Cap Testing Thursday: July 15 BP Oil Spill Update

1. Oilcast

Today we configured NOAA's new interactive spill map for wind and wave projections over the next 72 hours (as above). It looks like the moderately light southerly breezes we saw on the beach yesterday will continue. By late yesterday afternoon, we made the wind out to be almost a two-club wind at times, or as brisk as 15 mph along unprotected shores. Small white caps dotted Pensacola Bay.

A southerly breeze generally means southerly currents near to shore. These days, with large sheets of oil hanging around offshore, that almost inevitably means at least some small tarballs and fresh oil mousse sloshing around in the surf. If the past is prologue, the farther west on Santa Rose Island one goes the more numerous and larger the tarballs even on days when the weather seems great.

2. Cap Test Delayed, Resumes, Delayed, Resumes, etc. etc. etc.

After a long day of on-again, off-again promises to begin the pressure testing on the new cap stack, late last night BP finally started the tests -- and discovered " a leak on a line on the choke valve of the new cap." Little wonder Energy Secretary Chu and his team thought it necessary to make BP re-check everything yesterday.

We shouldn't be surprised that BP's engineers missed something. For three months, BP has been acting as if they're filming "The Keystone Kops Drill for Oil." Even when the corporation stubbornly sticks to sharing only what little good news there is, and suppressing all of the bad, it screws up.

Yesterday, however, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs and Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen were more explicit about the risks BP is running than any official involved, government or otherwise, has been before. As the New York Times reported today:

Mr. Gibbs described the review as “a series of steps” that were being taken “in order to ensure that what we’re doing is being done out of an abundance of caution to do no harm.”

Among the concerns was that if the well was damaged during the test, oil and gas might leak from the seafloor around the well rather than up through the well bore as it is now.
* * *
Admiral Allen said the government had asked BP for more information on the structural strength of the well. And in allowing the test to proceed, the government stipulated that pressure be allowed to build up in intervals, with acoustic tests to gauge the well’s condition every six hours. That would most likely lengthen the duration of the test, which had been expected to last from 6 to 48 hours.

Earlier this morning, BP repaired the leaking hose. Now, says the New York Times in a late update, the "test can proceed." Remember that admonition of our dear old father. He wasn't a pessimist, just a clear-eyed realist.

3. Booms on the Water.

Even in a moderately light breeze, as mentioned above, the oil booms in unprotected waters don't fare well. Even low waves wash over them, twist them, and sometimes dislodge them altogether. Yesterday, the boom on the mainland at the Project Greenshores site at the north of the 3-mile bridge was close to breaking up in less than 2 feet seas (see photo, left).

It's disheartening to imagine what a stiff wind will do to them.

On the other hand, in protected waters like the entrance to Little Sabine Bay, the boom was doing fairly well yesterday:

4. The Story of O.

Yes, there are "oil impact notices" stuck here and there at Pensacola Beach warning visitors of the possible presence of "oil products." But what about the electronic sign? Nary a word that so much as starts with the letter "O."

Yesterday the sign read, "Swim with extra caution." Doesn't that sound almost like an invitation to swim rather than a health warning?

5. New Tourist Game: Tarballs and Mousse.

Not surprisingly, many land-lubbing tourists don't know a tarball from a mousse patty. Heck, most of us who've frequented the beach for years didn't know the difference either, until a couple of months ago.

It seems, now, that tourists well enough informed to know we're experiencing an oil emergency may be coming to the beach out of curiosity. Yesterday, we came across a small party beaching it along the road to Ft. Pickens. They were from Missouri, the "show me" state. They had to see for themselves.

Several were wading in the surf, playing at catching tarballs with each ebb and flow of the waves coming ashore. It's the latest tourist recreational activity, like shelling -- only for bits of oil pollution.

We saw Yvonne from St. Louis snatch something small and orange from the surf before it washed back into the Gulf.

"What's this?" she asked a friend.

He shrugged and shook his head. "A shell, maybe?"

"It's oil from the spill," we offered. "See how soft and pliable it is? They call that mousse."

"Really?" she said excitedly. "It doesn't look like oil."

We explained that the hard black things she had been grabbing out of the water are called tarballs. They are bits of oil that have weathered awhile in the air and water. The small orange glop she held in her hands now was unweathered oil. It had traveled from BP's well over a hundred and fifty miles away, probably under water for most of the time.

Yvonne was so excited that she proudly displayed her find to all of her friends. We obligingly took a photo:


We didn't mean to be censorious of our new-found acquaintances, but we couldn't help remarking that it seemed a little, well, inappropriate that she looked so happy about finding oil on the beach.

"You're right," she said after a moment's thought. "Here, take my picture again."

This time she wrinkled her nose and screwed her face into what she supposed would be the locally-accepted expression:


As they were leaving, we noticed that Yvonne took the mousse with her, despite our warning that it is toxic. A souvenir of her beach vacation.

6. Social Notes from Pensacola Beach.

Rick Outzen, publisher of the local weekly Independent News, reported yesterday that he's been getting complaints "from business owners that attended the SRIA cocktail party for the Blue Angels and their wives on Friday, July 9 at the Hilton."

First, the beach lifeguards were there and talked through most of the presentations. Second, the names and titles of the Blues were stated incorrectly. When the Blues wanted to make their presentation to the SRIA, no one could find the board chairman or a board member to accept it.

As one beach business owner and admitted Blues fan told me, "These men deserve our respect and admiration. That party was an embarrassment."

The most shocking lapse, to us, is the absence of anyone from the Santa Rosa Island Authority. SRIA executive car-counter Buck Lee likes to receive more awards than a TV exec at a sitcom convention. Once, he even had the SRIA give himself a Hummer.

7. Journalism Award.

Speaking of awards, Mac McClelland, who was on Pensacola Beach a couple of weeks ago, has won the Hillman Foundation's monthly Sidney Award for outstanding social consciousness in journalism. Her winning entry in Mother Jones magazine concerned BP's oil spill and the devastating effect it has had on the lives of families along the Louisiana coast. ["Depression, Abuse, Suicide: Fishermen's Wives Face Post-Spill Trauma"]

8. NPR Continues to Doze Through Its Oil Coverage.

National Public Radio this morning continued its miserably superficial coverage of the Great Oil-Poisoning of the Gulf of Mexico. At long distance from his sunny, eternally-optimistic desk in Washington D.C., where he's sure not to get his cuffs dirty, NPR'S science guy Richard Harris continues his completely credulous watch of the same robotic camera feeds that everyone else in the world sees. Then he reports what he thinks he saw.

Have time to waste? Give a listen. Then ask NPR, is this the kind of "serious, in-depth reporting" they claimed they would do with Joan Kroc's $200 million?

