It is also a damages issue for BP. One of their duty is to mitigate the damages. Since the press is out to ruin the summer beach season along the Mississippi-Alabama-Florida Gulf coast, BP has to do what it can to avoid or minimize these damages.
BP doesn’t own those beaches. They may not like it, but they don’t to dictate who goes there and doesn’t.
This is not just about drilling sites, this is about BP preventing commercial seaplane services and charter companies from providing services to journalists to fly anywhere in the area. BP does not want us to see the truth about what the Gulf looks like.
While I understand your concern that BP is somehow hiding things, consider the effects of limitless small craft ripping around full of journalists looking for the biggest mess, with boatwakes sloshing oil on the water further into the marshes. Who would be doing the damage then? and who would get that blame?
As for seaplanes and helos flitting about, who is to keep those out of aerial spraying of dispersant? You are talking about an air traffic nightmare, whether it is back and forth around the beaches or the rigs offshore, one accident in a critical place could make a mess of things.
Yes, it is a safety issue. Environmental damage, if it is as permanent and horrible as we are continually told, will not be kept a secret anyway, and in fact will be more pronounced later when green things are brown, etc.
and so far they are doing a pretty good job of it.
No oil on the beach yet in Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, AL. No oil on Perdido Key or Pensacola Beach, FL ( and east ) either. Still I hear of many calls from vacationers to cancel their Summer visits.
The oil may show up and we may have some major problems some time in the future but you can't tell there is a problem by looking at these beaches today.
Many thousands of condos on these beaches are “vacation rental” condos. The Summer season and the 12 weeks of rental incomes from the tourists pay for large parts
of the mortgages for the year. A bad beach season will be really bad for foreclosures.