Pensacola Beach, the famous white sand beach located on the barrier island of Santa Rosa, is back to some of its former glory, thanks to the assiduous efforts of locals to to recover their sands from the infamous explosion of a BP off-shore drilling rig that killed eleven men and temporarily destroyed the tourist economies of the Gulf Coast.

One year after America's worst offshore oil spill, in which BP spilled 172 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, “hotels and restaurants that sat largely abandoned at the height of the spill are reporting a 50 percent increase this spring compared to the same time last year before the disaster,” according to reporter Melissa Nelson in the Bloomberg Businessweek.

The beach is kept clean in part due to early morning beach walks by BP crews that scour the sand each day and remove tar balls that washed ashore.

Buck Lee, executive director of the Santa Rosa Island Authority, has overseen the beach's cleanup since the spill started. Mr. Lee said he wants to make sure BP cleaning crews stay on scene in case storms moving through the Gulf push undersea oil or tar mats onto the beach. Lee stated: “It's not over.”

Mr. Lee says that as of last June, the beach was covered in oil “50 feet up all along the shoreline. Then the oil was covered up by three high tides and buried before we could start cleaning it.” He pushed for heavy sand-cleaning machinery and for permission to dig 3 feet down to ensure all the buried oil was thoroughly removed before the 2011 tourism season.

As the tourism industry slowly recovers, the restaurant and seafood industries remain heavily affected, and oil cleanup crews face the worst risks of all. Weitz & Luxenberg supports all Gulf Coast residents in their fight for compensation, and we hope that as the economic and environmental recovery continues, we can aid in that recovery for all who need legal representation.