Test Delay Wednesday: July 14 BP Oil Spill Update

1. Oilcast

Not much change from previous oil forecasts for Pensacola Beach. We remain well within the "uncertainty" area of NOAA's potential forecast of washed-up tarballs and mousse, but so far this week only about one percent of Pensacola Beach has been reported covered with "sporadic tarballs." Light southwest winds and off-and-on overcast conditions continue.

2. Pressure Test Postponed.

First the "well integrity" pressure tests were to start "immediately" after the new "18-foot-tall, 150,000-pound" stack cap was seated. Then, it was Monday. Then Tuesday morning. Then Tuesday by noon. Then Tuesday mid-afternoon. Then evening.

Now it may not be until Thursday -- if ever -- before pressure tests on BP's new cap stack begin. The New York Times and Bloomberg News were among the first to report late last night that start of the pressure testing --

was postponed after BP met with National Incident Commander Thad Allen, Energy Secretary Steven Chu and a government team of scientists and industry experts, who decided more analysis needed to be done before they proceeded, Allen said in a statement last night.

"We continue to prepare and review protocols for the well integrity test, including the seismic mapping run that was made around the well site this morning," Allen said. "As a result of these discussions, we decided that the process may benefit from additional analysis."

As the Times explains:

On its Web site, BP said in a statement that the test had been postponed after a meeting with Energy Secretary Stephen Chu “and his team of scientific and industry experts.”

According to a statement issued a little after 8:30 CDT last night, Admiral Thad Allen and Secretary Chu's group, seismic mapping of the seafloor yesterday morning convinced them "that the process may benefit from additional analysis that will be performed tonight and tomorrow."

BP's well bore is more than 12,000 feet, or 2+ miles into the Earth below the seafloor. There always has been concern that merely by "pressure testing" the new cap stack the oil company conceivably could cause additional, irreparable damage to the stack or the well itself, thus complicating or even negating August's relief well efforts. Hence, BP has issued multiple assurances that it would proceed slowly to close three open vent in the stack while trying to achieve higher pressures inside the stack; and it would re-open the vents if pressure dropped because that would signal problems below the seafloor.

Now, it seems, seismic imaging has caused concerns that the well bore, or the rocky formations around it beneath the seafloor, may have been compromised by the original April 20 explosion. As Rolling Stone Magazine's Osha Gray Davidson wrote late last night:

Allen’s reference to an already performed “seismic mapping run” as a reason for delaying the test, suggests the possibility of a second even more serious problem. Geologists may have detected cracks or fissures in the rock surrounding the well, weaknesses probably caused by the initial explosion.

If that’s true, the area may not be stable enough to proceed with the well test. The pressure generated by shutting off the flow of oil could lead to a catastrophic failure of the well — allowing crude to spew into the water at a rate even greater than it already is.

Sound familiar?

3. NPR's Leaking Coverage.

For some reason National Public Radio's coverage of the oil spill has been leaking a lot of oil lately. It's all surface and no depth. Faced with what may be the biggest man-made environmental disaster in history, so far as we can tell NPR has no correspondents on the leak scene or along the Gulf Coast.

This morning, NPR science reporter Richard Harris, still sitting at his desk in Washington D.C., continues his superficial "analysis" by confessing on air that he gets his information by "watching the robot under water" and that he really doesn't know what's going on or why. But, 'Rah-rah BP! It's all so exciting!

Confronted with a glass of oil and asked if it's half-full or half-empty, Harris would say it looks full to him -- and then he'd drink it. Give a listen if you have time to waste:

4. Executive Malaprop.

Goodman Ace would have been amused. During BP Corp. vice-president Kent Wells' afternoon telephone press briefing Tuesday, he opened the discussion about the cap stack's then-anticipated integrity tests with this apology:

So now let me move to the well integrity test. So I come with my head in my hand. I was a little optimistic this morning, thinking we’d get started by late morning or noon. [emphasis added]

We realize Wells meant to employ the usual shibboleth about apologetically approaching another with "hat in hand." But for Gulf Coast residents it was so much more apt the way he said it. Any number of coastal residents and businesses would like to have his head.

As Jane Ace might have said, being funny must be why Wells gets "the big busts." We look forward to seeing him put his foot in his mousse more often.

5. Beach Oil Study.

The National Science Foundation is supporting Florida State University professors Markus Huettel and Joel E. Kostka in their study of "how quickly the Deepwater Horizon oil carried into Gulf of Mexico beach sands is being degraded by the sands' natural microbial communities, and whether native oil-eating bacteria that wash ashore with the crude are helping or hindering that process."

St. George Island, Fla., and Dauphin Island, Ala., have served as the primary research sites since early June, when the one-year study began. In addition, the researchers have obtained heavily oiled sand from Pensacola Beach, Fla., and from a barrier island off the Louisiana coast.
* * *
Huettel and Kostka will analyze sediment cores collected from Gulf beaches to find out how much and to what depth oil washed onto the shore is carried into the sand; how rapidly microbes in the sand are breaking it down; and how the oil pollution may be impacting the structure and function of natural microbial communities that help to protect water quality on the coast.

The results also may shed light on whether dispersants help or hurt in the degradation of beached oil, as well as possible techniques for accelerating the degradation process.

6. Oily Games.

We predicted it. An Xbox "indy" game is now available for download, called "Crisis in the Gulf." Price is $1.

No reimbursement from BP for your losses is assured.

In the game, the company saddled with stopping the leak is named "DP." Damned Petroleum? View a promo here.

7. Beached Oil Map.

The National Resources Defense Council, long a respected advocate for the environment, has posted a new interactive map showing the latest info on beached oil, "closures, advisories, and notifications." Click on any dirty-looking "sand pail" and you get a pop-up screen with additional links to follow:

8. BP's Oily Lockerbie Leak.

Yesterday, four U.S. senators from New York and New Jersey wrote Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to demand an investigation into "whether oil giant BP played a role in winning last year's release of the man convicted of the Lockerbie airliner bombing." The "four Democrats said they were concerned BP may have put profits ahead of justice in the al-Megrahi case, given the petroleum giant's current handling of the Gulf oil spill."

There is not even a tenuous connection in any of this to the oil spill, of course. But, like the ongoing BP oil spill, it could be considered additional evidence that we are witnessing the early stages of an epic power struggle over who and by what means economic life on Earth is to be organized.

Is the paramount power now democratically-elected nation-states? Or, is it shareholder-owned mega-corporations? "Both," our friend who just retired from the oil industry told us last night.

The Lockerbie incident, like the oil spill, casts more light on that question. For those who don't remember, the BBC has a synopsis of events, with links to original news stories.

