By MATTHEW BROWN
Associated Press Writer
BAY RONQUILLE, La. – The marsh is soaked with oil and the grass is dying. It’s a common sight on the Gulf coast these days, and it’s nothing new for Robert Nailon.
The BP-hired environmental consultant kneels as he has done many times on the Louisiana coast, assessing the damage in a task now taking on new importance as the world’s attention turns from the ubiquitous images of gushing oil to the daunting task of restoration.
He dips his hand, covered in a blue rubber glove, into the muddy ground. It comes up streaked brown with crude. “You’ve got sheen throughout,” he says, and calls out his findings to a government scientist: Oil covers about 95 percent of the grass, reaching about 15 feet inland.