Dipping in Deep Waters

GALVESTON, TX. The cap may be on, but the effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill are far from over for the people of the gulf coast.

So for the next month, my assignment is to meander my way from Houston to Pensacola, checking in on the changes that the oil has brought. I’ll be writing articles while I’m at it, and also keeping track of my progress in blog posts like this one.

On my second night in town, I listened while an employee of Chevron and an employee of BP shared their contrasting views of the disaster and drank Lone Star beer in a red-walled bar in the Montrose district. The BP guy said it could have happened to any of the big oil companies, while the man from Chevron said that people throughout the industry are angry; BP’s accident has caused trouble for everyone.

But both agreed that the spill shouldn’t have happened.

“All the safety mechanisms failed,” said the Chevron employee, adding that it’s akin to getting in a car accident and having the seatbelt and the airbag fail at the same time.

“That and all four wheels came off the car,” the BP employee said. Later, he described the problem as a “failure of imagination” – no one had ever planned for everything to go wrong.

The next day, I paid a visit to BP itself. The sprawling, London-based company’s secondary headquarters is located in Houston’s “energy corridor.” Though I was expecting the corridor to be industrial, what I found was a series of estate-like scenes. BP, Exxon Chemical and Transocean properties are all in a row, buildings set back from the road, screened by trees and surrounded by lawns and fountains. Ducks were relaxing on the edge of a pond, and a large flock of vultures was preening along the edge of a man-made river. A few of the dark birds were circling overhead, silhouettes against the gathering thunderheads that later would soak me.

Despite being bisected by a well-signed road, BP’s campus is also private, as I learned a few minutes after wandering in. A very large security guard with a gentle smile firmly asked me to stop taking pictures, and then escorted me inside so I could request clearance to be on the grounds. After being told that photos are a security risk, and promising to avoid all people and entryways henceforth, I was given the green light to snap more shots of the bucolic campus before pointing my rental car south.

Down on Galveston Island, infrastructure is still recovering from the devastation of 2008’s Hurricane Ike. Despite this, tourism has mostly been unaffected – or even been given a boost – by the catastrophe to the east. Hotels were booked solid over the cloudy weekend. Even on weekdays the beaches were packed and the surf full of swimmers.

According to RoShelle Gaskins, PR person for the Galveston Visitor’s Center, tourists’ enthusiasm dampened only when tarballs (which ultimately proved not to be from the Deepwater spill) washed up over the Fourth of July weekend. But that was nearly a month ago, and visitors’ worries soon faded. Few of them ask about the safety of the water, or the likelihood that oil or dispersants would drift this far west.

“For the most part the tourists don’t really care,” RoShelle said. It helps that the beaches are monitored daily by the Coast Guard and the Texas General Land Office, and the Visitors Center website has posted reassurances from Mayor Joe Jaworski that “all of Galveston’s 32 miles of beaches remain clean, safe and open to the public.”

That website has shown a dramatic spike in inquiries from most states, with some of the most being from Louisiana, Mississippi, Maryland and South Dakota.

One of those hits was from Debbie Chaney of Pearl Mississippi. I talked to the cheerful grandmother on a crowded beach across the street from Galveston’s upscale San Luis Resort. Chaney said that after doing internet research, her family came to Texas instead of their usual vacation spot of Destin, Florida. “We were afraid that it was going to be oily, and that the kids wouldn’t be able to get in the water,” she said. “We decided it would be safe here.”

It was a hot and humid afternoon. Debbie and several thousand other people couldn't be wrong, I figured. I hoped. I put down my notebook and waded out for a swim.

Comments? Story ideas? Contact the author at jacobacharles@comcast.net