Beach Cleanup at Grand Isle State Park: July 29, 2010

Beach Cleanup
Originally uploaded by Laura Erickson

There are an awful lot of miles of oiled beach, and the oil goes down really deep, yet this is the way they're cleaning them. It's not like it's low impact--the front-end loader kept going back and forth between the clean-up crews and the enormous dumpster.

I was allowed to go back to another stretch of beach at Grand Isle State Park for a while that afternoon. I felt woozy and faint after 20 minutes or so, though I didn't smell anything. I can't imagine how these workers could get through an 8-hour day without respirators. But BP's contractors were working with convict labor--people who aren't in a position to complain.

This is the 21st century, yet this is the best technology we have for beach cleanup?