On December 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 from London to New York exploded 31,000 feet over Lockerbie, Scotland after taking off from London. Two hundred and seventy people were killed; the great majority of them Americans. Almost three years later, two suspected intelligence agents working for Moammar Ghadhafi's Libyan government were charged with multiple counts of murder. After intervention by Nelson Mandela, Ghadhafi finally agreed to surrender the defendants in April, 1999.

They were tried over a nine-month period in 2000-2001 by a Scottish court sitting, unusually, in the Netherlands. One defendant was acquitted and the other, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, was convicted. After al-Megrahi's last appeal was rejected in 2002, he began serving his life sentence in a Scottish prison. A year later, the government of Libya paid nearly $3 billion into a compensation fund for the Lockerbie victims.

And now we get to the BP angle:

• On May 29, 2007, British Prime Minister Tony Blair signed "a memorandum of understanding" agreeing to "shortly 'commence negotiations' on prisoner transfer, extradition and mutual assistance in criminal law, with a final deal signed within 12 months."
• February, 2008, it was "reported that Libya had just ratified a £450m contract with oil giant BP, after [British] ministers drafted a prisoner transfer agreement that [reports said] could cover al-Megrahi." The Scottish government protested. The British government, which had "said at the time that the [prisoner exchange] agreement did not cover Megrahi," now was admitting a prisoner exchange involving al-Megrahi was a "matter for discussion."
• In October, 2008, al-Megrahi's lawyer publicly announced that the Libyan had been diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer.
• In July, 2009, al-Megrahi applied to the Scottish courts for compassionate release because his cancer was terminal. The BBC reported at the time that "Traditionally, only applications from those with three months to live are granted."
  
• On August 20, 2009 it was announced that Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill had issued a decision releasing al-Megrahi to go home. MacAskill said, among other things, that the decision was based on the statement by the Scottish prison system's Director of Health and Care "that a three-month prognosis is now a reasonable estimate" for al-Megrahi's life expectancy. Two other doctors examined him and concluded "Megrahi could live for 19 months."
• A few days earlier, the London Times reported that "industry sources" and a Libyan informant were saying there was a direct connection between al-Megrahi's release and the British government's desire to "liberate Britain’s largest industrial company from a string of problems hampering its $900 million (£546 million) Libyan gas projects... ."
  
• A year later, al-Megrahi is still alive and secure in Libya. The doctor who certified a year ago that he had three months to live is "embarrassed."
  

Moammar Ghadafi's son, Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, recently told CNN --

that Libya pressured the British government to include the convicted terrorist in the prisoner release agreement. Initially, he said, Britain refused to heed Libya's demands that Megrahi be included in the prisoner release agreement.

"There was no mention of Mr. Megrahi until the British said 'we are ready to sign but there should be a clause mentioning that Mr. Megrahi is excluded.' And then we said no," Gadhafi said. "We were very very angry. It's not acceptable."

Gadhafi said the agreement was that Megrahi would be released if Libya dropped its appeals in the Lockerbie case. But, Gadhafi said, Libya still believes he is innocent.

If you think it's all about politics, think again. "Sà, cle l'argent! Sà, cle l'argent," wrote another chronicler of the fourteenth century in the age when newly invented nation-states were growing powerful enough to rival the papacy. "Money, money! Such is the cry which all the day long sounds in the ears of the famished people." [Masson, The Story of Mediaeval France]

Both justice and democracy are secondary. "That's just the way it is," our retired oil industry friend says.

Public Health Friday: July 2 BP Oil Spill Update

1. Fourth of July Weekend Oilcast.

Hurricane Alex is ashore and weakening, but the oil sheets it pushed toward Northwest Florida beaches will remain too close over the coming weekend. Continued cleaning is likely to be necessary. Local beaches will be open for business, technically. But mainly for spending your money, only.

Public health warnings (see below) apply. Shorter advice: Only the foolhardy or delusional would venture into Northwest Florida Gulf waters.

Local weather forecasters say the chance of some scattered summer showers will range from 30 to 40 percent through the weekend.

2. Biggest Oil Spill.

This week the BP oil spill made history as the largest oil spill ever on Earth in peacetime. USA TODAY calculates that about 164 million gallons will have entered the Gulf by Monday.

The largest previous peacetime spill occurred in the Gulf in 1979 when the Ixtoc I well off Mexico blew out and leaked for nine months. An estimated 140 million gallons leaked from that disaster.

The largest oil spill in war time occurred in 1991 during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. USA claims 460 million gallons deliberately were spilled or burned. Others say of the total an estimated 6-8 million barrels (252 - 336 million gallons) of that oil was dumped into the waters of the Arabian Gulf.

Compare the BP oil spill to ten other infamous oil disasters.

3. Permanent Health Warnings.

Dr. John Lanza, director of Escambia County's public health department, finally grew a pair and metaphorically hung up on Pensacola Beach administrator Buck Lee . PNJ reporter Jamie Page writes today that Lanza has "decided to replace future health warnings with a new 'oil impact notice.'"

The new oil notice will mean posting signs on all Gulf beaches in Escambia County to serve as a continuous advisory that the beach has been impacted by oil, warning beachgoers to avoid walking in oily areas, wading or swimming.

It's Day No. 73 since the BP platform blew up, beginning the largest continuous peacetime oil disaster in world history, and Dr. Lanza at last has awakened to a reality the rest of the world saw two and a half months ago:

"As we continue to have greater impacts from the oil, it has become evident that we are going to have impacts from this for many weeks to come," health department spokeswoman Molly Payne-Hardin said, "whereas with health advisories, we had to put those up and then rescind them each time."

4. Navarre Beach Non-Warnings.

Next door in Santa Rosa County, however, county health department Director Sandy Park continues to live in high denial. The "nurse practitioner" who's acting head of the county's health department told reporter Paige that oil "impacts do not warrant" a health advisory for Navarre Beach.

Tarballs are washing up in Walton County to the east. "More tar and oily foam" washed up this week on Ft. Walton and Okaloosa County beaches, next door to the east. On the west -- well, that's us, now with permanent public health warnings. Right in between is Santa Rose County.

Look, there's nothing wrong with a nurse heading a public health department. Having a medical degree is no guarantee that you have a quick mind, as Dr. Lanza has proven.

But a nurse who ignores oil to the left, oil to the right, and oil right in her face covering "twenty percent" of Navarre Beach? That's someone who needs supervisory help from the Florida State Department of Health.

5. Florida's State Surgeon General - M.I.A..

So where is state surgeon general Dr. Ana M. Viamonte Ros, anyway? Better check your milk cartons. She seems to be missing.

And, why is the state's "Environmental Public Health Tracking" web site so out of date that it says nothing -- absolutely nothing -- about the public health dangers of the BP oil spill?

