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Fed up with British Petroleum’s cleanup efforts, volunteers in Baldwin County took matters into their own hands Friday and began cleaning up the beach themselves.
More than 200 people took a four hour course to handle hazardous materials, but 15 people showed up Friday to pickup tar balls and all the oil Hurricane Alex slung up onto the beaches.
Despite the low turnout, they city says the volunteers made a big impact.
Yards away from where BP workers sit under a tent to escape the summer sun, Deborah Spooner was busy scooping up oil. “It’s more than I thought there was. It just seems since the storm we’ve had, it’s really pushed up on shore now,” said Spooner.
Spooner is one of 15 volunteers who showed up at the city’s first crack at cleaning up BP’s mess.”I just feel like I need to do my bit to clean up the beach.”
Volunteers have a lot to clean up. There are large patches of oil on the beach.
“It’s soaked down in the sand where I guess they didn’t clean up, wouldn’t clean up form the past couple days,” J.C. Gillespie, Gulf Shores resident, said.
The city says volunteers that did show up made a difference.
“This is something that we can do to help rally the community and get people out to try and make a difference, feel like we’re doing something so it’s not putting everything in the hands of BP.”