Tropical Storm Alex may have missed directly hitting the area around the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, but it has still left a fresh set of problems for the Gulf Coast. Because of the difficult conditions at sea, hundreds of oil skimmers had to stay docked as more oil washed toward land. "We had to stand down because of the storm activity. Now that oil has been spewed all over the Chandelier Islands," said one Louisiana official. "We are going out again [Friday] to start cleaning it up. We have to go back out, basically start over." But the coast is not entirely clear yet—the Gulf seas could remain choppy through the weekend. The winds that came with Alex have also altered the landscape for cleanup efforts because oil was driven away from the western end of the Florida Panhandle and back toward the already-battered shores of Mississippi and Louisiana.
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