This is a repost of an article from Panama City’s News Herald

New boom: County moves forward with plan to protect the pass

PANAMA CITY — Crews will begin to construct a gated boom system Wednesday morning to close off St. Andrew Pass to oil, county officials said.

It will take at least 20 days, weather permitting, to drive steel pilings into the pass and string a 6-foot curtain of rugged plastic and fabric across them, Bay County Public Works Director Ken Schnell told county commissioners at a special meeting Tuesday.

A 400-foot-wide gate in the boom, which will be made of a 30-inch plastic float and a 48-inch fabric skirt, likely will be opened to traffic with outgoing tides, he added. Eighteen pilings will extend at least 10 feet above the high-tide mark.

Although the county didn’t yet have a permit for the plan, commissioners voted Tuesday afternoon to start immediately on the project and pay its $2.8 million price tag, along with its $8,300-a-day maintenance and operation costs. Emergency Services Director Mark Bowen hoped Bay County might be able to get a reimbursement agreement from BP within a month.

“We’re following the rules, but we’re not letting the rules delay what we need to do,” Bowen said about the lack of a permit, which he said he hoped to have by the end of the day. “And cost certainly is an issue, but we’ve got to do something.”

Commissioner Jerry Girvin agreed.

“The fact is, we may or may not get reimbursed for this,” Girvin said. “But we do not have an option.”

The boom system is as unique as the pass it’s designed to protect, Bowen said. Attempts to block bays in western Florida have not been successful; Bay County has been trying to learn from those counties’ mistakes and develop a blockade that will work in St. Andrew’s especially deep and fast-moving waters, he said.

This “rugged” boom should be able to stand severe weather and waves, Bowen added.

The steel pilings likely will be difficult and costly to remove from the pass — commissioners wanted to include those expenses in any reimbursement requests to BP — but Bowen was more concerned with the immediate future.

“We have to view this as if it’s going to go on much longer than August,” he said.

The blockade will not stop tar balls from getting into the bay, Bowen added, but he said he hopes other oil products will slide off the skirt and pool on the gulf side of the pass, where skimmers will be at work to collect oil.

Favorable winds continued to push oil farther away from Panama City on Tuesday, and only scattered tar balls were reported in Bay County. Dime- and nickel-sized tar balls were found near Front Beach Road and Dement Circle, and mostly dime-sized tar balls were found near the City Pier in Panama City Beach, according to the state emergency response team (SERT). Aircraft reconnaissance also spotted about a 1,000-foot circle of tar balls and rainbow sheen about 5 miles west-southwest of St. Andrew Pass, SERT reported.

“I would wager a very strong bet that there are multiple tar balls in St. Andrew Bay,” Bowen said. “When we see them, we’re going to jump on them; we’re going to clean them up and that’s the best we can do.”

President Obama has repeatedly said his Administration is doing everything in its power to expedite the oil clean-up and mitigate the damage. But in the two weeks immediately after the spill, 13 foreign governments reached out and offered their assistance. The U.S. response? Thanks, but no thanks.

Or at least that’s how Geert Visser, consul general for the Netherlands in Houston, described the U.S. answer. The State Department phrased it slightly differently: “While there is no need right now that the U.S. cannot meet, the U.S. Coast Guard is assessing these offers of assistance to see if there will be something which we will need in the near future.” One month later, many of these offers are still outstanding.

The Belgian dredging group DEME says it has offered the U.S. specialized vessels and technology that can help clean up the spill in three to four months compared to the estimated nine months that the U.S. will need. There are only a handful of these vessels in the world, and most of them belong to Dutch and Belgian companies. So why aren’t we calling on them?

Blame it on the protectionist Merchant Marine Act of 1920, also called the Jones Act, that requires ships working in U.S. waters to be built, operated and owned by Americans. Building specialized clean-up vessels in the U.S. is too expensive because of high union labor costs, and unions don’t want ships built with foreign labor to be used in U.S. waters. To circumvent the Jones Act, clean-up crews have had to outfit American ships with skimming technology airlifted from the Netherlands. This has resulted in serious delays and greater harm to the Gulf.

