The US coastguard is to finally end the cleanup efforts from the Deepwater Horizon disaster along the Florida, Mississippi and Alabama coasts this week – 38 months after the worst offshore oil spill in American history.
Responsibility for looking after the stricken part of the coastline will transition back to a national response centre – although coastguard officials warned that local response efforts could be initiated if more oil is found on land or in the water of those states.
However, Louisiana – the hardest hit part of the coast after the April 20 2010 spill – is not among the areas the US coastguard is transitioning back control of.
Eleven people were killed after the explosion on the rig, which was 50 miles off the Mississipi river delta in the Gulf of Mexico. Oil continued to discharge for 87 days, before being capped in July and eventually sealed in September 2010.
BP, who operated the rig, told the Houston Chronicle that operational activity had ended on 4,272 of the 4,376 shoreline miles hit by the spill, with monitoring continuing along 84 miles of shoreland in Louisiana and another 20 miles pending approval for final inspection.
“Even as the Coastguard has made the decision to move these states to the National Response Center reporting system, should residual Macondo oil appear on the shoreline, BP remains committed and prepared to address it under the direction of the Coast Guard,” said Laura Folse, BP’s Executive Vice President for Response and Environmental Restoration.