Just for fun, we went to the department's Contamination Locator Map and checked "petroleum" within two miles of the SRIA's address at 1 Via DeLuna, Pensacola Beach. All that shows up are some old storm run-off issues mostly along Pensacola Beach Boulevard that were identified in the late 1990's.

Try it by zip code 32561 and what you get is more antiquated data, including one for "Dippin' Dots," a Gulf Breeze business that closed its doors years ago. There's not a single data point -- not one word -- about sheets of oil polluting Pensacola Beach.

Right there may be the root of the public health confusion that has plagued Northwest Florida since the oil spill began. We have a state "surgeon general" in Tallahassee directing 20,000 state public health employees. The department's mission is "preparing the state for natural and man-made disasters, reducing health disparities, and leading Floridians to better health by example."

What has the state surgeon general been doing while all the "health disparities" arise in Northwest Florida as this 'man-made disaster' unfolds? Someone in Tallahassee has some explaining to do, and it had better be convincing before Election Day.

6. Unlimited Liability.

Yesterday, the House of Representatives approved the SPILL Act (HR 5503) by voice vote. The legislation reforms "inadequate and outdated maritime liability laws to ensure that the families of those killed or injured in the BP Oil Spill and other such tragedies are justly compensated for their losses." The full text is here.

The Act was opposed by the right-wing, hair-brained U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the cruise line industry, and Republicans who "argued that the bill was too broad, though they did not act to block its passage." In the Senate, a competing bill co-sponsored by Florida Senator Bill Nelson would raise the limit to $10 Billion, but it would not be retroactive.

Without much question, there are legal issues a-plenty in the House bill. Not the least of them is the constitutionality of a retroactive clause eliminating the ridiculously low liability cap enacted by Congress years ago. Let's hope dolphins and pelicans survive long enough to see those issues resolved.

7. Fireworks on Oil.

The weekly Gulf Breeze News reports the Pensacola Beach Chamber of Commerce is planning to blow things up on the 4th of July. But the organization no longer has a barge available -- it will be busy skimming -- so the fireworks will have to be shot off into the Gulf of Mexico from the fishing pier.

With all the oil sloshing around out there, what could wrong?

8. Blue Fin Tuna and New England.

Massachusetts fish and wildlife authorities are worried the BP oil spill will endanger blue fin tuna, a local staple for the New England economy and the palettes of gourmands. The Blue Fin Tuna --

spawn in the Gulf not far from the spill site and then make their way to New England.

"It could take a year before we know the impact on the tuna. And that is something we are keeping a very close eye on," says Paul Diodati, Massachusetts Director of Marine Fisheries.

9. Oily Food Chain.

Mobile TV station WALA reports that "scientists at the University of Southern Mississippi say oil has entered the Gulf food chain."

Droplets of oil have been found in baby blue crabs and fiddler crabs. A laboratory has been analyzing "larvae found throughout the Gulf, and they're finding oil trapped between the outer shell and the inner skin."

Scientists have found oil covered larvae from Louisiana to Florida.

"Because a host of species that inhabit the marsh eat and prey on blue crabs, it would be very easy for the oil to get into the food chain," [Harriet] Perry said.

Perry is Director of Fisheries and Research at the University of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast Research Lab.

We're looking forward to Governor Haley Barbour reassuring everyone Mississippi crabmeat is safe to eat by downing a couple of dozen crabs infected with oil.

Night Watch in the Oily Gloom

Friend "DJ," also known as Barrier Island Girl, is on volunteer turtle patrol this week. She's looking out for mother turtles whose instincts lead them to seek a nesting place on the toxic, oiled beaches of Santa Rosa Island. (Volunteers then move the nests elsewhere.)

She's assigned to the night shift right now. As it happens, this gives her a close-up, extended view of the clean-up workers who labor all night long and into the dawn to clean our beaches of BP's poisonous effluent. DJ writes affectingly of all the hard work she has seen them doing -- just before she collapses, herself, after a long night in the dark and oily gloom of Pensacola Beach.

Give it a read, please. So few trouble to thank the workers who, for very little money and at great risk to their own health, labor quite literally night and day in the near-futile but necessary effort to try to clean the Gulf Coast.

Into thy maw I commend my body
But the soul shines without
* * *
One step forward
Two steps back
Will soon be over
Hear it crack!
* * *
Day and night
Night and day
Till life is turned
The other way.

-- Dorothy Livesay, Day and Night

Breaking: All County Beaches Under "Health Advisory"

Effective immediately, the Escambia County Department of Health has issued a "health advisory" warning the public that all Gulf-side beaches in Escambia County present health risks due to the "extensive presence of oil sheen, oil mousse and tar balls" and they should be avoided.

The new, expanded advisory includes all county beaches east of the fishing pier, including Casino Beach, the beach across the road from the five Portofino towers, county Beach East, and all beachfront to the Santa Rosa County line. Previous advisories included only a small section of beach west of the fishing pier and at the "Ft. Pickens Gate" picnic park at the western end of Pensacola Beach.

Beaches inside the Gulf Islands National Seashore areas at Opal Beach and Ft. Pickens on the western end of the island are under a similar health advisory. Gulf Islands National Seashore has a recorded information hotline for current oil spill conditions: 850-916-5658.

Surreal Thursday July 1 BP Oil Spill Update

1. Beach Report.

Escambia DisasterResponse acknowledged in this morning's Beach Report # 28 (not yet online as this is written) that "Pensacola Beach is seeing coverage of up to 50 percent in some areas in tar balls and tar patties today." Also:

• Cleanup crews were on the beach last night and crews working today as weather permits.

• Heavy equipment is being utilized on Pensacola Beach. Work will continue as weather permits.

Natch', county and beach officials claim the beach "remains open" for swimming except for the area west of the fishing pier.

The open area is exactly the one we visited yesterday, a popular 6-mile stretch of beach from the County East Beach to popular Casino Beach in the commercial core. All of it, although officially "open," has been inundated by BP's tarballs and disgusting orange oil mousse for days on end.

2. Surreal Surf Presser.

Island Authority administrator Buck Lee yesterday held a joint press conference at the fishing pier. He was joined by county neighborhood services chief Keith Wilkins. Conspicuously missing in action was county public health director John J. Lanza.

The presser must have been, by all accounts, a surreal experience. The Pensacola News Journal carried two versions about it. One makes the two county officials sound like idiots. The other paints them as shameless shirkers, blaming everyone else for not stopping them from endangering the public.

The first PNJ dispatch was filed by Mike Greear ["Is It Safe to Swim in Gulf?"]. Greear is a new guy on the block, formerly opinions editor for the University of West Florida's student newspaper.

