Volunteers Eager To Help With Oil Spill

Jeff Wilkinson is hoping to collect as much trash as possible before oil comes ashore.

BP has hired thousands of workers in Mississippi to help with preparations and cleanup from the ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But as MPB’s Phoebe Judge reports, a number of volunteers are also trying to pitch in.

The temperature had already reached 85 degrees by 9am at the Singing River Yacht Club in Pascagoula and as a number boaters headed off to celebrate the Memorial Day weekend, another group spread out to find trash,

“Well it is always good to pick up litter, but right now it is even more important in case some of the oil should come in. We don’t have to deal with it as contaminated waste; we can pick it up with it as litter.”

That’s Don Hainsford is one of the volunteers who has been working to clean up the marshes and waterways of coastal Mississippi since news of the oil spill began. On this day the group was tackling the mouth of Bayou Chico and only an hour into the trip the garbage bags full of plastic bottles, fishing line, and Styrofoam were already piling up. Jeff Wilkinson is the director of the environmental organization Coastal Rivers,

“I was just like all the other volunteers who were frustrated that’s there nothing for us to do, and I said wait a minute there is something for me to do.”

Just after news of the oil spill broke, thousands of Mississippians immediately signed up to help volunteer with cleanup and preparations. but since that time few events have been scheduled, admittedly there hasn’t been any oil to cleanup so far, but Wilkinson says when he reached out to BP to let the company know what his group was doing, all he got was an email saying he would be contacted if they needed him,

“I beg your pardon but I am not asking your permission, endorsement or anything to do this. I am telling you this is what we are doing, and we are going to do it if you think there is a need for it our not, because we live here. I just don’t think they are going to have the same I guess passion about this area that we do.”

So far Wilkinson says his group has collected over 1500 lbs of trash, and he says they’ll keep doing it as often as they can until it’s as clean as they can get it, so that at least if the oil does come in there’ll be less hazardous material to deal with.