By Erika Blumenfeld
Al Jazeera

In April 2010, BP’s Macondo well explosion leaked oil into the Gulf of Mexico, causing one of the worst environmental disasters in US history. Now, over a year later, problems continue. On September 13, 2011, Al Jazeera investigated an announcement that two public beaches, Fourchon Beach and Grand Terre Island Beach, in Port Fourchon, Louisiana, were closed to the public by BP for undisclosed reasons. Al Jazeera was escorted to the Edward Wisner Land Donation, a land trust where most of the oil was found, along 16 km of beach. Upon examining Fourchon Beach, Al Jazeera found that the recent Tropical Storm Lee had eroded the top sand away, leaving evidence of massive tar and oil mats that have been buried under these beaches since the summer of 2010.

1)  BP recently closed Fourchon Beach to the public for undisclosed reasons.

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2) BP sets up a staging area for the oil cleanup on Fourchon Beach.

3) A BP cleanup crew on Fourchon Beach prepares to excavate buried oil.

4) Eroded sand on Wisner Land Donation’s section of Fourchon Beach shows large oil and tar mats sunken below the sand’s surface.

5) Scraping even a centimeter below the sand’s surface yields glistening toxic oil that was never cleaned up by BP in 2010.

6) Several dead birds, two of which were Louisiana’s state bird, the Brown Pelican, near the oil and tar on Fourchon Beach.

7) Forrest Travirca, the Field Inspector for Wisner Land Donation, stands next to a buried tar mat mixed with BP’s oil cleanup debris. Pink flags mark the oil that BP is supposed to clean up.

8) Fields of tar balls cover the beach’s surface.

9) Close-up of a tar ball with oiled seashells.

10) The largest oil mat discovered on Fourchon Beach lies buried under the sand. It is approximately 150 m long, 100 m wide, and 20 mm thick.

11) Forrest Travirca shows how the oil under the sand is wet and fresh, and is therefore still highly toxic to the environment, wildlife and marine animals.

12) Several boats were shrimping right off these oiled beaches, which contained oil and tar mats buried along the shoreline as well as under the water.

Source: Al Jazeera | All photos by Erica Flumenfeld.