Coming soon to a beach near you

On a business trip to "Little Washington" Thursday, I squeezed in a five-minute visit with former colleague Ray McKeithan at his office at the Washington Daily News. Ray and I had worked together about 20 years ago when he was ad director at The Wilson Daily Times and I was editor. We've reconnected occasionally in the time since he left for greener pastures, and I was sorry I had only a few minutes to catch up. I'll have to drop in on him again sometime.

Topics at my business meeting ranged far and wide, but one topic of concern drew gasps — the likelihood that oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico could wind up on North Carolina beaches. This has been speculated in some news reports and scientific modeling, but to hear coastal residents discussing this as an issue we'll have to prepare for and face brought the topic close to home. One apparently knowledgeable participant in my meeting said oil was approaching the Florida Keys, and once it got that far, it would be only a matter of days before it flowed into the Gulf Stream and hurdled toward the North Carolina coast. Oil sheens and tar balls could be lapping up onto North Carolina's precious beaches before the summer's over, but that's not all. The oil could easily find its way into the Intracoastal Waterway. A hurricane or a smaller storm could push the oil even farther inland, up estuaries and tidal streams.

If the news from the Gulf and the apparent helplessness of the best petroleum engineers BP can hire were not enough to sour America on offshore drilling, the desecration of beaches in 10 or more states could alter the entire national attitude toward offshore drilling and petroleum in general. This incident — drilling for oil in mile-deep water while cutting corners on safety precautions with the complicity of lax or incompetent federal regulators — could become the Three Mile Island or the Love Canal of the oil industry. An overheated reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant soured the country on nuclear power, even though the environmental damage was minimal. A chemical company's uncaring poisoning of residents at Love Canal shocked America and led to stricter controls on chemical companies and the dumping of poisons.

Americans are angry over the apparent inability of BP and the government to stop the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and are worried about the long-term environmental damage of this spill. The longer the oil continues to billow and the more oil that washes ashore or kills marine wildlife, the more willing Americans will be to clamp down on the powerful oil industry. They might even be willing to curtail their own use of oil by finding alternative energy supplies. Until they take that final step, oil sucked from underwater wells or delivered by huge tankers will remain a hazard to plants, seafood, animals and people.