His on-line report didn't make it into today's print edition. But Travis Griggs sewed a few threads of it together with other hair-raising facts of his own to make it today's above-the-fold top story in the dead-tree News Journal. ["Oil Spill: Water Safe? You'll have to Wing It"]

Griggs' report of the 'news' from the two county officials can be quickly summarized:

• Yes, County and SRIA officials "have the authority to close the beach waters to swimming."
• But no, they haven't closed the beach except for one brief two-day period last week "after the heaviest waves of oil yet washed ashore on Pensacola Beach."
• Yes, county officials will close swimming "when there is no way beachgoers can reasonably avoid the oil washing ashore."
• But no, they didn't close it yesterday even though there were tarballs and orange mousse in the surf all the way along the 7 1/2-mile stretch of beach we trekked both east of the fishing pier and west to Ft. Pickens Gate.
• Yes, county official Williams would no longer let his own children swim in the Gulf.
• But no, he won't close any more beach to swimming until the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issues new guidelines specifically "determining the maximum safe levels of oil in swimming water."

Reporter Griggs also contacted Molly Payne-Hardin, a "spokeswoman for the Escambia County Department of Health." She told him the county health department "does not have the authority to close Gulf waters to swimming. " It can only issue "public advisories... based on the amount of visible oil present." (And, as we know, Dr. Lanza relies on Buck Lee's eyesight for what oil is visible.)

Let's hope an infectious viral epidemic never strikes Pensacola Beach. The county public health office might be limited to posting personal appeals on Craig's List to be cautious about spreading disease.

Buck Lee, no doubt realizing someone should look like they're in charge, reassured the press yesterday that he monitors beach conditions daily. "I went swimming Saturday afternoon. It was fine," he said. Let's hope he slept in a Holiday Inn, too.

On Pensacola Beach it comes down to this: the health of tourists and beach visitors now depends on a broken-down county pol's impressionistic view of the state of the water whenever he happens to take a dip in it.

Lee also said, according to cub reporter Greear, that "health advisories refer only to water." Only water!? Rather than boasting about that, Buck Lee ought to be apologizing to the sand. Rick Outzen reports "at least one sand dune has been leveled to provide access to the beach" for heavy bulldozers.

After blowing all this sand in the eyes of reporters Lee does admit, "Even if you can't see tar balls or mousse, there may be oil residue in the water."

3. False Message of an 'Open Beach.'

What is Buck Lee doing to warn beach-goers of tar, mousse, or "oil residue?" We happened into three members of a large church group from Texas yesterday. They told us they checked "on the internet" and the 'city' said the beach was open. From that, like most out-of-towners we suppose, they assumed the water was 'clean enough' for swimming.

Essentially, Lee and Wilkins are preying on the uninformed and naive, hoping the 'open beach' message will convince them it's safe to come to Pensacola Beach to spend their money. But it is not safe. Not unless, like the Texas group, you want to spend your time indoors, staring at a beach you cannot reach without wading through tarballs.

4. What Locals Know.

All of this is known to most locals, of course. At Casino Beach yesterday we met a retired haz-mat worker now living in Pensacola. He's got it figured out:

5. Happy Birthday, No. 412.

Progressive Pensacola the other day passed along "belated birthday wishes" to the congressman ranked No. 412 out of 435 in the House of Representatives. Hey! That's a generous ranking for "Mr. Oil Spill."

6. Grasping at Straws.

A friend on the beach calls to our attention a new and even more desperate straw for everyone to grasp: Taiwan's giant oil skimmer, now said to be on its way to the Gulf of Mexico. It's called the "A Whale."

We're partial to a more nature-friendly solution -- another whale, actually. This one is the giant whale just discovered to have inhabited the oceans some 12 or 13 million years ago.

Leviathan melvillei was up to fifty long and its mouth "was about 9 feet long and up to 7 feet wide."

The upper and lower teeth interlocked when the mouth closed — good for securing prey and ripping through flesh... . Leviathan probably ate anything it wanted to."

First, we'd have it eat all the oil sloshing around in the Gulf, then what's left of the Deepwater Horizon rig, and finally BP itself.

Now and then it's nice to dream.

Oil Presents from BP, Delivered by Hurricane Alex

As the outer-most bands of Hurricane Alex began to churn the surf all along Pensacola Beach this morning, we traveled down the beach a bit, alternating between a movie camera and a still camera.

First we went to "East Park," the county-owned beach just beyond Portofino. There, what we found washing ashore in the churning surf were large and small black tarballs of weathered oil mixed with fresh orange oil mousse in patties as large and thick as a three-pound package of ground hamburger.

Hurricane Alex is hundreds of miles to our west. Just try to imagine what things will look like if a hurricane comes close to or strikes Pensacola Beach.




Later, we traveled to Ft. Pickens Gate Park, the picnic area on the western-most side of Pensacola Beach. The surf there was slightly more vigorous. Thick, heavy streaks of orange mousse over-washed the entire beach, from the surf to forty yards or more inland.

A small regiment of bulldozers was trying to scrape the surface clean. But their heavy tracks left behind evidence that much more oil lies just beneath the thin veneer they'd scraped.

Click on the photo below to see a closeup:
As we were leaving an eleven year old boy "going on twelve," who was visiting with a dozen family members from Oklahoma, proudly showed us his new collection of oil refuse.

"What are you going to do with it?" we asked.

""I'm gonna show it around and keep it," he answered.

"It's a souvenier," his mother said proudly. "We'll split it up so everybody in the family has some."

"It's historic," added the father.

"It also contains carcinogens," we pointed out.

"Really?" the mother gasped. "No one told us that."

CTD Wednesday June 30 BP Oil Spill Update

1. Hurricane Alex.

Alex is officially a hurricane. The storm is expected to make landfall near the Texas-Mexican border "late tonight or early Thursday morning," NHC's early morning advisory says. It likely will continue to strengthen as it hits the mainland.

Locally, Pensacola is well away from the projected wind field, but the Mobile NOAA regional weather center expects higher than normal tides and "rough surf and breaking waves" along area beaches. "Brief wind gusts from 25 to 35 mph and locally heavy rain will be the main threat in passing bands."

Mobile NOAA adds, "winds and waves will abate to close out the week."

2. CTD Lessons from Alaska.

Erin Kourkounis of the PNJ covered a BRACE luncheon talk by Prof. Steve Picou of the University of South Alabama. Prof. Picou is a sociologist. He's tracked indicators of community stress and decline in various towns near the Exxon Valdez oil spill site for a quarter century in such articles as "The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill and Chronic Psychological Stress," co-authored with Duane Gill in 1996.

Kourkounis sums it up well in the lede: "Depression. Domestic violence. Rising divorce rates. Growing feelings of mistrust. Suicides. Substance abuse."

That could well be a litany applied to any number of American towns, big and small, which once flourished and later fell on hard times or disappeared altogether. Think Lynn, Massachusetts; Centralia, Pennsylvania, Gary, Indiana; Galena, Illinois; Times Beach, Missouri; Bisbee, Arizona, Bodie, California.

