Alabama tourism dollars drop $100M after oil spill | pnj.com | Pensacola News Journal

Alabama tourism dollars drop $100M after oil spill pnj.com Pensacola News Journal: "Alabama tourism dollars drop $100M after oil spill
Associated Press • February 12, 2011"

Alabama tourism dollars drop $100M after oil spill

Associated Press • February 12, 2011

GULF SHORES, Ala. — Tourists spent almost $100 million less visiting Alabama's main tourist beaches last year than the year before the Gulf oil spill, a tourism official said Friday.

The vice president for the Gulf Shores-Orange Beach tourism agency, Mike Foster, said Friday that $144 million was spent in the Baldwin County beach communities of Orange Beach, Gulf Shores and Fort Morgan in 2010. That compares with $241 million in 2009, the year before the spill. The spending figures include money spent at hotels, restaurants and beach-related businesses, such as souvenir shops and beach chair rental stands.
"That is very significant," Foster said.

Associated Press

He said the decrease showed people, concerned by images of oil- and tar-coated sands, stayed away from the beaches. Tourism plummeted across the coast after BP PLC's well in the Gulf of Mexico blew out in April, spewing millions of gallons of crude into the sea. Crews spent weeks clearing oil and tar balls from the beaches.
Foster said the number doesn't include revenues from people who stayed in motels or hotels in nearby communities like Foley or Mobile, or those who made a one-day trip to the shore. He said it also doesn't include revenue lost from tourists who would have stayed in motels or visited restaurants across Alabama on their way to the Gulf Coast.
The loss is probably worse than the numbers show because many merchants, hotels and motels offered large discounts to spur business, Foster said.
The Alabama Attorney General's Office has filed a lawsuit seeking to recover revenue lost by the spill. A spokeswoman for Attorney General Luther Strange, Jessica Garrison, said the tourism figures would be an important part of the overall assessment of damages to the state caused by the oil spill. She said Strange is working with Gov. Robert Bentley to determine Alabama's total economic loss as a result of the oil spill.
State tourism officials said 1 million fewer people visited Alabama's beaches in 2010 than in 2009. That figure was part of an annual report on the state's top tourist attractions.
The report said 3.6 million people visited Alabama beaches in 2010 compared with 4.6 million 2009. While the number of visitors to attractions on the Gulf was down, other attractions across the state showed an increase in visitors in 2010.
Gulf State Park alone recorded 300,000 fewer visitors in 2010 than the previous year.
Advance bookings suggest more people will visit the coast this year, but the numbers aren't likely to hit 2009 levels, Foster said.
"I hope that people who come for spring break take the message home that everything is fine," Foster said.
AP-WF-02-11-11 2331GMT

Big blob of gunk found in the Gulf | HeraldTribune.com

Big Blob of Gun Found off Perdido Pass HeraldTribune.com: "Big blob of gunk found in the Gulf"

Big blob of gunk found in the Gulf

PHOTO PROVIDED / UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA

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Scientists used a multi-corer to take sediment samples near Perdido Pass, offshore of the Alabama and Florida border. Lab tests found no traces of oil. The goo is made entirely of dead plankton, algae and bacteria.

By Kate Spinner

Published: Wednesday, February 2, 2011 at 10:28 a.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, February 2, 2011 at 2:25 p.m.

( page 1 of 3 )

From a distance the toxic goo looks like oil, but up close it smells like rotten eggs and wiggles like jelly. Scientists have no idea what it is or how it wound up in the northern Gulf of Mexico, near Perdido Pass.

Related Links:

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Click to enlarge

A core sample from Perdido Pass taken in Dec. 2010, shows black goo at least 50 centimeters deep.
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PHOTO PROVIDED / UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA

Just off the Florida Panhandle coastline, within site of Perdido Key, scientists have discovered an underwater mass of dead sea life that appears to be growing as microscopic algae and bacteria get trapped and die.

