A year after the worst maritime oil spill in history sullied the US Gulf Coast, men armed with shovels and a big yellow excavator are still digging up the sandy beach of Grand Isle, Louisiana in search of sticky tar balls.
“We’d like to tell people it’s over, but the oil will still wash up every time it storms,” said Jay LaFont, Grand Isle’s deputy mayor.
People here are used to dealing with disasters. They’ve had to rebuild from four major hurricanes – Katrina, Rita, Ike and Gustav – in the past five years alone.
Those disasters had a clear start and end. BP’s runaway well – which blew on April 20 and spewed 206 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico before it was finally capped 76 days later – continues to threaten their way of life.
Because nobody knows what the long-term impacts will be. While favourable currents and a massive response kept the bulk of the oil from reaching shore, plenty got trapped in the tidal zone and keeps washing up in sandy clumps.
Grand Isle was among the hardest hit areas, but crews are still actively cleaning 380 kilometres of coastline and plan to return to around 480 kilometres once tourism and nesting season is over.
The occasional tar ball shouldn’t be enough to keep the tourists away, but people in Gulf Coast beach towns like this one are worried that last year’s bad headlines will.
Even more frightening is what will happen to the fish, shrimp and crabs swimming through the oil and chemical dispersants still floating in Gulf waters and clogging the nearby marshes which act as nurseries.
The stress of the spill forced Sarah Rigaud, 76, to start taking anti-anxiety medication after business at the restaurant she’s run for 38 years collapsed in the wake of the spill.
At first she thought she’d make money serving the clean-up crews, but after BP brought in outside catering she had to start cutting back and dipping into her savings.
So far BP’s promising to make people “whole” hasn’t done much to help Ms Rigaud cover a mounting stacks of bills. She got two emergency payments of $5,000 and, like nearly 90,000 other people, is still waiting for her claim to be processed.
Ms Rigaud can’t imagine closing Sarah’s Restaurant and will do just about anything to hang onto it.
While there is plenty of anger focused on BP’s response to the spill and the cumbersome claims process, there was little support in the region for the temporary moratorium imposed on deepwater drilling. The moratorium was lifted in October after regulators drafted new safety rules, but the first deepwater drilling permit wasn’t issued until February 28 and activity is only now starting to ramp back up.
Harris Cheramie said he gets about 25 calls a day from people looking for work on one of the tugboats he runs out of nearby Leeville, which is just up the road from the offshore industry’s main launching point of Port Fourchon.
Like many here, Mr Cheramie says the moratorium hurt Louisiana more than the oil spill and blames the Obama Administration for holding the oil and gas industry to a different standard.
“I can’t understand why they let the airplanes fly,” Mr Cheramie said. “There are more people killed in airplanes than died offshore, but one accident in 50 years and they kill the oilfield.”
Chronology of the disaster
The worst maritime oil spill in history began nearly a year ago with a drop in pressure in a poorly drilled well deep in the Gulf of Mexico. It hasn’t really ended even though BP’s runaway well was eventually capped 87 days later.
April 2010
20: The BP-leased Deepwater Horizon oil rig explodes in the Gulf of Mexico some 80 kilometres off the coast of Louisiana, killing 11 workers.
22: The platform sinks 1,500 metres to the sea floor.
30: Oil starts washing ashore in Louisiana, eventually soiling more than 640 miles of coastline across five southern US states.
May
27: President Barack Obama announces a six-month moratorium on new offshore oil drilling and exploration,
30: BP chief executive officer Tony Hayward sparks outrage after he says “I would like my life back.”
June
1: US launches a civil and criminal investigation into the spill,
16: BP announces a $20 billion fund to compensate people affected by the disaster.
July
12: A giant cap is placed successfully over the leak.
15: BP says oil has stopped flowing into the Gulf.
27: BP boss Hayward resigns, replaced by American Bob Dudley.
27: BP announces plans to sell $30 billion in assets to cover the cost of the spill.
August
2: Revised figures show that a total of 4.9 million gallons of crude gushed from the ruptured well, making it the world’s biggest ever maritime spill,
5: A “static kill” operation succeeds in plugging the well with heavy drilling mud and cement.
September
3: BP recovers the blowout preventer valve, blamed for failing to stop the spill as it is designed to do, from the depths of the Gulf of Mexico.
19: US officials declare the well “dead” after the “bottom kill” succeeds in permanently sealing off the reservoir.
October
13: US lifts moratorium on deepwater drilling after imposing tough new safety rules.
January 2011:
11: A Presidential commission tasked with investigating the spill releases its report proposing comprehensive reforms and finds that the disaster was “foreseeable and preventable”.
February:
1: BP posts a $4.9 billion loss for 2010 and warns that the $40.9 billion charge related to the spill does not include many potential legal liabilities.
28: The US government awards its first permit for deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico to US firm Noble Energy.