Presidents can suspend the Jones Act in emergencies, as George W. Bush did after Hurricane Katrina. But the Obama Administration continues to maintain that this isn’t necessary and that there are “no pending requests” for waivers. But Florida Republican Senator George LeMieux disagrees and says his constituents want all the foreign help possible.

We sympathize with the President’s lament on Monday that “I can’t dive down there and plug the hole. I can’t suck it up with a straw.” But there’s no excuse for turning away ships that can clean up the oil merely because that might offend Mr. Obama’s union friends.

Greetings From KY,

True to my word, I told you all I would tell you when tar balls did in fact wash up on the beaches in PCB. My goal has not been to deceive to keep your hard earned vacation money. My goal has been to help keep you informed so that you could make an informed decision. The media has distorted the story so much, it’s hard to know who to believe.

That being said, the top story in the News Herald (Panama City Beach Newspaper) is that tar balls have reached Bay County. Here is a snippet of the story with a link to the web page…

PANAMA CITY BEACH — After weeks of waiting, watching and dodging the oil, Bay County finally felt a direct hit from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Bay County Spokeswoman Valerie Lovett said the county confirmed that tar balls washed ashore Friday night along the west end of Panama City Beach, in the area of Hollywood and Carillon beaches.

“Tar balls, nickels to 50-cent piece in size, have washed ashore on the west end of the beach,” Lovett said. “It is consistent with the time frame that we were looking at.”

The first call came in to the county about 8 p.m. Friday, she said.

Lovett said the tar balls are a confirmed match to a sample the county has from Pensacola.

She said the county would have the equipment staged to clean up the tar balls first thing in the morning, “with the light on our side.”

Carillon Beach is 7 miles West of Pier Park and is where Front Beach Road intersects into 98 or Back Beach Road.

The story indicates that crews are working quickly to remove the tar balls. If you are headed to the beach, please take pictures and or video and I will get them posted on our website and facebook page. We can all work together to help inform others thinking of going to the beach and help stop wild rumors.

I know some of you are going to the beach regardless. Please help keep us informed. Post coments on our blog or post comments on our Facebook page or just simply send me an email. Thanks in advance.

I am very disappointed to announce oil has washed ashore 55 miles West of Panama City Beach on Fort Walton Beach, Florida. Below is an ireport of someone filming at Azure in Fort Walton Beach. I stayed there a few years back before we bought our condos in Panama City Beach. It was a very nice place. We were there for Thanksgiving.

It now appears that PCB is in the area of uncertainty but not in the 72 hour projection. Lets keep our fingers crossed that it stays away for a while.

I took this video of Panama City Beach and the Gulf of Mexico showing people still in the water and enjoying the beach. For those of you that have been coming to Panama City Beach for a while, you are familiar with the annual bloom of seaweed and what it is like when it washes in. That is what is happening right now. Lots of green seaweed in the water, the kind that gets in the crack of your…. bathing suit

If that is the worst thing happening here, I’ll take it

Here is our latest of amateur videos showing the water status as of 6-10-10.

CONTACT: GOVERNOR’S PRESS OFFICE
850-488-5394

Governor Crist Announces Proactive Reconnaissance
Measures to Protect Florida’s Beaches
~~State assets search daily by air, land and sea from sunup to sundown ~~

TALLAHASSEE –Governor Charlie Crist today announced that the State of Florida is taking additional proactive measures to ensure the quick and timely discovery of oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Reconnaissance missions are being coordinated daily from the State Emergency Operations Center in Tallahassee using air, land, and sea assets from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), the Florida Civil Air Patrol, and the Florida National Guard.

“While we acknowledge that the Coast Guard and BP, as the responsible party, are in charge of the response to this oil spill, I have asked our state team to use all available assets to proactively evaluate the potential areas of impact by air, land and sea,” said Governor Crist. “We have a responsibility to our residents, businesses and visitors to exhaust all possible avenues and to work to avoid the tragic scenes we have seen along the coastline in Louisiana. This level of response can be done only by using these aggressive reconnaissance methods from first light each day until dark. I want to thank the members of our state team for their dedication to this mission on behalf of all Floridians.”