Early samples indicate the glob is at least three feet thick and spans two-thirds of a mile parallel to the coast.

No one knows where it came from or where it will go.

Scientists are trying to determine if oil from last year's Deepwater Horizon disaster led to the glob. But tests so far have found no sign of oil.

"It seems to be a combination of algae and bacteria," said David Hollander, a chemical oceanographer with the University of South Florida, describing the substance as "extraordinarily sticky" and toxic.

While scientists have drawn no conclusions about the gooey mat's origin, they are not ruling out a potential connection to the oil spill. Oil gummed and slicked that part of the Gulf for 30 to 40 days during the three-month well gusher, which pumped 186 million to 227 million gallons of crude into the Gulf.

"We don't know all the ramifications, the implications of a spill like this," Hollander said.

He and other scientists plan to return to the glob in a few weeks for more samples. The equipment available on the last cruise was not long enough to reach the bottom of the mat. The bottom sediments could hold important clues about how the glob formed. The scientists also did not have the time or equipment to map out the entire blob.

Researchers found the substance while on a December search for oily sediments on the Gulf floor. Scientists found such sediments, but were diverted when they got a tip about something unusual about a half mile from Perdido Pass.

The environment near the blob is a relatively pristine sloping shelf, where wave action usually sweeps away sediments.

Tests show it had no connection to land, was less than a year old and almost 100 percent biological. Tests also showed that tiny organisms had been getting stuck to the blob and dying as a result.

George Crozier, executive director of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Louisiana, said such material is foreign to the northern Gulf coast environment.

"It sounds a lot like an organic deposit, the source of which is frankly very difficult to ascertain," Crozier said.

He speculates that a bloom of algae may have feasted on something - possibly oil - ran out of food and then died. The decaying algae might have then sucked all the oxygen out of the water and killed whatever was in the way.

The blob is equally puzzling to local ecologists who study the coastal resources near Perdido Pass. But it could be one of many strange discoveries that scientists find as they conduct oil spill research. Gulf research has been limited over the decades, so every odd discovery may not have a link to the spill.

"The scrutiny and the eyes and the awareness and the attention on the water these days, people are noticing things they've never noticed before," said Phillip West, coastal resources manager for the city of Orange Beach, Alabama.

But all of the damage caused by the oil and the 1.8 million gallons of chemical dispersants used to break it up will be difficult to trace, especially as time passes.

In his nine years with Orange Beach, West said he has never heard of a substance matching Hollander's description. Occasional mats of decayed marsh muck turn up, but those are far different.

West also is not ruling out a potential link to the oil.

"Ecology tells us there are chains of events that occur for inputs or disturbances in the environment. One thing can lead to another," West said.

242 sea turtles released into the Gulf of Mexico

242 sea turtles released into the Gulf of Mexico

Posted from http://www.orangebeach.ws/ Fri Jan 21 2011

January 20, 2011 - Orange Beach, AL (OBA) - Gulf of Mexico (GOM) - Two hundred forty-two cold-stunned sea turtles removed from St. Joseph Bay this winter were released Wednesday into the Gulf of Mexico off Cape San Blas in Gulf County. All were green turtles. Twenty-five Kemp’s ridleys, also rescued from the cold, will be released at a later date, along with green turtles that need additional rehabilitation.


Dedicated volunteers fanned out around the southern end of St. Joseph Bay Jan. 13-16 when a frigid cold front enveloped the South, triggering the third sea turtle cold-stunning event in the bay this winter. Local residents, University of Florida turtle researchers, and volunteers from the St. Joseph Bay State Buffer Preserve braved the cold to search marshy shorelines and inshore waters and to bring the immobile animals to safety. Rescuers took the turtles to Gulf World Marine Park in Panama City Beach, where they were evaluated and warmed. About half of the turtles were then moved to Florida’s Gulfarium in Fort Walton Beach to provide them with more swimming space.

