Beaches stained with oil and tar balls from the Gulf of Mexico spill will be clean by the end of the year, a top US official vowed Tuesday, hoping to tempt tourists back to the suffering region.
"We're still in it for the long haul," Coast Guard Rear Admiral Paul Zukunft told reporters at a press conference marking six months since the rig explosion that caused the biggest maritime spill ever.
The response has been dramatically scaled back since the height of the disaster, from almost 50,000 personnel to 13,000, but Zukunft said a massive effort was ongoing to finish the job.
He announced the launch of operation "Deep Clean" to return the tourist beaches from Louisiana to Florida that are so vital for the region's regeneration to their former glory.
Zukunft said he aimed to "have that work done by the end of this calendar year because those beaches are very critical to the economies of those coastal communities.
"Many people make their travel plans after the first of the year and we want to ensure that those travel plans do include those beaches and that we return them to pristine conditions."
Some 560 miles (900 kilometers) of coastline in Louisiana, Florida, Mississippi, and Alabama — which alone has a one-billion-dollar tourism industry — remain affected.
"We've developed a couple of mechanical devices, one's called "The Sand Shark," that can reach up to a meter (3.3 feet) deep into a recreational beach," Zukunft said. "It leaves sand in place but it removes that tar from the sand column."
The Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers. Two days later it sank to the bottom of the Gulf, setting off one of the largest and costliest environmental disasters of all time.
The leaking Macondo well was eventually capped in July and permanently sealed last month, but the full extent of the damage is still unclear.
Scientists are testing Gulf waters to try and reopen closed fishing grounds, while delicate marsh grasses are painstakingly cleaned to try and save the fragile wetland ecology.
The long-term effect of the disaster on fish in the Gulf is unknown, but Louisiana's key oyster and shrimp industries were practically wiped out as the toxic crude invaded oyster beds and spawning grounds.
Zukunft said the government's fleet of charter vessels was trying to ascertain any longer-term damage to certain species as they take samples that also help determine which fishing grounds can safely be re-opened.
"We've got a number of grids throughout the Gulf of Mexico where we're looking at upwards of 50 to 60 different fish species within each grid," he said.
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