Oil on Bolivar, Galveston beaches from BP spill

Tar balls found on Bolivar Peninsula and Galveston’s East Beach during the holiday weekend were reliably traced to the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the U.S. Coast Guard and state officials said Monday.

The discovery makes it the first such confirmed report on the Texas coast.

The Coast Guard and the Texas General Land Office were notified by residents Saturday about tar balls found on Crystal Beach, Capt. Marcus Woodring, Coast Guard sector commander for Houston/Galveston, said.

Crews rapidly set out to clean up the contamination using rakes and shovels, Woodring said.

They recovered five gallons of tar balls, one gallon from Crystal Beach, the remaining four from East Beach. An additional 1.5-mile stretch of Crystal Beach still was being cleaned Monday afternoon.

The largest of the tar balls found was the size of a pingpong ball, Woodring said.

The makeup of the oil was “inconsistent” with having traveled more than 400 miles in the Gulf of Mexico, Woodring said. Officials are looking into the possibility the oil that washed ashore came from the side of a ship or from the bilge of a vessel that had past through the spill.

While no new tar balls were spotted Monday, cleaning crews planned to head out today after high tide, before the influx of beachgoers.
No beaches were closed because of the oil.

How Did The Oil Get Here?

Neither federal or state officials believe it is likely that the tar balls were carried to the county’s coastline on regular currents.

The consistency or “weathering” of the tar balls is inconsistent with what they would look like if they had drifted directly from the site of the spill 400 miles away, Woodring said.

Holding up a glass container with a few tar balls inside, he pointed to the streaks of oil left as he moved them around.

“These are tackier than they should be,” Woodring said.

Oil from a spill initially spreads out in an oil slick, then is gradually broken up by wind and waves. With time, physical, chemical and biological processes gradually “weather” the oil making it firmer and firmer until it resembles a piece of asphalt.

When a tar ball is found on shore, it can be tested to reveal information about how long it has been at sea by looking at how weathered it is. Its composition also can be tested to point to where it came from, what Woodring termed “fingerprinting.”

Still, the Coast Guard and the Land Office aren’t yet sure how the oil was carried here.

Woodring said natural means, like Hurricane Alex, can’t be ruled out.

One possible theory is that oil was sucked into the ballast of ship, or got stuck to the bottom of one. Ships that have been navigating through the oily water in the Gulf are required to go to a decontamination station near Louisiana.

There have been a couple of ships, however, that came into port without the Coast Guard’s knowledge. One in particular was immediately sent back to be decontaminated, Woodring said.

While officials continue to narrow down how the oil got here, they are preparing for more — just in case. Woodring said the Coast Guard is setting up a command post for the spill at its offices in Texas City.

If more oil shows up anywhere between Matagorda Bay and Lake Charles, La., there is a possibility this post will oversee all of the Texas cleanup operations.

Since the oil has been identified as having come from the BP spill, the company will be obligated to reimburse the funds spent by the Coast Guard to clean up the tar balls, Woodring said.

Oily Mess

Crystal Beach resident Joni Harding was one of the first to report the oil discovered on the beach Saturday afternoon.

“I had dipped my toes in the water just to see how warm it was,” Harding said. “I put my shoes back on and went back to the house.”

She said when she took off her shoes, her feet were covered in oil.

“I’ve been living here for 20 years, and we are used to seeing tar balls and oil wash ashore,” she said. “But this was different.”

Harding called the Deepwater Horizon hot line to report the find and met with Coast Guard officials Saturday night.

Officials found tar balls, but a liquid form of what appeared to be oil found by Bolivar residents was “black silt” and not related to the BP spill and was not recovered, Coast Guard Lt. Timothy Tilghman said.

Peter Davis, chief of the Galveston Beach Patrol, said his team started picking up the tar balls Saturday and throughout the day Sunday.

He too was used to seeing tar balls on Galveston’s beaches, but noticed the finds during the weekend were different.

“It was real sticky, not dried out like we usually get around here,” he said.

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Word that oil from the largest oil spill in U.S. history had made its way to the coastline had local officials worried.

Galveston Mayor Joe Jaworski tried to set an early tone that all was well.

Jaworski said he spent time in the water Monday and everything looked fine. He said he was alarmed, however, that fallout from the oil spill reached local shores. Jaworski said he is “cautiously optimistic that this is an anomaly.”

He said the theory that the oil latched onto a ship was, “50 percent wishful thinking and 50 percent possible. It seems to me there would have been a whole lot more oil if it had drifted this way by the currents,” Jaworski said.

County Commissioner Patrick Doyle, whose precinct includes the Bolivar Peninsula, said that he was encouraged that what was found so far was minimal.

“I don’t think it will cause a severe problem for us,” he said. “I think the reality is something picked it up and pushed it this way.”

Galveston Parks Board spokeswoman RoShelle Gaskins also was holding on to the initial reports that the oil finds “were an isolated event.”

She said despite the fact that there had not been any previous reports of oil on the beaches, Galveston tourism officials have been spending much of the summer telling curious travelers that the beaches were oil free.

“Now we have to tell them yes, there was some oil, but it was a small amount and it was cleaned up and the beaches are open for business,” Gaskins said.

KHOU-TV contributed to this report through a content partnership with the Galveston County Daily News.

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At A Glance

• Anyone who sees oil or tar balls on the beaches is asked to report them to the National Response center 1-800-424-8802 or 800-832-8224.

• Health and cleanup: Brief contact with small amounts of oil is generally not known to harm people. Some people, however, are especially sensitive to chemicals, including the hydrocarbons found in crude oil. If a person comes into contact with oil, it is recommended that they wash the contact area with soap and water, baby oil, or widely used, safe cleaning compounds such as the cleaning pastes sold at auto parts stores.

• Beach reports: The Galveston Parks Board will report any new findings at galveston.com or by phone to those who call the Galveston Island Visitors Center at 888-425-4753