Miles of oil washing up in Florida panhandle

The Miami Herald reports: The worst blow yet to the Florida coastline from the growing oil spill struck yesterday in an eight-mile line of thick, sticky goo that stained the pristine sands of this Panhandle community.

Workers spent the day raking up the chocolate-brown oil mats and tar patches that washed ashore, and the state ordered road graders to lift the gunk from the once-white beaches.

Some local leaders complained it was too little, too late.

"It's pitiful,'' said Buck Lee, executive director of the Santa Rosa County Island Authority. "It took us four hours to clean up 50 to 60 feet of beach and I don't see this stopping for a while.''

He urged Gov. Charlie Crist, who toured the area by helicopter yesterday, to demand that the Coast Guard's unified command center in Mobile, Ala., dispatch front-end loaders and heavy-duty equipment to scoop up the tar mats before the brown goo sinks into the sand.

Florida Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Mike Sole then ordered the machines to the scene.

"It's worse than I expected,'' he said.

Cleanup workers in the area were kept busy , clearing 8 tons of oil waste off a Perdido Key barrier island. By Wednesday morning, a three-mile-long trail of the oily slick had washed up between the Pensacola Beach pier and Fort Pickens National Park.

In addition, the county spotted several solid masses of 8-by-10-foot weathered oil waste in the Pensacola Pass. It was contained and a skimmer was on site, said Kelly Cooke, Escambia County's public information officer.

Crist visited the Pensacola Beach pier after taking an aerial tour yesterday morning with Coast Guard officials and environmental consultants. A week ago, Crist walked along the same beach with President Barack Obama as they discussed the federal response to the cleanup effort.

"It's pretty ugly. There's no question about it,'' said Crist, who arrived at the beach expecting to see tar balls, not pools of sticky goo. "We don't want to take `the sky is falling' attitude about this. We want to clean it up and stay after it and stay after it and we will.''

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