Some of these towns have survived as mere shells of their former selves, others are now ghost towns. Each was undone by a different cause: a shift in manufacturing, advances in transportation technology that passed them by, ecological disaster, the abuse and eventual disappearance of natural wonders, and so on.

Yet, as Gunter, Aronoff, and Joel argued in a useful article some years ago ["Toxic Contamination and Communities"], there is something special about decline due to "chronic technological disasters (CTD)". Thanks to BP's massive oil spill, Pensacola -- indeed, the whole Florida panhandle -- faces the real danger of a decades-long decline. County and town leaders need to see this clearly and squarely address it.

The first step, we think, is to resist ineffectual boosterism and put at least as much energy and effort into understanding how other towns have handled CTD's, where some went wrong, and why others succeeded. There is a rich professional literature on the subject. Inviting experts like Steve Picou and a host of others is a part of that first step, but only a part.

3. NBC on Pensacola Beach.

Brian Williams did two segments on Pensacola Beach for NBC's Evening News last night and anchored a third on the oil spill in Louisiana. View the beach excerpts here and here. If there is one thing he proved from his station high above the eastern portion of Pensacola Beach, it's that the county health department needs to get the lead out of its britches and begin directly monitoring the quality of beach water and sand.

4. Tarballs Everywhere.

Front page headlines in the PNJ today include the news that Navarre Beach is experiencing "plate size tarballs" of oil. It is the largest oil detritus so far to wash ashore at Navarre Beach.

As reporter Louis Cooper notes, however, Navarre Beach is not alone:

[T]ar balls continued to wash ashore on Escambia County beaches Tuesday. Aerial reconnaissance flights observed streamers of mousse and sliver sheen hovering just offshore near Johnson Beach, Fort Pickens and Pensacola Beach, Escambia County

5. Navarre Beach Daily Beach Report.

Cooper also reports on an unsurprising innovation tourist promoters have started at Navarre Beach: daily video updates on the condition of the surf and sand:

People concerned about the impact of the ongoing BP oil spill on Navarre Beach have a new, daily online resource.

Santa Rosa County public information officials on Monday began compiling a daily video report on conditions at the beach. The report will be posted at www.santarosa.fl.gov/oilspill by noon, Monday through Friday.

"I receive phone calls from people every day, from locals and out-of-towners who want to know what the beach conditions are like as it relates to the oil crisis," said Santa Rosa Public Information Officer Joy Tsubooka.

"With the video beach updates, it gives people one more tool to receive information and make decisions, especially for those who live out of town and may only see national coverage and get the impression that Santa Rosa County beaches and fishing areas are not open," she said.

That's the spin, anyway. Listen to the current report and you get a lot of 'happy-happy' beach talk mixed with some generalized info about the current state of tarballs and oil sheen.

Can't blame them for that. Promoting tourism isn't a news assignment. Besides, anyone adept enough with a computer or PDA who manages to navigate to www.santarosa.fl.gov/oilspill hardly can miss the fact they're getting a large dose of spin with their tarballs.

What's surprising is the inconvenient technology and the venue, half-hidden inside a government agency web site. Any "out of towners " looking for a video about beach conditions are far more likely to check in at YouTube or one of the dozen other popular video sites where residents and recent beach visitors are busy posting their own mini-movies -- like this one.

There are many more video sharing sites than YouTube, too. None of them is a Santa Rosa county web site. Check out the Top Ten or even the top fifty.

As for technology, many more potential visitors are using a browser already equipped with a Flash video player, instead of the odious RealPlayer, often ranked as one of the "25 worst tech products of all time."

Memo to Local Tourist Promoters: Whether you're sharing facts or blowing sand in the eyes of potential tourists, you need to go to the Internet places they inhabit and use the technical tools they prefer.

6. The Futility of Lying About Beach Conditions.

The persistent failure of Escambia County health and beach administration officials to tell the unvarnished truth about the oil disaster on Pensacola Beach is being noticed.

Ellen Klas, the estimable reporter who often covers Northwest Florida stories for the St. Petersburg Times, reports on the stunned reactions of Pensacola Beach residents when they see what BP's spill has done to the beach ["Oil Blankets Pensacola Beach"]. Aptly, she records the shattered dreams of beach goers in what we took, at first, to be a kind of sing-song rhythm reminiscent of Ding Dong School's "Miss Francis:"

Here came Courtney Laczko, 16 and sunkissed, who has been coming to the beach almost every morning since school let out because she knew the days were numbered.

"It's actually really here," she kept saying.

She thought about the dolphins and how she used to pretend they were a happy little family. She thought about the time her mom wasn't working and she took the kids to the beach every day. Bologna sandwiches and Capri Sun in the cooler.

"It was always the prettiest beach around here. You can't say that anymore."

Here came Kathy Allen, 15 and native. She thought about that night in November, after the homecoming dance, when a boy named Dakota leaned in and kissed her lips, her first ever, and how the stars seemed so bright and sparkly.

Here came Stef Ackerman, 22 and tattooed, who learned to fish here and surf here. He walked to the oil and squatted and ran his finger up under his sunglasses. He thought about all those journeys to the beach with his dad to watch the Blue Angels zing down the shoreline and about that fishing trip when his older brother came home from war. How they talked and fished all day.

This? He doesn't know how to process it.

"I don't know what to do," he said. "I don't know if anybody knows what to do."

On reflection, perhaps Klas' tone is less like the always-sunny Miss Francis than it is the ominous voice of Mathew Arnold in his The Forsaken Mermen:

Call her once before you go--
Call once yet!
In a voice that she will know:
"Margaret! Margaret!"
Children's voices should be dear
(Call once more) to a mother's ear;
Children's voices, wild with pain--
Surely she will come again!
Call her once and come away;
This way, this way!
"Mother dear, we cannot stay!
The wild white horses foam and fret."
Margaret! Margaret!

Come, dear children, come away down;
Call no more!
One last look at the white-wall'd town,
And the little gray church on the windy shore;
Then come down!
She will not come though you call all day;
Come away, come away!

Whatever her inspiration, Klas' article is worth a read.

We normally do not pay much attention to eschatologists. But Elizabeth Pratta has an insight into Pensacola Beach prevaricating that's also worth mentioning:

I wish that the first priority of the officials was the protection of our society's most vulnerable. But it isn't. It's money. They store up money...at the expense of the lives and the health of their brothers and sisters on this earth. Perilous times indeed.

7. Boosters and Beach Business.

Historians also have much to contribute to the discussion, too. If there is one loud and clear lesson to take away from the bulk of the historical CTD studies we have read it's this: blatant boosterism never works.

