BP oil washed up on Fourchon

By Nikki Buskey
Staff Writer
Published: Monday, September 12, 2011 at 6:03 p.m.

The wind and waves of Tropical Storm Lee ate away at the shore of Fourchon Beach Labor Day weekend and left a miles-long stretch littered with tar balls and cleanup equipment abandoned after last year’s BP spill.

BP has reactivated cleanup on the island, sending 90 cleanup workers to the beach for the next 30 days with directions to remove the oil and debris.

Forrest Travirca, a field inspector for the Edward Wisner Donation, a private land trust that owns about 9.5 miles of Fourchon Beach, estimates about eight miles of trust-owned beach were affected.

“I don’t know how to describe it other than to say it was a whole hell of a lot of oil,” said Travirca, who discovered the oil Sept. 4 while surveying the beach for tropical storm damage.

Pictures provided by Travirca show large chunks of oil littering the beach. The chunks, too large to be considered tar balls, are described as tar mats.

The storm also caused extreme erosion to the beach, Travirca said. At Belle Pass, all of the sand washed away, leaving just the hard clay beneath. Cleanup work interfered with the natural compaction of the beach, increasing the risk of erosion in spots where workers dug holes to unearth oil and left loose, sifted sand in its place, Travirca said.

Curtis Thomas, a BP spokesman, said the storm eroded about 2-3 feet of sandy shoreline and uncovered oil hiding underneath new sand. PVC pipes used to secure boom and snares used to absorb oil were also uncovered.

Six task forces, made up of a combined 90 workers and 17 technicians, will work a seven-day-a-week schedule to clean the beach, Thomas said.

The cleanup will start within the week, he added.