Dr. Allen Foley, a sea turtle biologist who oversees sea turtle rescues for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), said the cold-stunning event was triggered by the latest bout of cold weather, causing the shallow-water temperatures in the southern end of St. Joseph Bay to drop into the 40s.

“Sea turtles can tolerate water temperatures down to about 50 degrees, but when it drops below that, they’re in trouble,” Foley said. “St. Joseph Bay is a long bay that is open only at the north end, and turtles may become trapped when the water cools quickly.” Dr. Robbin Trindell, an FWC biological administrator who oversees sea turtle management efforts, offered high praise for the volunteers who scoured the bay, sometimes several times a day, and for staff at Gulf World Marine Park and Florida’s Gulfarium.

“In addition to efforts by the volunteers and by the marine parks, Florida’s sea turtles are regularly helped by the funds received from the sea turtle license plate program and by grants from the NOAA Fisheries Service, which provide funds needed for the supplies, equipment and transportation used to respond to these events,” she said.

The public can help conserve and fund research for sea turtles by purchasing a specialty license plate or making $5 donations to receive a decal. Every dollar for the sea turtle plate helps sea turtles. Approximately 30 percent of the money goes to the Sea Turtle Grants program, which the nonprofit Sea Turtle Conservancy administers (visit www.HelpingSeaTurtles.org for more information). The other 70 percent of tag revenue goes to the FWC’s Marine Turtle Protection Program to support research and management activities related to sea turtles, such as the rescues during cold weather events.

Plates and decals are available at county tax collectors’ offices.

To report sea turtles near the bay acting abnormally, call the FWC Wildlife Alert hotline: 888-404-FWCC (3922).

Deepwater Horizon OilSpill Trajectory Link

Deepwater Horizon OilSpill Trajectory Link Very Interesting

LinK: http://ocg6.marine.usf.edu/~liu/Drifters/latest_roms.htm

Nonprofit eyes Orange Beach for arts facility

Originally Published by the Mobile Press Register

Link: http://www.al.com/news/press-register/baldwin.ssf?/base/news/125136456919590.xml&coll=3

Beach CITE Studios had earlier agreed to build education center in Gulf Shores

Thursday, August 27, 2009

By RYAN DEZEMBER
Staff Reporter

ORANGE BEACH — A nonprofit that earlier this summer struck a deal to build and operate a 6,700-square-foot art education center on city property in Gulf Shores has backed out of that deal and instead proposed putting its facility in the next city over.

Beach CITE Studios Inc. struck a 99-year, $1-a-year lease agreement with the Gulf Shores City Council in February. Its leadership said in June that it expected to open its art center at the corner of West 19th Avenue and West Second Street early next year but that deal fell apart.

As the nonprofit sought approval for its building designs this summer, Gulf Shores officials sought to develop the public space with green building techniques, but Beach CITE Studios representatives said adding things like landscaped stormwater retention basins and a permeable parking lot would price the project out of their budget.

"At the end of the day we just had a different vision," said Jim Coughlin, the nonprofit's executive director. "We were virtually devastated that didn't work out."

About a month ago, the nonprofit approached Orange Beach leaders about building their facility on municipal property along Canal Road just south of the city's Arts Center and The Hot Shop, a public glass-blowing studio that opened this month.

Mayor Tony Kennon said that the nonprofit would build and operate the studio on public land at no cost and that there would be no city money involved.

Should the arrangement fail after the facility is built, Orange Beach would get to keep the structure, he said.

Beach CITE Studios — CITE stands for community interactive teaching experience — was founded last October as a 501(c)3 organization by area residents Dan and Linda Scott and Drew Osika. A donation from the Gulf Shores-based Camille Schroeder Charitable Foundation, which Coughlin also runs, is paying for construction of the facility and its initial operating funds, but the organization has said it plans further fundraising.

Coughlin said the building proposed for Orange Beach is virtually the same as the one that had been planned in Gulf Shores: "There will be a culinary kitchen, dance studio, music room, three or four different rooms for painting and things of that nature, a creative writing lab.

