Terrebonne council concerned, tar balls on beach

Although Terrebonne Parish can begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel now that BP’s well is sealed, clean-up efforts are still a major cause for concern for local elected officials.

“You want to protect your marsh and your beach,” said Gary Ott, a technical advisor from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “You protect your marsh by not letting hundreds of people go walk through your marsh and drive the oil into the sediments, and you protect your beach by not letting heavy equipment go up in dunes and destroy dune structure or whatever vegetation you have.”

Representatives from BP, the U.S. Coast Guard and NOAA attended a Terrebonne Parish Council special meeting last Monday to answer questions regarding clean-up and beach protection.

Of the nine council members, District 3 Councilman Billy Hebert was the most vocal about his concerns for south Louisiana’s beaches.

“Well, I’m fired up, I’m going to tell you why. Yesterday, I went out to Canal 19 to look at a site where the islands had been split in two from a previous hurricane to notice if we could build a levee,” Hebert said. “All along the beach, I found tar balls, and there were thousands of them, and about a half-mile away was a crew sitting down under the tents not doing anything.”

Ott said that NOAA had predicted the tar balls would wash up on the beach once the well was shut off.

“When the well was shut off at last, it would have been a matter of weeks that the oil would come ashore. Not months, not years, weeks,” he said. “Winds push [the oil] ashore, and it comes up on the beach [in tar balls] or sometimes in the marshes a little more gooey.

“In the clean-up operation, you do not want to damage your marshes or damage your beaches,” Ott stressed.

Hebert said the pelicans and seagulls didn’t go anywhere near the tar balls.

“I don’t know who’s out there, but I’d fire them all and start all over again because they’re not doing their job,” the councilman said.

Recognizing Hebert’s cause for concern, Winston Shero, a BP engineering manager, told Hebert the clean-up effort in that area is a work in progress.

“We started on Timbalier about a week ago,” he said. “One of the difficulties that we’ve had is gaining access to the island as a result of the question of private ownership and private land.”

But with the help of Wildlife and Fisheries, Shero said the private ownership issues have been worked out, and the tar balls should be significantly reduced in the upcoming weeks.

“I understand and appreciate that the island needs a lot of work and we’ve only just begun,” he said.