As Carl Abbott writes in "Boosters and Businessmen," public discourse on economic growth in hard times as well as good too commonly seems to have the purpose of aiding individual business enterprises "rather than the interests of the larger community." Or, to paraphrase another scholar's unpublished dissertation on CTDs (Daniel Aaron), what passes for "vision" in times of town crisis often means little more than expressions of blind faith in real estate, T-shirt shops, and the hotel business.
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Brian Williams - Advance Report from Pensacola Beach

NBC News' Brian Williams will be broadcasting tonight's NBC News program from Pensacola Beach. On the network news department's web site, he filed a video report from the beach this morning:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

And in case you're wondering, that oil Brian finds on the beach is well east of the Fishing Pier. Are you watching, Dr. Lanza?

The Oil Beneath

Back home tomorrow, to see for ourselves. In the meantime, "Gregg" posted this video on YouTube:

Pensacola's Petroleum Politics

1. When it oils, it pours.

As if the Gulf Coast isn't facing enough trouble, the National Hurricane Center says Tropical Storm Alex strengthened while over Belize last night. This morning, it "looks more like a hurricane than a than a low-end tropical storm."

The NHC adds, "There is at least a moderate likelihood that Alex could become a major hurricane" in the coming week.

Current computer model forecasts do not agree on the storm's ultimate destination now that it is emerging over Gulf waters again. Some have it veering west toward the Mexico-U.S. border, others have it slowing growing stronger for a few days before striking somewhere near the Louisiana-Texas border -- on a path that just about certainly would shut down everything except the oil gusher at the Deepwater Horizon oil spill site.

Above is the sunny side forecast. You don't want to see the other one.

2. Oil over troubled waters.

The PNJ's Travis Griggs articulates the question on everyone's mind:

Would a hurricane dilute the oil and speed its breakdown? Or would it pollute bays and the surrounding land and cause health problems for area residents?

It's worth while to read the whole article. What you'll find, as with so many other questions raised by BP's criminal negligence, is that no one knows for sure what the answers are, but it sure seems like none of them is good.

3. Destination near.

We're still on the road, but nearing our destination. Altogether, so far we've logged 1300 miles of endless Interstate highways. The relative we're helping is so anxious to reach his new home that we aren't allowed to stop for any sites of interest.

We only slow down, it seems, to refuel the vehicle. Consequently, the only photos we're able to take have to be snapped at 75 mph through the windshield.

4. Public Health Alerter Mystery.

The boring road trip has given us some time to contemplate this from yesterday's PNJ:

Dr. John Lanza, director of the Escambia County Health Department, said he lifted the health advisory on Pensacola Beach today, at the direction of Santa Rosa Island Authority W. A. “Buck” Lee.

“Today, when I got the call from Buck Lee, he and his staff evaluated beaches and gave me information, and I rescinded the health advisory,” Lanza said.

There was no inspection from Health Department employees. No water testing.

Wait just a minute, here. Who's on first? Is Dr. John Lanza really the director of the county health department? Or, is he just the office stenographer, paid to transcribe messages from high school grad Buck Lee?

Locals will recognize what's going, although potential visitors to Pensacola Beach may not. This has absolutely nothing to do with public health. It's a game of "Pass the Petroleum Political Problem."

Buck Lee's knowledge about human medicine and public health is so scant you could stuff it in an olive. He isn't even an "executive" director, as he likes to be called. He's just an ol' pol at the end of a long career whose hallmark was to avoid taking responsibility for anything bad that happens.

The last thing Buck Lee wants to do is get blamed by beach businesses for discouraging visitors to Pensacola Beach because the water, surf, and what may lie beneath the sand represent a health hazard to swimmers. Being the wily old Panhandle pol that he is, he knows if the oil really represents a health hazard, somebody somewhere else will eventually have to step in and do the responsible thing.

Lee might well have figured that 'somebody' would be Dr. John Lanza. But Lanza fooled him. He decided not to conduct any public health testing of the beach sand or water. After all, he had Buck Lee 's word for it, "the beach looks clean to me."

That's good enough for medical science, right?

Now, both Lee and Lanza are ducking responsibility. In effect, they're waiting for someone else to do the right thing.

What do you bet it will have to be the feds? And when they shut the beach down because of unhealthy conditions, who will be the first to scream about "federal interference?"

It's a predictable but dangerous strategy Lee and Lanza are playing. What you don't know about public heath could kill you. And these two are doing their best to make sure you don't know anything.

-------------------------

Looks like we'll be back home just about the time Hurricane Alex starts flexing his muscles.

Oily Beach Decision

Has anyone checked Buck Lee's eyesight lately? We ask because your health and the health of your loved ones apparently depends on whether he could see an oil tarball if it crawled up his leg and grabbed him by the throat.

We're still on the road, but we read that Buck bucked recommendations federal health officials and leaned on the county health department to open Petroleum ... sorry, Pensacola Beach for public swimming. Escambia county health officials --

lifted the health advisory on Pensacola Beach early Friday on the advice of
W.A. "Buck" Lee, Santa Rosa Island Authority executive director. Lee said he
made the recommendation based on a visual inspection.

As Kimberly Blair reports, Lee has decided to fly only the 'yellow' flag for 'caution' rather than red flags for 'danger.'

"And that means you need to be careful where you step," Lee is quoted as saying. "Just be careful and have a good time."

Tough to do when everyone else except Buck Lee sees "oil chips, tar balls and submerged oil slicks" on the beach and detects "the odor of petroleum."

Kimberly Blair, again:

[P]eople complained about getting a petroleum jelly-like substance on them from sand that was tainted brown.

Swimmers who did venture into the water questioned whether it was really safe to wade, swim and play in the Gulf, especially when they had to walk through a line of tar balls and stay clear of skimmers scooping up oil just 25 and 50 feet from the shore.

"I only went into the water up to my ankles. That's as far as I wanted to go," said Joe Chambers, 28, of West Pensacola as he scrubbed off oily residue from himself and his son, Ethan, 4, in the public showers at Casino Beach. "It doesn't smell like the beach. It smells like a gas station. There are no fish in the water. There's nothing alive in the water. I don't know how public officials can just look at the water and make a call to reopen it for swimming."

Carol Doster of Grand Isle, Miss., said her son Dallas, 12, was frightened by the oil that streaked his legs and arms after a five-minute swim in the Gulf on Friday. "It won't rub off," Doster said.

What in the world are county health officials thinking? They're content to rely on Buck Lee's medical advice in guarding the public's health? That's an oily medical decision they will come to regret.

Buck Lee is the general manager (he likes to call himself "executive director") of the Santa Rosa Island Authority, which governs Pensacola Beach. He's a former county commissioner with lots of political experience, but no particular education for the job in management, public health, or medicine.

