4 Years After BP Spill, Florida Beach Monitors Remain

Four years after the massive 2010 BP oil spill, monitors from Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection continue to find thousands of tar balls on beaches in the western Panhandle.

The Pensacola News Journal reports that the two remaining oil spill monitors have discovered more than 46,000 thousand tar balls and 3,190 pounds of submerged tar mats in the last year. The state of Florida plans to keep the monitors in the region indefinitely.

Pensacola Beach, Escambia County and Gulf Islands National Seashore officials say the state monitors are critical because BP and the Coast Guard have disbanded the major oil spill monitoring effort created in the aftermath of the massive 2010 spill.