Orange Beach, AL – Fourth of July weekend is a time for relaxation and celebration. On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, officially recognizing our move to break away from England.
On July 4, 2010, I found oil on Alabama’s beaches.
Embracing the view from a beachfront condominium or taking a long walk on a sandy shore should never garner a negative connotation. They belong in eHarmony profiles, not tear-jerking stories. This past weekend, Orange Beach did not seem like a normal beach, especially one on July Fourth weekend.
Some 90 miles away, a BP-owned oil well has tarnished the natural beauty of the Gulf shoreline. Oil containment booms, large unsightly floats designed to stifle oil and debris flow, litter the waters. Tar balls mix with the once purely white sand. Tractors roam amongst tanning vacationers. Orange-clad workers mosey about.
The smell is faint, but crude – in more ways than one. Lines of beach chairs sit vacated. Tar wash buckets remind guests to scrub off the oil latched on to their feet. Simply washing it off with the sand is not enough; you need to scrub. Hopefully, BP does not expect a well-developed public relations campaign to wash away this incident. They need to scrub.
Images such as these have scared off the usual beachgoers. Uncommonly sparse traffic frees the roads, and major restaurants miss the expectedly long wait times for dinner. Not a soul hunts for crabs on the benighted shore. Everyone just wants to help, but they are forced to idly watch and decide on whom to blame.
The pervading belief is that no one is doing much at all. BP has yet to fix the leak, President Obama expertly impersonates former President Bush’s Hurricane Katrina debacle, oil skimming boats wait for authorization and calm seas, local boat operators struggle with BP’s “Vessels of Opportunity Program,” and the BP workers on the beach might as well be making sand castles.
Business owners cannot possibly discuss the spill with a level head. Some business owners are no longer business owners. Some have tragically taken their own lives.
On June 24th, the Montgomery Advertiser reported that Allen “Rookie” Kruse, an operator of two charter boats for an Orange Beach marina, was “found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound on one of his boats.”
Jason Bell, who knew and worked for Kruse, described the problems facing Kruse and others in a similar situation.
“It’s a nightmare with just all of the paperwork and training and then waiting to get hired on top of the fact we’re all stressed about losing our entire season anyway,” Bell told the paper. “I hate to say it, but I’m surprised something like this hasn’t already happened.”
At least Hurricane Ivan, which crashed into Alabama’s beaches in 2004, was natural; no one deserved responsibility for the disaster itself. Only the cleanup efforts involved finger pointing. Now, too many deserve a share of the public ridicule.
This incident represents both an environmental and energy crisis. Where is the motivation to solve an issue that has loomed over our country since former President Nixon resided in the White House?
President Obama should know the “Chicago way” of confronting a problem such as this. It’s how Sean Connery in “The Untouchables” explains to Kevin Costner how they can catch Al Capone: “They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital; you send one of his to the morgue.”
Do not get caught up in the special interests that constrict Washington, D.C. No president has fought hard enough to break free of them. Congress has proven their ineptitude to even broach the subject beyond silly meetings, let alone demand transformation of our country’s comprehensive energy layout.
This past weekend should have been a time for beachside celebration. However, all I experienced was consternation.
As our country celebrated its independence from England, a British-based energy company’s oil lapped up onto American beaches.
It is about time we declared independence from this destructive resource. Big Oil has already pulled a knife and sent one of ours to the hospital. The Supreme Court recently overturned Chicago’s ban on handguns. I’ll take that as a sign for the “Chicago way” to begin.
Wesley Vaughn is a junior majoring in public relations and political science.