He didn't sleep in a Holiday Inn last night, so far as we know, but he does have a history of inviting the public to swim in filthy water. And, he's also good at drawing poor performance reviews.

Here's a suggestion: when everyone except Buck Lee sees oil tarballs on the beach, and many are getting them stuck to their legs and arms, maybe the county health department should test the water, first, before opening it to public use. And, before taking Buck Lee's word for anything he claims he doesn't see, give him an eye examination, would you?

Back on the road -- where even the Monfort Lane is safer than Pensacola Beach.

The Anti-Oval Office Oil Spill Address

We've had anti-popes. Why not an anti-President?

Rachel Maddow delivers her "fake presidential address" -- the one she says Obama should have given instead of the one he did give.

There might be, as Maddow might put it in her playful way, "a wee bit of a problem" with the constitutionality of point No. 2 (commandeering BP to conduct world-wide boom training for everyone). But otherwise? Better than the one delivered from the balcony of the presidential basilica in Washington D.C.:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

BP Agrees to $20.1 Billion Trust Fund for "The Small People"

From this afternoon's New York Times:

The White House and BP agreed on Wednesday that the oil giant would create an independent $20 billion fund to pay claims arising from the worst oil spill in American history.

Bowing to pressure from the Obama administration, the company also said it would suspend paying dividends to its shareholders for the rest of the year and would compensate oil field workers for lost wages.

BP's board chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, soon after announced it would be suspending shareholder dividends for the balance of the year.

An additional $100 million will be set aside "to compensate oil field workers who have been idled by the moratorium on deepwater drilling."

Get this. While explaining the suspension of dividends, Svanberg said, "it was clear from the meeting Wednesday at the White House that the president was "frustrated because he cares about the small people." He added:

And we care about the small people. I hear comments sometimes that large oil companies are greedy companies or don’t care. But that is not the case indeed. We care about the small people.

Apparently in BP's world the rich get richer, the poor get small.

Has Svanberg ever met a Louisiana fisherman? We're tempted to suggest it, but on second thought we think he ought to stay away. One of those "small people" might take it into his head to show him just how "small" his fists are.

Presidential Tuesday: June 15 BP Oil Spill Update

1. Oilcast.

Temperatures should moderate slightly today and wind and water conditions will be much the same as yesterday: a light breeze and relatively calm waters. Except for moderately increased cloud conditions and a continuing Southwest-to-Northeast very light breeze, these are very nearly ideal conditions for any community facing an aggressive oil slick.

2. Oil in Pensacola Bay.

Yesterday afternoon, Southwest winds (bad) remained light (good). A very light chop (good) caused only small, scattered whitecaps (bad). Short of absolutely dead-still conditions, that's about as good as it gets this time of year in Pensacola.

Nevertheless, a large oil slick breached the orange booms at the head of Pensacola Pass, slipped past skimmers, divided at the western edge of the Gulf Breeze peninsula and now is sloshing around Pensacola Bay and Santa Rosa Sound.

Oil sheens were spotted as far inshore as the Bob Sikes Bridge on Santa Rosa Sound. Scattered clusters of tar balls, red weathered crude and mousse were observed across much of Pensacola Bay as well as inside Little Sabine Bay. Oil seeped into the grass beds in and around Lafitte Cove, where Pensacola Beach's Peg Leg Pete's restaurant is located.
* * *
During a ride aboard a Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission boat Monday afternoon, [Pensacola News Journal] reporters saw a 100-yard-long swath of quarter-sized brown tar balls floating more than a mile inside of Pensacola Pass.

3. What's Lies Beneath Mobile Bay?

In Mobile Bay, Ben Raines reports, the Mobile Press-Register on its own used depth finders to locate "dozens of places with... unusual readings at depths ranging from 10 feet to nearly 50 feet at the bottom of the ship channel."

In some cases, the anomalous readings began just below the surface and continued down to depths of 20 feet or more. In other cases, depth finders showed what appeared to be a layer of material floating above the seafloor, separated from the bottom by about 4 feet of water.
* * *
The areas yielding the unusual readings appeared to have defined edges. Moving away from the areas caused the depth finder image to return to normal. In some cases, areas with the abnormal readings were perhaps 20 feet across. In other cases, they were 100 yards or more across.

Divers descending to twenty feet below the surface found "nothing but murky water." No fish, no visible oil, no vegetation. Dauphin Island sea Lab's George Crozier "said that he was intrigued by the unusual readings."

He told the newspaper, "I don't know if that is oil down there. We'll send the boats out and try and get some samples taken."

4. Obama in Pensacola.

Well, we blew it with our beach hotel prediction. President Obama didn't take our advice and enjoy a night on Pensacola Beach. Instead, he checked into the Crowne Plaza Grand Hotel on the mainland.

That's the hotel that hides a charming nineteenth century railroad depot beneath its ample skirts, so visitors won't know it's there. The best view the Crowne Plaza offers guests, we would imagine, is a stunning look right in your face of Pensacola's hideous all-cement Convention Center. Just beyond that is St. Michael's Cemetery.

As the late Willie Junior once said, only in Pensacola would you see politicians building a convention center next door to a bunch of dead bodies. Willie may have been guilty as charged, but he was a funny man.

Staying at the Grand is so conventional. No change we can believe in. Visiting dignitaries, business tycoons, books authors on tour, and politicians always wind up there.

Some years ago a good friend of ours came through Pensacola. His publisher put him up at what was then known, simply, as the Grand Hotel. After the obligatory semi-formal author's dinner, we rescued him from all the hangers-on who wanted autographs and brought him out to the beach.

There, he spent the night amiably chatting with half a dozen of our friends in the locally famous driveway of our next door beach neighbor, Jamo Pihakis. Jamo, some people claim, lives in his garage.

However that may be, friends from all over the island drop by his place nightly to engage in that nearly extinct, pre-television custom known as "neighborly conversation." It's one of the most enjoyable charms of beach life. And, it's free! Later, our friend said it was one of the most enjoyable nights he'd ever spent on book tour.

Heck, if we'd known President Obama preferred cement, we're sure Jamo would have offered to bed him down in the driveway.

5. Cement Job.

Speaking of cement, New Orleans Times-Picayne's Rebecca Mowbray Monday had a superb article yesterday summarizing the similarities and differences between BP's oil well disaster on April 20 and the "blowout of Australia's Montara well" in August, 2009.

The Australian oil spill was in shallow water and it wasn't attributable to failure of blowout preventer (because there wasn't one). But, Mowbray writes, "what they do have in common is problems with the cementing job on the well, an oil release and missteps in shutting down the well and dealing with the oil."

Note to readers: We'll try to update the blog later today, after the president leaves our oil-stained beach.
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