(via sebastianwaters:claytoncubitt)
Mac McClelland and John Hazlett, “They take these bags to a plant and separate out the sand so they can process the oil. Another problem is that after surface cleanup, raking the sand brings up more oil.”
And: “The shoreline is packed with men in hats and gumboots and bright blue shirts. Nearly all are African-American, all hired from around New Orleans. They tell me they’ve been standing in these exact same spots for three days. It’s breathtakingly hot. They rake the oil and sand into big piles; other workers collect the piles into big plastic bags, and still other workers take them to a plant where the sand is separated out and sent to a hazardous-waste dump and the oil goes on for processing. Then the tide comes in with more oil and everybody starts all over again. Ten dollars an hour. Twelve hours a day. When I joke with one worker that he should pocket the solid gobs of oil he’s digging up to show me how far beneath the sand they go, he stops dead and asks me if BP’s still trying to use the oil they all collect. “Aw, I knew it!” he says. Another leans on his rake to ask me, “Have they at least shut the oil off yet?” He randomly picks three spots in a three-foot-wide expanse of sand that he’s already raked clean and drops his rake in an inch deeper to show me how the oil bubbles up from underneath. He can’t count how many times he’s raked this same spot in the 33 hours he’s worked it since Thursday, but one thing he’s sure of, he says, is that he’ll be standing right here tomorrow and the next day, too.”
Read more: Mac McClelland for Mother Jones, “It’s BP’s Oil,” Running the corporate blockade at Louisiana’s crude-covered beaches.’ (via The Gambit)
