Gulf Poisoning

Pensacola Beach Cover Up – Officials Say Beaches Are Safe But Reports On The Ground Show A Different Story

  Posted by Alexander Higgins - July 8, 2010 at 12:07 am - Permalink - Source via Alexander Higgins Blog
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Florida Officials have recently unleashed a multi-million dollar ad campaign aimed at luring tourists to Florida beaches.

Government officials have categorically declared the Florida Beaches safe and have chosen to allow the beaches to remain open against the advice of Federal Government scientists which lead to over 400 people becoming sick.

Even Florida Governor Christ has gone on TV declaring beaches are safe.

And while the campaign of disinformation telling the public the beaches are safe continues the media spins the story making claims that the people swimming in the water are ignoring warnings not to swim.

The state-run Escambia County Health Department, with jurisdiction over Pensacola’s sandy-white beaches, on Friday declared all 43 miles of Gulf front to be a swimming risk, an expansion of a health advisory that until Thursday covered just a portion of the county’s beaches.

Pregnant women and young children were urged to avoid the beach, and the public was advised against swimming in general. But in comments to reporters, the agency’s local director, Dr. John Lanza, said he would “of course” swim in the Gulf as long as oil wasn’t obviously present in the water or the beaches.

“The water has been affected by the oil. We know that,” Lanza said. “One particular spot may be affected more than others. If you really want to go into the water, you’re welcome to do that.”

Later he added: “It’s something like the surgeon general’s warning against smoking. Guess what? People still smoke.”

The nerve to print such an article when you clearly have public officials making such statements.

Of course the public is going to listen to the Government they trust way too much over “alarmists” bloggers like myself.

Even when you have director of the EPA has saying that Pensacola Beach is unsafe in direct contrast to the ads being ran on TV and the Claims of Governor Christ the media just buries the story and most people don’t even hear about it.

An administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson, visited the Florida Panhandle on July 3 for the first time since the April 20 explosion and stated to reporters that she would not swim in the water off the coast based on what she saw and smelled.

Lisa Jackson has visited the Gulf Coast six times since the BP oil spill began in the Gulf of Mexico on April 22 after the collapse of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig at the Macondo well.

Her comments are the exact opposite of Florida Governor Charlie Crist who went on record to state that the waters were safe for the public to swim in and that the presence of oil was a mere nuisance. He also went on record that there was no toxicity due to the BP oil spill or the dispersants used during the cleanup.

Governor Crist’s comments were aired on a morning show on ABC on June 29, 2010, only a few days before Lisa Jackson’s visit to Pensacola Beach.

…

The beach can only be closed upon a direct order of Governor Charlie Crist who was not immediately available for comment. At the moment, Pensacola Beach remains open and beachgoers are allowed to bathe and swim even though the surf is highly toxic and orange foam is visible around the sandbars in front of the shore.

As the Pensacola News Journal Reports, one of the problems is  that the determination to keep beaches open is being made based on the visible presence of oil in water which as you’ll see below is clearly being lied about.

By 10 a.m. on Friday, the double red flags prohibiting beachgoers from the water were replaced with yellow flags.“We’re flying the yellow flags. And that means you need to be careful where you step,” Lee said. “Just be careful and have a good time.”

But oil chips, tar balls and submerged oil slicks and the odor of petroleum still were present.

And people complained about getting a petroleum jelly-like substance on them from sand that was tainted brown.Swimmers who did venture into the water questioned whether it was really safe to wade, swim and play in the Gulf, especially when they had to walk through a line of tar balls and stay clear of skimmers scooping up oil just 25 and 50 feet from the shore.

Lanza said the health department did not test the water or sand samples before lifting the health advisory.

He did send out health department employees to look at the water before they covered up the health advisory signs.

Dick Snyder, director of the Center for Environmental Diagnostics and Bioremediation at the University of West Florida, began conducting water samples May 3 on Pensacola Beach every Tuesday and Thursday because beach and health officials were only doing visual assessments.

The Pensacola Beach Blog further informs us that the local officials have began tearing down warning signs not to swim in the water, pictured at the beginning of this post, and have instead began replacing them with a signs saying the beaches are open.

EscambiaDisasterResponse.com headlines its weekend advisory by telling us “The beaches are open and ready for business!”

Indeed they are open. County officials have worked hard to be sure no one in the county or state health department, state EPA, or Island Authority will close them no matter how much oil washes onto the beaches. As the Associated Press reports, “Pensacola Beach is doing its best to make its sands presentable.”

Whether the beaches really are safe, well, that’s another matter.

Notice the date on the sing of July 2nd. As you’ll see below on that very day there was a large slick of oil on Pensacola Beach.

The Pensacola Beach Blog also gives us another update today informing us that Mac McClelland has finally reach Pensacola Beach to help expose the truth.

Hypocrites, liars, polluters, pols, and shameless promoters beware! Mac McClelland from Mother Jones is now on Pensacola Beach. Today, she published her first article from Northwest Florida: “Pensacola: Come On In, The Water’s Oily!”

Here’s a small taste:

Some of the tar mat is so thick that it’s visible to the naked eye. Other traces of contamination are so subtle that they can only be seen with Kirby’s ultraviolet light, which makes crude fluoresce an unnaturally bright orange.

We trek around Pensacola Beach with the oversize light, illuminating oil everywhere: on decks, driveways, boardwalks, handrails. Blobs of it, smears of it, perfect imprints of footprints glowing neon, far beyond the waves washing oil from the Deepwater Horizon leak ashore.

If you’re a tourist or a local thinking of letting your kids swim in Pensacola Beach water anytime soon, do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.

Now while the beaches have remained open based upon the visible presense of oil even that is now in question.

The Pensacola beaches have remained open for some time but YouTuber  pcolagregg has been giving us a daily update on the status of the Pensacola beaches which show oil and tarballs on the beach on an almost daily basis while the beaches remain open.

Here are some of his videos showing the state of Florida beach while officials have made public statements that the beaches are safe and have decided keep the beaches open to the for swimming.

Daily Pensacola Beach Update For July 7th.

Pensacola Beach Report July 6th

Pensacola Beach Report July 3 2010 pm – Shows massive layers of tar and oil just beneath the surface

Pensacola Beach Report July 2nd – Large Slick Of Oil On Horizon

Pensacola Beach Report July 1 2010 pm

June 30th Tarballs washing ashore while beaches remain open

June 28, 2010 Pensacola Beach Covered With Oil And Tar

Photos by Alexander Higgins, The Pensacola Beach Blog and Mother Jones‘ Mac McClelland

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