These reconnaissance missions that started last week are being conducted from Perdido Key in Escambia County to Cape San Blas in Gulf County. Search areas are divided into approximately five-mile increments, with all terrain vehicles (ATVs) patrolling the coastline looking for any evidence of land-falling oil products. Boats are patrolling the gulf waters in these areas looking for evidence of oil sheen or other oil byproducts, and air assets are evaluating waters out to nine miles from shore daily and further when directed. When evidence of oil is detected, the reconnaissance teams quickly report their findings back to the State Emergency Operations Center in Tallahassee. Then teams hired by the responsible party, BP, can be dispatched to the impacted areas through Unified Command in Mobile, Alabama, to perform cleanup, skimming or other mitigation measures in a timely fashion.

The aerial teams are equipped with cameras that geocode the location of what are believed to be impacts from the oil spill. Aerial teams then send images to the State Emergency Operations Center, so they can be mapped and relayed to response teams who are deployed to that location to take appropriate actions. The attached map shows the area of operations, flight patterns and where the state’s assets are deployed in these five-mile zones and actively working to mitigate the impacts of oil on Florida’s beaches.

Two plans created by the United States Coast Guard, BP and the impacted states, including Florida, outline the steps for shoreline assessment and cleanup to ensure quick and efficient response to oil on our shores. Those plans include The Shoreline Cleanup Assessment Team (SCAT) Plan and the Mobile Sector Near Shore and Shoreline Stage I and II Response Plan.

The SCAT Plan outlines the role of SCAT teams and provides a process for collecting shoreline oil data used to create cleanup plans. SCAT teams consist of trained representatives from BP, the federal government and the state. The response plan addresses response in three stages: recovering oil in the water, placing boom and other protective measures along the most sensitive areas of Florida’s coastline, and cleaning up any oil that does impact Florida’s shores as quickly as possible, both while the oil discharge continues from Deepwater Horizon and after the leak is stopped.

The first stage of response involves oil removal from near shore waters using skimming devices, vacuum systems, booming and other appropriate methods. These removal methods are currently being used to prevent oil from reaching Florida’s shoreline. Approximately 261,250 feet of boom has been placed in Florida along the most sensitive areas of the Panhandle, and several counties in the western tip of the Panhandle are moving forward with supplemental booming plans.

The second stage of the response plan outlines the cleanup methods for a variety of habitats, including beaches, marshes, and man-made structures such as docks and pilings. Boom will likely not prevent tar balls, tar mats and very sticky weathered oil from washing onshore. Therefore, the most feasible cleanup method in this stage is manual removal of oil with hand tools or mechanical equipment used by authorized and trained individuals. The third stage is intended to finalize shoreline cleanup in habitats that may be adversely affected by oil after the leak is stopped.

BP has contracted with Waste Management Services (WM) for removal of waste generated from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. This plan has been approved by the Unified Command in Mobile with input from the State of Florida. Learn more about treatment and disposal options here<http://www.dep.state.fl.us/deepwaterhorizon/files/treatment_disposal_options.pdf> (http://www.dep.state.fl.us/deepwaterhorizon/files/treatment_disposal_options.pdf).

For the most up-to-date information on Florida’s Deepwater Horizon response, as well as health and safety tips, visit www.deepwaterhorizonflorida.com<http://www.deepwaterhorizonflorida.com><http://www.deepwaterhorizonflorida.com/>, follow www.twitter.com/FLDEPalert<http://www.twitter.com/FLDEPalert><http://www.twitter.com/FLDEPalert> or call the Florida Oil Spill Information Line at (888) 337-3569.

Here is a link to the latest Panama City Oil Spill 72 Hour Trajectory Map updated on 6-8-10.

Actually, this is the NOAA forecast for the entire Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Horizon Incident trajectory forecast, but since most of my postings have to do with Panama City Beach, I kind of fudged the title a little.

Please be aware that false rumors are circulating.  Here’s the truth–There is no scheduled oil impact, no dead marine life washing up, and the air quality has no “smell of oil.” Don’t cancel your vacation–Panama City Beach is still very much open to the public and hasn’t had any impact from the Oil Spill.

Video taken at the waters edge in Panama City Beach Florida.