Oil Spill Threat Spreads to Alabama and Florida Beaches

Like a slow-motion train wreck, the massive oil release from British Petroleum’s blown-out Deepwater Horizon well oozed into more environmentally sensitive — and economically important — areas last week. Boston’s Big Picture blog for June 11 shows floating oil fouling coastal wetlands and killing wildlife in coastal Louisiana. By Saturday, spreading oil had closed some Alabama beaches to swimming, the Mobile Press-Register reported (“Swimming on Alabama’s busiest beaches closed by oil,” by Russ Henderson). As the weekend went on, thousands of beachgoers stood watching the spill, but avoided the water, the paper reported (“Alabama beaches filled with waves of oil,”