Monday, July 19, 2010

On the oil spill

We started to see evidence of the Deepwater Horizon spill when we arrived in Mobile, Alabama. The lady at the tourist info place we visited reckoned accommodation was scarce and prices had gone up because of clean-up operations. It's supposition but there were people with serious looking equipment in their pickups staying at the same motel as us. Driving along some of the roads that bordered water - the gulf especially we could see boom laid out and clean-up crews and machinery on beaches. They must have being doing their jobs right as we didn't see any actual fouling of the beaches we visited.

In Pensacola a guy came over and chatted to us at the motel. He was there working on cleaning beaches. I didn't really catch what he was saying because I was sitting a little further away and reading the paper. From what I overheard though he was saying that himself and a lot of other people have work now because of the spill. This contrasts sharply with the articles in the newspapers which have focused mainly on the loss of income for people like fishermen and the inadequacy of BP's payment process. It should be noted that at least one of the articles were fairly balanced, praising BP for modifying contracts in the favour of fishermen now working for them in the cleaning efforts. Although obviously it would be better if it hadn't happened at all.

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