Television reports from the Panhandle show oily beaches and coastlines with no cleaning crews anywhere in sight. So anxiety is rising in South Florida over whether preparations by local governments will avoid a seeming shortage of clean-up crews.
The answer is unclear, because oil is complicated, and so is this spill.
The oil takes on various forms. The currents and winds take it in different directions and the dispersants make some of it float on the surface and some stay beneath.
"We're ready," declared Carlos Espinosa, director of Miami-Dade County’s Department of Environmental Resource Management, the largest such agency in Florida.
Espinosa was speaking to a group of citizens at a meeting Monday night in Coconut Grove, hosted by the Miami-Dade chapter of the Sierra Club.
DERM is not, however, the lead agency for the oil response in the county. Federal and state agencies will run the show and command county agencies in what to do.
At this point, concerned citizens want to know what they can do to help, but the answer in Miami-Dade may be nothing.
“Volunteers are not going to be involved in picking up the tar balls," said Espinosa. "That is going to be contract people and or people who are trained and who have the proper equipment and protection to do that."
Espinosa said the Coast Guard and other authorities have told him the amount of oil expected to reach Miami-Dade county is relatively minimal, and will be weathered tar balls, which means they'll be much less toxic. He said there are enough people to assist in the clean up without needing volunteers.
But some at the Sierra Club meeting felt there wasn't enough sense of urgency in the Miami-Dade plan, that things were being downplayed for fear of scaring away tourists.
Club member Jonathan Ullman said it’s incumbent upon government to use the best tools to engage the citizens with information on oil preparations because “at the end of the day, it’s about us protecting our land.”
Espinosa also said the county is keeping track of the man hours and costs of planning for the oil impact and BP will be billed for the costs.
But, at the meeting, Espinosa was asked whether BP would be billed for the loss in value of our beaches, our fishing, our tourism, and more – should that happen. His answer was unclear.
