PANAMA CITY BEACH — Although BP-funded beach monitoring has ended in parts of Florida affected by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the state Department of Environmental Protection hopes a new program will help keep oil off Panhandle beaches.
The DEP plans to organize a volunteer program that will provide training, organization and a communication network for residents interested in monitoring beaches for oil and other pollutants. The Beach Watch program is expected to launch in the next six to 12 months.
“We’d obviously like (volunteers) that continuously have a presence on the beach, people that are familiar with the beach, people that continuously walk the beach and know what’s there,” said Gwen Keenan, director of the DEP’s Office of Emergency Response. “They’re most likely to notice something that’s out of the norm.”
The Coast Guard supervised beach monitoring for three years after the oil spill, but ended active monitoring in Florida on June 1. However, BP still is responsible for the cleanup if oil appears on the coast, Keenan said.
The decision to end the monitoring was made based on minimal amounts of oil debris that have been recovered from Panhandle beaches in recent months.
“We’re trying to bridge that transition between the active Coast Guard monitoring,” Keenan said. “We just knew the counties in the Panhandle were concerned with the cessation of that active monitoring, and we thought this program was a good fit.”
Using the Coast Guard’s assessment techniques, volunteers will be trained to identify different types of pollution on the beach, including oil and tar balls.
“The Coast Guard had indicated that if we got the program up and running, they would come in and provide some training,” Keenan said. “They’re basically trained to look at a beach and identify what doesn’t belong.”
A DEP team will monitor the beaches for oil products until the new program is up and running.
The eventual plan is to expand Beach Watch throughout Florida to provide long-term pollution monitoring.
Keenan said the DEP will release more information soon on how local residents can get involved.
“A lot of the people we’ve been working with are just people who have a vested interest in the beach,” Keenan said. “They just have an interest to return the beach to what it was pre-Deepwater.”
WANT TO HELP? Those interested in volunteering in the Beach Watch program should check the Office of Emergency Response page at www.dep.state.fl.us for updates. People also are advised to report any suspected tar balls to the National Reporting Center hotline at 1-800-424-8802 or at www.nrc.uscg.mil.
