ORANGE BEACH, Ala. – A dredge contractor working for the Army Corps of Engineers hit a submerged oil mat Saturday morning causing a strong odor and oily sheen in the area of Outcast Marina, a city official said.

“Apparently about 5 o’clock the Corps became aware, the dredge contractor and the Corps site superintendent became aware that they hit what appears to be, or dug into what appears to be a submerged oil mat that’s been covered for some time,” Coastal Resources Manager Phillip West said Saturday morning.  “From what I understand they immediately moved off that site but they uncovered up with seems to be a good amount of oil. I don’t know how to quantify it.”

West said city officials have taken samples to be tested to find the origin of the oil.

“We have water samples and seaweed samples that appear to have an oily substance on it to be sent to Auburn to be tested,” he said. “They hit some oil, released some, don’t know how much. Don’t know if that was all of it or just a small part of it.”

BP, West believes, is aware of the incident.

“They’re part of the management team and the Coast Guard was there,” West said. “They own 49 percent of the response and have authority over 49 percent of the response so I feel like by now everybody knows. Now I don’t know how far up the chain that goes with them.”

West didn’t arrive on scene until about 8 a.m. but still saw evidence of the oil.

“There was quite a bit of sheen in the marina still even on the outside, on the incoming tide there was a good bit of sheen,” he said. “But we really couldn’t find, except for some seaweed that may be coated, but there’s a possibility that’s been coated for some time.”

The Corps was addressing some “hot spots” in channels in Perdido Pass and West said about 25,000 cubic yards would be removed, but not pumped back onto beaches because of concerns it may contain oil.

Problems with tar mats are something West has been anticipating. Several are believed to be off the beaches of both Orange Beach and Gulf Shores.  

“I hate to say it but it was bound to happen,” West said. "This is not, in my opinion a big surprise. We intuitively have felt that there was tar trapped inside the pass and that’s where you get tar balls. You’ve got to get them from somewhere.

“With everything shoaling up it probably just continued to cover ‘em so that’s we’d asked the incident management team, the response, to do more investigations on the locations and extent of the submerged oil mat.”

How to deal with the mat now that has been located is another matter. First, West said he’ll ask the state to inspect the site.

“I just don’t know how anyone would be able to quantify how much oil they disturbed but I would be willing to bet that the remainder of the mat is still there,” West said. “Or it may not be. We know just about right where they were cutting when they hit it and we’ll be able to go back and investigate.

“We’ll get with the state and see if they can bring a coring vessel for that whole area.”

Dealing with tar mats long term is something officials all along the coast have been struggling with. West sees no easy answers.

“I guess I have two conflicting feelings on that,” he said. “One, it was covered, let’s leave it covered until after the season. Number two, if you know it’s there, go get it and study it and clean it up.

“I’m just not sure. I guess if I were more confident that they had a sound method of addressing the mat and cleaning it up without making a big mess, I would say yeah, let’s go ahead and clean it up. It would kind of be a no-brainer.”

But there is no such method, West said. And the solutions officials came up with weren’t pretty.

“But I don’t have that confidence and I don’t know that they have a real good grasp on how to address submerged oil mats that lay off shore that can’t be reached by land like this one,” he said.

The best method West said that came up in meetings about tar matts involved scooping as much as you can and when it breaks up and pick up the pieces when they wash up on the beach.

“Now’s not a good time to do that,” he said, indicating the looming tourist season. “Inwardly, I’m just conflicted. I’m sure as this gets passed around the branch and over to New Orleans and back, we’ll get some idea of how they want to deal with it.”