Bill Capo / Action Report
PENSACOLA, La. -- The Gulf of Mexico is sparkling blue and green, flaring into foam where the surf crashes ashore onto the shimmering white sands of Pensacola Beach.
One year after oil from the BP spill polluted these beaches, they are once again jammed with tourists basking in the sun, glad the spill is a bad memory now.
"We could see the oil really bad. Nobody came. It was really deserted last year," said Pensacola resident Brittney Rawlings.
Rawlings said now that the beaches are clean, "it feels really good."
Globs of thick, gooey brown oil stained the sugar-sand beaches last summer. Stretches of beach were cordoned off by clean-up crews, leaving tourists to watch in street clothes, not bathing suits.
"It's sickening," Slidell resident Claudia Knippenberg said at the time. "I'm frustrated, I'm angry, I'm sad."
"How in hell did we let this happen?" Santa Rosa Island Authority Executive Director Buck Lee asked angrily last year. "That's what's going through my mind. I've lived here all my life, Bill, and to see our beautiful white sand look like that, it's devastating."
Tourism is vital to the Pensacola Beach economy, and visitors stayed away, so business dropped almost 50 percent, with beachfront restaurants nearly empty.
"It's hard to look out there and know this is the peak of our season, and the beach is empty," worried Stephen Hughes, manager of The Dock, last summer.
One year later the tourists are back, and the only oil visible is the suntan oil on those enjoying the beach. And Pensacola leaders say the sands here have been scrubbed.
"We did our whole eight miles up about 60 feet from the Gulf, down to about 2 to 2 and a half feet," said Buck Lee. "We had a screen and we cleaned it, and we separated the tar from the sand, and we're back full force."
The tide still brings in tar balls occasionally, but clean-up crews search the beaches each morning to scoop them up before visitors step on them.
"It's just the tar balls that we have coming out of the surf right now, so any time something is coming up on the surf, they dispatch us out," said Clean Up Crew Member Alfred Doctor. "We pick them up and clean up the beach."
Spokesmen say business started rebounding last September after the leaking well was capped. This spring they've been seeing 20,000 cars visit Pensacola Beach on Saturdays.
"They're doing more business than they've ever done in history," said Lee. "I don't care if you've only been here for three years, if you've been here 10 years. Our spring so far this year, businesses are up anywhere from 30 to 50 percent over '09, when we were coming out of the recession."
A sign of the changing times is the booming business at the island's newest hotel, Margaritaville Beach, which opened last year at the peak of the spill.
"Last summer was pretty much the summer that wasn't for us, so we're really excited that this is our first full summer here on the beach, and everything is going well," said the hotel's Courtney Lawson.
Some hotels say they'll be fully booked for July 4.
"This is going to be a record year for us," predicted Lee. "We've already talked to the hotels, they're filling up for July. It is just fantastic. We appreciate so much the people from your area, whether it is New Orleans, or Metairie, or wherever else, Slidell. Thank God for y'all coming over. You've helped us rebuild."
