At Tampa conference, La. official disputes BP claims on oil spill

For the past 20 years, the annual Clean Gulf Conference has been a place where oil industry vendors hawk their wares and speakers talk about marine science, business, fishing and tourism. This year is different. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is dominating the conversation.

On Tuesday, government and oil industry executives said the worst of the oil spill is past. But one Louisiana parish leader, who attended the conference at the Tampa Convention Center, was livid this morning at the suggestion the disaster is passed.

Billy Nungesser is president of Plaquemines Parish, which took the brunt of the oil spill in the form of tar balls on the beaches and oil sludge in the marshes. Parish fishermen and oil workers are out of work, he said this morning, and life is far from normal.

After U.S. Coast Guard and BP officials spoke at the convention on Tuesday, talking about how the disaster is over, Nungesser said he walked out.

"If you get in the way of the Coast Guard, the Coast Guard will knock you down," he said. "I'm going to get in the way of the Coast Guard."

He said the Coast Guard has said it moved 5,000 people into the region to clean up the spill, "but not one of them has oil on their shirts."

He said locals should have been given more of a say in clean-up efforts during the days and weeks after the oil rig exploded and began spewing millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf. He said local fishermen know the waters and the currents and could predict where the oil was headed better than government and oil industry officials.

When out-of-towners came in and took charge, he said, the result was gobs of oil settled in ecologically sensitive marshes and tar balls rolling ashore on beaches.

He said locals were underutilized; that dozens of skimmers never got used and that clean up efforts continue to this day in his parish, and likely will continue for years. He said even though most of the nation believes the disaster to be over, Louisiana coastal locals are still sucking up 8,000 gallons of oil-tainted sea water every day from Gulf near his parish.

Federal officials have downplayed the disaster in recent months. Thousands of miles of closed fisheries have been opened and some marine scientists have said much of the oil has dispersed. Federal officials also have lifted a moratorium on deepwater drilling.

The conference should be a critique of what went right and what went wrong, Nungesser said, instead of a "dog-and-pony show."

"This could happen in Tampa tomorrow," he said. "We had better find a better way to respond. When this is all over, we will have wasted more money than we spent cleaning up the oil."

Drew Landry is a Lafayette, La., musician who also catches crayfish in Grand Isle. He attended the conference and agreed with Nungesser that the disaster is not over.

"There's still a lot of oil out there," he said. "Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it isn't there. It seems like it's the game plan for the industry to say all is safe and to put all this behind us."