Oil hasn’t flowed from BP’s Macondo well in more than three months, but cleanup efforts from the massive Gulf oil spill continue in Plaquemines Parish, parish officials say.
Crews in Plaquemines Parish have collected thousands of gallons of oil-water from parish waterways and filled thousands more bags of oily waste and tar balls from parish shorelines in the last two months, the parish said in a news release today.
The parish said the “Inland Waterways Strike Force” has recovered 126,827 gallons of oil/water mix from Bay Jimmy since early September, including 6,300 gallons on Tuesday, the news release said.
The shoreline crews have picked up almost 18,000 bags of oily waste and tar balls from the beaches at Southwest Pass, Southeast Pass, and Pass Chaland from Sept. 30 to this week, the parish said.
Across the Gulf of Mexico, more than 13,000 responders are still at work cleaning and retrieving oil, Coast Guard Rear Adm. Paul Zukunft said this week. Many of those are in south Louisiana, he said, including some 600 responders working in the area around Bay Jimmy,
Zukunft said coastal Plaquemines Parish is an area that is still seeing problems from the oil spill, as tidal movements continue to bring residual oil in contact with the marsh. Besides Bay Jimmy, he said areas near the mouth of the Mississippi River, such as South Pass and Pass a Loutre, continue to be impacted by oil in the marshes.