"We're trying to reach out to a variety of arts."

Coughlin has said he envisions the facility offering both private lessons and group instruction in several disciplines. During the day the focus would be on programs for preschool and home-schooled students and senior citizens. After-school, evening and summer programs are also anticipated, along with recitals, showings and other events.

During a Tuesday work session, each member of Orange Beach's City Council, Kennon and numerous residents voiced support for bringing the project to Orange Beach. Councilwoman Pattisue Carranza, however, said she'd prefer it be built behind the city's Adult Activity Center, on the Wolf Bay waterfront, leaving the area in front of the Arts Center available for festivals and other special events.

"They spent a lot of time exploring options in Gulf Shores and they came to us ... just over a month ago," Carranza said. "I don't want to be told this is the only place it can be; there are other options."

Other elected officials disagreed. They cited the added cost of filling in wetlands and building up a foundation at the waterfront site, the potential need for that space for a library expansion, and the desire to put all the art buildings in one spot as reasons they preferred the Arts Center parcel.

"After looking at the sites," said Councilwoman Joni Blalock, "I believe this is the best place for it."

Kennon said it was Coughlin's "prerogative to tell us this is the only option because it's his money."

The mayor's informal tally of the council members indicated that they would consider the proposal to build it near the Arts Center at the panel's Tuesday meeting.

In fryer oil, city sees fuel savings

PUBLISHED by the MOBILE PRESS REGISTER

Beach town partnering with USA scientists to make biodiesel

Sunday, July 27, 2008

By RYAN DEZEMBER Staff Reporter

ORANGE BEACH — Though most have relegated dollar-a-gallon gas to nostalgia, some in this south Baldwin County resort city are batting around the phrase in the future tense.

City officials have teamed up with University of South Alabama researchers on a project to convert used cooking oils into biodiesel in hopes of reducing clogs in Orange Beach's sewer system, lessening the carbon emissions of municipal vehicles and saving taxpayers thousands of dollars a year in fuel costs.

Though Orange Beach and its partners at South Alabama's Chemical Engineering Department are still waiting to see if the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs funds its $128,000 grant request, the $15,000 reactor needed to make biodie sel is not out of the reach for the city considering the potential savings, municipal officials said.

The biggest factor in the program's success will be residents', and restaurants', willingness to provide the used cooking oil. To that end, City Hall plans to provide one-gallon containers to residents so they can collect and deliver their old oil to the Public Works Department starting next month.

If the state grant is awarded, Orange Beach must begin making biodiesel by October, so city officials are trying to ensure they have a batch to cook when the equipment is assembled and ready to go, said Coastal Resources Manager Phillip West.

Though the city is working to establish cooking-oil collection points throughout the city, grease will initially have to be taken to the Public Works office on William Silvers Parkway. West said Orange Beach is ready with a 750-gallon reservoir for the grease, and, according to the city's grant application, the machinery it plans to use can churn out biodiesel in 50-gallon batches.
Orange Beach is largely basing its efforts on a biodiesel program that has been run successfully for the past few years by Daphne Utilities, West said. The utility has told the Baldwin Register that by collecting about 100 gallons of grease a week they're able to reduce sewer spills by 40 percent and save about $10,000 a year on diesel.

Officials at the county-managed Magnolia Landfill have also started experimenting with biodiesel production in hopes of cutting into the fuel costs at the facility, which uses about 7,500 gallons of diesel every 10 days.

With 92 diesel engines — be they in trucks, tractors, generators or heavy equipment — Orange Beach burns upward of 50,000 gallons of diesel a year, said Coastal Resources Planner Nicole Woerner. Last year's diesel bill, she said, came to $116,257.30 for 49,311 gallons, a price of about $2.36 a gallon.

