The environmental damage from the Deepwater Horizon disaster is here to stay.

Craig Pittman in the St. Pete Times:

In some areas, including national and state parks, that will mean knowingly leaving some oil buried because trying to clean it all up may cause more long-term damage, federal officials said.

To document where that subsurface oil might be, crews have used an auger to drill 2,000 3-foot-deep holes in Escambia County's beaches so far, said Andrew Milanes of Environmental Science Services, the Louisiana contractor BP hired to oversee beach cleanup in Florida.