NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana - July 8, 2010 - A problem lurks under the sand on the U.S. Gulf Coast, but some argue the best thing to do is - nothing.
Walk to a seemingly pristine patch of sand, plop down in a chair and start digging with your bare feet and chances are you'll walk away with gooey tar between your toes. So far, workers hired by BP to clean oil off beaches have skimmed only the surface, using shovels or sifting machines.
The oil underneath is sometimes buried by the tides before workers can get to it. Now the company is planning a deeper cleaning program that could include washing or incinerating sand once the blown-out oil undersea well is plugged and the gusher stopped off the coast of Louisiana.
But some experts question whether it's better to just let nature run its course, in part because oil that weathers on beaches isn't considered as much of a health hazard as fresh crude. Some environmentalists and local officials fret about harm to the ecosystem and tourism.
"We have to have sand that is just as clean as it was before the spill," said Tony Kennon, the mayor of Orange Beach, a popular tourist stretch reaching to the Florida state line.
George Crozier, a marine scientist and director of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, said tourism's the only real reason to dig up the buried oil.
"Buried is buried. It will get carved up by a hurricane at some point, but I see no particular advantage to digging it up," he said. "It's a human environmental hazard only because people don't want to go to the beach if it's got tar balls on it."