Prices have soared since last year, though, making $1-per-gallon biodiesel — which is about what Daphne Utilities pays to make fuel — all the more alluring. At the moment the city is paying about $4.15 per gallon, Public Works Director Tim Tucker said.

If, for example, Orange Beach can brew 5,000 gallons of biodiesel at $1 a gallon, it would represent a savings of $15,750, assuming the cost of diesel holds at $4.15 a gallon.
Besides the savings, the plan fits into Orange Beach's goal to clean up the local environment, an initiative that has seen Orange Beach start programs to pick up recyclables curbside, purchase equipment to rake litter from the beach, collect used motor oil for recycling and sell the tens of thousands of pounds of abandoned beach chairs and tents to a Pensacola scrap dealer.
"Hopefully we'll remove a lot of cooking oil from our sewer system," West said. "And the emissions from biodiesel are much cleaner."

Of biodiesel's three ingredients, the city would have to buy methanol and either sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide, said Srinivas Palanki, the chair of South Alabama's Chemical Engineering Department who is advising Orange Beach on the project.
The lone byproduct of biodiesel manufacturing is glycerin, which can easily be turned into decorative soaps used to promote the effort, or fed to the bacteria at the city's wastewater treatment plant, Palanki and Woerner said.

Much of the grant proceeds, should the city win them, will be used to pay the university to supply faculty and graduate students to help set up, tweak and study Orange Beach's efforts. Eventually, Palanki said, the process could be replicated in other area cities and school systems.

Sewer Land Swap will proceed in Orange Beach

Orange Beach also restarts negotiations to lease Josephine area lines

Friday, November 16, 2007

By RYAN DEZEMBER Staff Reporter

ORANGE BEACH -- After a nearly 18-month delay, the city and Alabama conservation officials have set a date later this month to finalize a land swap that will allow construction of a new $20 million municipal sewer treatment plant, Mayor Pete Blalock said Tuesday.

The two sides plan to close the transaction Nov. 27, which will give Orange Beach 40 acres south of the city's current treatment facility on Canal Road while the state will get 46 acres of maritime forest to be added to the Gulf State Park.

The trade had been delayed first because of problems with appraisals used in the deal, and later because of a disagreement between the state and the federal government over whether the state land could leave Alabama's hands.

But Blalock said those issues have been resolved and the city, as soon as the swap is finalized, plans to begin building a plant that can treat 10 million gallons per day with the ability to be expanded to handle 15 million gallons daily. The current plant can treat 5.5 million gallons a day.
Last month, with the future of the new plant still up in the air, the City Council voted to stop promising wastewater treatment service to large developments for 180 days. The fear was that with the delays in building the new plant, the current facility might be overloaded by new condos and shopping centers.

Councilman Jeff Silvers said the city has contractors already lined up to clear the site, and that construction will likely take 18 months.

Also Tuesday, the city officials said that after putting the brakes on negotiations to lease its Josephine-area sewer lines to a private company, it would resume working out a short-term deal with Alabama Utility Services LLC.

Orange Beach now bills 817 customers in the area north of the Intracoastal Waterway that the company seeks to take over. Each of those customers is charged, like city residents, $20 per month.

The Pell City sewer company, which is building a treatment plant in the Lillian area, seeks to lease those lines from the city for the first few years it's open. That would not only give the company some business to start with, but it would provide the city's sewer system some relief until the new plant is finished, city officials have said.

The city would then be able to reclaim the lines when its plant is completed.

City Administrator Jeff Moon said that after the company's initial proposal last month, three council members expressed hesitancy to lease the lines because the company said that it would likely need to raise rates for existing customers.

Council members said a recent 68 percent rate hike by Baldwin County Sewer Service, a separate private provider, caused them some pause in dealing with a private company.
But Alabama Utility Services has now offered to keep rates level for existing customers while charging a separate city regulated rate to customers it hooks up to the lines, its lawyer David Whetstone said Tuesday.

"We can assure you that it would be in the $30 to $40 range, which I think is a very competitive rate," Whetstone said.

