GRAND ISLE, La. (CN) - A billboard on Highway 1 says: Devastating Spill, Devastating Feelings. Inside the Gulf Coast Claims Facility building on the far end of Grand Isle, about 60 people have turned out for a National Resource Damage Assessment public scoping meeting. "You talk about 18 months or so before we get started," a resident tell trustees. "That's a long time for us who live here, while our environment and animals are dying."
"We have a huge problem," Beverly Armand, continues. "We have to stop denying it. We can't fix the problem if we deny it is there."
The National Resource Damage Assessment, or NRDA, is being conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, the Department of the Interior, and the states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.
Because of the magnitude of the oil spill and its effects, the earliest that the NRDA plans to have a restoration plan in place is 18 months from now.
The NRDA has held public scoping meetings along the Gulf Coast all month, to find out what concerns residents have and to hear ideas for restoration.
"Medical issues," Armand says, "many residents have medical issues. BP is not cleaning the beaches. They are burying the problem. We will have children on these beaches. First thing they do will be to dig in the sand, and they will come up with oil.
"The air quality - I don't even believe anyone is even testing the air anymore."
"People are suffering," Armand says. "And please be honest about the continued use of Corexit. They're continuing to use it. It's washing up on our beaches all the time."
Corexit is the brand name for the dispersant BP used to break up the oil that spewed from a broken wellhead for 10 weeks after the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon.
Cheryl Brodnax, habitat restoration specialist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said the impacts of the oil spill "have been so vast" that creative ideas are a necessity.
"These types of conversations are important," Brodnax said toward the meeting's end. "Even if they feel frustrating, they are important."
The broken wellhead under the Deepwater Horizon, before the drilling rig exploded, is 50 miles offshore from Grand Isle.
Eight miles long and a mile wide, Grand Isle has almost 10 miles of white sand beaches. It once was home to 1,100 residents. With salt water on one side and fresh water on the other, it was a nature lover's paradise and a fisherman's dream, with 46 species of game fish.
During his public comment, Wayne Keller from the Grand Isle Port Commission referred to a NOAA check sheet listing resources that may have been affected by the oil spill.
"Probably 99.9 percent of everything you could check off has been impacted," Keller said. "This is Ground Zero."
Concerns raised at scoping meetings have varied by location.
At a scoping meeting last week in Biloxi, Miss., Vietnamese shrimpers said they have pulled up nets full of oil from the seafloor and have had to decide whether to report the oil to the Coast Guard, which would mean dumping their day's catch, or pretend they don't see the oil.