Tar balls began washing up on shore today on the Florida beaches today.
Globs of oil were found scattered on more than 23 miles of Pensacola’s white sandy beaches in Florida.
CBS reported:
Reuters reported:
Tar balls washed ashore in northwest Florida on Friday, the first apparent impact there from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that one senator said meant a “huge economic hit” to the tourism-dependent state.
Oil debris came ashore among swimmers and beachgoers on Pensacola Beach, part of the Gulf Islands National Seashore, which advertises “the world’s whitest beaches,” as the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history widened.
Florida, the “Sunshine State” with a $60 billion annual tourism industry, had braced for oil from the 46-day-old spill to arrive. Oil had already hit the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama to the west.
Florida Democratic Senator Bill Nelson told CNN the arrival of the oil signified “a huge economic hit” to local tourism. “There are already cancellations, the restaurants are down a little bit,” he said.
Beachgoers on Pensacola Beach, many of them children, picked up rust-colored tar blobs, ranging in size from a button to a table-tennis ball, scattered along the sugar-white sands.
As The Anchoress says, “This is not Obama’s Katrina; It’s his My Pet Goat
Maybe Barack Obama should have accepted help from the 17 nations offering their technology and expertise in attempting to contain the damage? Whoever is in charge(?) so far has declined the assistance.
More… Via Instapundit: “The real disgrace here is why, if he really did know right away that this was the oil equivalent of an asteroid strike, he didn’t scramble some sort of all-hands-on-deck emergency operation to protect the coastline. Remember, Jindal reportedly requested five million feet of hard boom back on May 2, long after Obama (according to Wolffe) knew about the magnitude of the disaster. By May 24, not even 800,000 feet had arrived. What happened?”