“Everything is just not how it used to be,’’ said Ryan Johnson, a fishermen in Pensacola Beach, Fla. “When you pull a fish up, it doesn’t look like it is supposed to look, like they did before.’’
The agreement approved last week by the US Coast Guard ends BP’s cleanup responsibility for all but a small fraction of the coast and marks a shift to restoration efforts that will likely include planting new vegetation and adding new sand to beaches.
Under the plan, BP PLC will not be required to clean up oil that washes ashore in the future unless officials can prove it came from the blown-out well that caused the 2010 catastrophe - a link that the company concedes will be harder to establish as time passes and the oil degrades.
Still, a top company official said BP is ready to respond to any oil that is deemed its responsibility.
“We are finally at a stage where scientific data and assessment has defined the endpoint for the shoreline cleanup,’’ said Mike Utsler, head of BP’s Gulf Coast Restoration Organization. “That endpoint can be reopened.’’
Such assurances are of little comfort to officials around the region who think that the Coast Guard failed to protect their interests. Louisiana refused to sign off on the cleanup plan, though the Coast Guard said it would carry it out regardless of the state’s objections. Among the state’s chief concerns is what they perceived as a lack of long-term monitoring required by the plan.
“This has been a unilateral decision,’’ said John Young, the president of Jefferson Parish, a coastal area that was hit hard by the spill. “We were supposed to work to make it right, BP said they would make it right. It’s not clean. There are still tar mats and tar balls appearing.’’
Alabama’s attorney general, Luther Strange, said the plan concerns him, and he has not decided whether he will go to court to force BP to continue cleanup efforts.
The Coast Guard estimates that all but 10 percent of the region has been cleaned of oil from the spill, and says it is time to move onto ecosystem restoration. BP has set aside $1 billion for projects to restore areas damaged by the spill that began on April 20, 2010, when the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded, killing 11 workers.
“There are significant portions of our coastline that are ready to move into the next phase, so that the Gulf Coast can start restoration projects critical to help heal the region,’’ said Coast Guard Captain Julia Hein, the federal on-scene coordinator.
New oil that shows up on clean shores would be treated “as any kind of oil response,’’ said Lieutenant Suzanne Kerver, Coast Guard spokeswoman. Officials would try to determine where it came from. If a link to BP’s now-plugged Macondo well was found, then the Coast Guard would ask the oil giant to clean it up.
