beach.
CNN reports:
"The tar mat, a slab of oil residue mixed with wet sand, was about 165 feet long by 65 feet wide, said Lt. Cmdr. Natalie Murphy, a Coast Guard spokeswoman. It weighed more than 40,000 pounds, but more than 85% of that weight was sand, shells and water, she said.
The mat was found under the surf off Isle Grand Terre, Louisiana, about 90 miles south of New Orleans. Crews using an excavator dug the largely submerged tar mat out of the beach in chunks over the last few weeks, Murphy said."
Louisiana is the last state where regular cleanup operations from the oil spill are still under way with more than 80 miles of the Louisiana coast still being patrolled.
