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Oil spill likely to doom Louisiana seaside restaurant
AFP - Thursday, June 3
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Oil spill likely to doom Louisiana seaside restaurant
GRAND ISLE, Louisiana (AFP) - – Her family has lived on this resort island for three centuries, she has survived four hurricanes in five years, but now faced with the oil spill Annette Rigaud will likely have to close her restaurant.
"To tell you the truth it makes me mad," said Rigaud, as she spread white and red checkered tablecloths on the empty restaurant tables in this Gulf of Mexico barrier island south of New Orleans.
"Sarah's Diner," Rigaud's seafood restaurant, was virtually empty throughout the long Memorial Day weekend, traditionally the start of the summer in the United States. "We were down 80 percent compared with last year's Memorial Day," said Rigaud.
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita slammed the area in 2005, then Hurricanes Gustav and Ike came for a second round in 2008. And now oil is washing up on the beach.
Rigaud has had enough.
"We've had four hurricanes in five years. We worked so hard after the hurricanes to repair the restaurant. They just redid the beach and our levee," she said.
The levee protects the town Grand Isle, home to some 1,500 people.
The tourists, however, have had little chance to enjoy the beach. Local officials closed it down one month after an April 20 explosion ripped through the Deepwater Horizon rig, 50 miles (80 kilometers) off the coast, killing 11 workers. The BP-operated rig sank two days later.
Oil gushing from the leak has polluted more than 125 miles (200 kilometers) of Louisiana coast, triggering long-term fears for the region's already endangered wildlife.
BP-hired workers meticulously comb the beach to remove any trace of oil. But some tar balls have already washed ashore.
Rigaud had no interest in seeing the tar balls. "That would have been too heartbreaking," she said.
The massive spill has frayed the nerves of local residents, who wonder when -- or if -- their lives will return to normal.
"Everybody is so stressed here. We're just sitting here waiting and they're not telling us anything because they don't know. I had four people who came yesterday crying," said Rigaud.
Rigaud said she expects the wind to eventually push vast quantities of crude onto the beach.
The restaurant, she said, is losing 1,500 dollars a day, making the 5,000 dollars that BP has given her as an advance payment seem like a pittance in comparison.
Rigaud said she has filed a compensation claim, but said that BP did not say when she would receive a payment.
Meanwhile, since fishing is banned in the area because of the pollution, Rigaud must drive for four hours each day to fetch seafood for her customers -- and yet she said she can't close the restaurant because she has debts to pay.
"I have a lot of people depending on me," she said.
Rigaud's ancestors arrived in Louisiana from France in the seventeenth century, and her family has lived in Grand Isle for six generations.
"They say they would evacuate us, but where would we go?" she asked. "We like it being secluded on a tropical island. There is no crime here.
"Who would have thought that the oil slick would kill me?" she pondered sadly.
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