BP says Hurricane Isaac pushed sand off of patches of hidden oil from the 2010 spill. The company now wants to dig deeper to clean some beaches.
BP spokesman Mike Utsler says Hurricane Isaac shoved around sand accumulated over two hurricane seasons to reveal oil still remaining from 2010.
“It’s what we’ve seen post-storm that actually gives us really great confidence in the methods that we’ve been using to locate and to help remove this material over these 29 months," Utsler said. "It’s helped to demonstrate the differences between deep cleaning beaches, such as amenity beaches, and the impacts of only being able to clean shallow depths in other areas.”
Utsler says crews are still checking wetlands areas where oil could now possibly be accessible for cleanup. The wetlands are harder to clean, because the delicate plant life and bird nesting areas can’t withstand the washing that sandy beaches can. He says the company has submitted cleaning plans to the Coast Guard and local agencies. Inspection teams are still looking for new traces of oil from the Macondo spill.
“Not only in the barrier islands, from what we’ve been able to examine, but across the entire operations area, we have seen no examples of new oil.”
Utsler says BP wants to deep clean beaches in Louisiana at Grand Isle, Grand Terre, Elmer’s Island and Fourchon.