An Anniversary We'd Like To Forget

Wednesday marks one year after the deadly Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion that sank the rig and spewed millions of gallons of oil into the ocean.  From Texas to Florida, the Gulf Coast is still flooded with uncertainty about the safety of the waters.

About 40 surfers paddled off St. Pete beach Sunday with a dozen roses in hand to mark the one-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

"It's sad to see that we're naïve to think that because it happened, we have all the answers," said Thomas Paterek, chairman of the Surfrider Foundation's Suncoast chapter. "Truth be told: We don't have any of the answers yet."

The nonprofit environmental group organized the event, during which surfers paddled out about 100 yards and tossed 11 roses into the water, remembering the 11 members of the Deepwater Horizon crew who died when the oil rig exploded off the Louisiana coast on April 20, 2010. The final rose represented wildlife impacted by the spill.

"This disaster is enormous, and there's still oil out there," said Dave Rauschkolb, founder of Hands Across the Sand, which opposes offshore oil drilling along Florida's coastline. "No one can be sure the sand and the Gulf (are safe). We're hearing that it is, but those of us who live up there who've been affected by this ... it's still scary for us."

Rauschkolb lives in Seaside, a coastal community east of Pensacola, and owns three restaurants, one of which serves seafood.

"We're buying our seafood from the eastern Gulf because I don't feel comfortable with the seafood that's coming towards the west coast further west from us."

And very few Americans do.   Do you blame the guy?  I don't.  Maybe because as Mac McClelland reports, the oil's still washing up on shore.

At the entrance to Grand Isle State Park, we're issued the same warning DW was, that the beach is closed to the press and everyone else because there are workers on it. That doesn't seem like that good of a reason to keep a reporter off a beach, and in any case it is a lie. Last August, when I walked out of sight of the park staffer at the entrance and onto the beach, two private guards escorted me away. This time, the beach is deserted of rent-a-cops and cleanup workers alike. It's covered in tarballs, little and sometimes not-so-little brown blemishes all over the sand. They're shiny and smell like gas when you break them open.

After a while, some workers arrive. Five of them. One shows me how they get the tarballs. He's holding a broken-off rake handle; he's taped a lens from a pair of sunglasses to the end of it, which he uses to scoop up the tar. He was originally issued a shovel, but the workers, finding this wildly inefficient, now make their own tools. In his other hand he's got a rake with too much space between the tines to pick up smaller pieces of tar. He affixed mesh to the inside of it. "I've had this job since May," he says. There's a laminated "Ten Ways To Be A Successful Husband" card in the pocket of his denim shirt. "We're just grateful for the work."

Asked if any of this oil is from the new, non-BP spill that started washing up on Grand Isle last week, he says no, that's already all been cleaned up, anything that's left over is still Deepwater Horizon oil. A group of Coast Guard guys I ran into earlier said the same thing. BP spokesperson Blake Scott also confirms this after I make it through security at central command.

We still have a major problem in the Gulf of Mexico, and it's one I'll be highlighting this week.