NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Cleanup and containment of a massive oil slick resumed Tuesday as winds eased in the Gulf of Mexico and people along beaches and bayous waited to find out just how badly it might damage the delicate coast.
So far only sheens have reached some coastal waters. The oil has lingered in the Gulf for two weeks, despite an uncapped seafloor gusher. The slow movement has given crews and volunteers time to lay booms in front of shorelines to try to protect them.
Rig operator BP PLC continued to try to cap one of the smaller of three leaks which, if successful, could make it easier to install a containment system over the well.
Officials are also hoping to dump chemicals from an airplane to help break up the sheen, and skim oil from the surface.
The uncertainty has been trying for people who live along a swath of the Gulf from Louisiana to Florida. The undersea well has been spewing 200,000 gallons (757,060 liters) a day since an April 20 explosion aboard the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon that killed 11 workers. The rig was owned by Transocean Ltd.
"The waiting is the hardest part," said Dodie Vegas, 44, who rents rooms in her Bridge Side Cabins complex in Grand Isle, the southernmost tip of Louisiana.
She said 10 guests have already canceled their rooms, worried about the oil slick.
"I understand their point. You can’t be mean about it," she said. "That’s their week off, and if they can’t get another week, they’ve got to decide where they’re going."
BP has been unable to shut off the well, but crews have reported progress with a new method for cutting the amount of oil that reaches the surface. They’re using a remotely operated underwater vehicle to pump chemicals called dispersants into the oil as it pours from the well, to break it up before it rises. Results were encouraging but the approach is still being evaluated, BP and Coast Guard officials said.
The latest satellite image of the slick, taken Sunday night, indicates that it has shrunk since last week, but that only means some of the oil has gone underwater.
The new image found oil covering about 2,000 square miles (5,180 square kilometers), rather than the roughly 3,400 square miles (8,806 square kilometers) observed last Thursday, said Hans Graber of the University of Miami.
Fishing has been shut down in federal waters from the Mississippi River to the Florida Panhandle, leaving boats idle in the middle of the prime spring season. A special season to allow boats to gather shrimp before it gets coated in oil will close Tuesday evening.
Meanwhile, crews haven’t been able to activate a shutout valve underwater. And it could take another week before a 98-ton concrete-and-metal box is placed over one of the leaks to capture the oil.
Worse, it could take three months to drill sideways into the well and plug it with mud and concrete to stop the worst U.S. oil spill since the tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska, leaking nearly 11 million gallons (42 million liters) of crude.
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist toured an Escambia County emergency operations center and said while the Panhandle would see the first impact from the spill, the entire state should be prepared.
"If and when it gets into the Gulf Stream, that will take it around the Gulf of Mexico potentially down to the Keys and up the Atlantic side. Now, I don’t want to be an alarmist, but I want to be a realist. And I just think we all need to be prepared to do whatever we can to protect our state. It’s precious."
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and other officials kept up their criticism of BP and the Coast Guard, saying they never provided plans to protect the Louisiana coast from an oil spill.
Jindal and Sen. David Vitter said local leaders have stepped in to come up with their own solutions and officials are waiting for the Coast Guard to approve the plans and BP to fund them.
"If it were up to the BP and the feds, we would not yet have plans," Vitter said.