Whetstone, who is Gulf Shores' city attorney and a former Baldwin County district attorney, said the company will adhere to city building standards when adding on to the lines and would allow the council to regulate its rates for all customers.
"It will bring a new competitor to the area and I think a competitor is good for everyone," Whetstone said. "I think competition leads to lower prices."

Council members, without taking an official vote, gave City Attorney Wanda Cochran permission to restart negotiations with the sewer company.

Orange Beach puts hold on sewer service pledges

Originally Published by the Mobile Press Register

Amid delays in new plant construction, Orange Beach negotiating lease of lines north of waterway

Wednesday, October 10, 2007
By RYAN DEZEMBERStaff Reporter

ORANGE BEACH -- With its plans for a new sewage-treatment plant in limbo, the City Council on Monday voted unanimously to put a hold on promises of wastewater service to developers.
In addition, the council began negotiations to lease municipal sewerage north of the Intracoastal Waterway to a private company that is building a treatment plant north of Lillian.

Besides saving Orange Beach money in servicing lines well outside the city's limits and relieving some pressure on the aging municipal system, it would give Alabama Utility Services LLC's burgeoning Blackwater Wastewater Treatment Facility an initial customer base to build from, city officials said.

"They need capacity and we need relief," City Administrator Jeff Moon said. "It really works out well in the short term."

Most of the details in the lease agreement have yet to be worked out, but both sides are considering a three-year deal in which Pell City-based Alabama Utility Services would take control of all of Orange Beach's lines north of the Intracoastal Waterway, excluding customers along the Foley Beach Express.

Though the private company would collect money from customers on those lines, be responsible for repairs and have the ability to add customers and extend the lines, the city would still own the sewerage and would have control over how much the company charges customers, city officials said.

Orange Beach bills 817 customers in the area that the company would take over. Like those living within the city, residential sewer customers there pay $20 a month.

Mayor Pete Blalock said that because of the cost of maintaining lines outside the city limits, Orange Beach will probably have to slightly raise rates for outlying customers even if the lease is not approved.

Alabama Utility Services owner Chris Matthews said that the rate he seeks will have a lot to do with how much the city charges in the lease agreement, but that, "Our rates are going to be in that $30 to $40 window."

City officials said they'd probably seek $5 per customer per month from the company. That would net Orange Beach about $49,000 annually.

Orange Beach obtained the lines, which extend in places into Elberta and Foley, when the city cobbled together its municipal sewer system by buying multiple private concerns.

Blalock said that the council will insist on strict controls over the rates Matthews can charge from the onset and may force him to get the council's approval for any hike in excess of annual changes to the consumer price index, a common gauge of inflation.

On Monday, Matthews and his lawyers, which include former Baldwin County District Attorney and current Gulf Shores City Attorney David Whetstone, met with Orange Beach officials for about 1½ hours to go over the arrangement before handing it off to their lawyers to iron out particulars of the deal. Besides the monetary and regulatory issues, both sides need to figure out what happens to customers and pipes that are added to the lines under Matthews' management.
Orange Beach has its own plans for a new facility capable of treating up to 10 million gallons of sewage each day, up from the 5.5 million gallons the city's Canal Road plant can handle each day.
Though the money for that $20 million project was obtained through a 2006 bond issue, construction has been delayed more than 18 months because the federal government has taken issue with a land swap between Orange Beach and the state that would provide the city with the 40 acres required for the new plant.

Blalock said that federal regulators in Atlanta are working with Alabama to clear up paperwork that will enable the property swap and said that a resolution could come this week, but city officials are considering alternative sites.

In the meantime, the city will not promise sewer service to any developers for up to 180 days.

Projects in the pipeline at City Hall won't be effected by the moratorium and neither will those wishing to build single-family homes, Moon said.

They need capacity and we need relief. It really works out well in the short term.-- City Administrator Jeff Moon