GULF SHORES, Ala. — If you want to see tarballs, Gulf Shores Building Official Brandan Franklin says, just go to Little Lagoon Pass.

“Lagoon Pass, the west side gets hit more than the east side but there’s generally a NRC report called in around Little Lagoon Pass every day,” Franklin said. “Every day, we find them there.”

The NRC is the National Response Center, the place citizens and local government officials call when oil or tarballs are spotted on the beach. In June regular BP patrols stopped and now Cleanup crews will only respond NRC reports generated by calling 1-800-424-8802. When an NRC report is filed, the Coast Guard will then take appropriate action.

Since then, Franklin has located some hot spots where the tar seems to appear regularly.

“There’s another one around the 2600 block on West Beach and there’s a couple of areas around the Beach Club and Fort Morgan and typically anytime anybody goes out there, they can find tarballs,” he said.

And he doesn’t believe that’s going to stop anytime soon.

“We were getting oil consistently and when they plugged the well, it stopped,” Franklin said. “That oil went somewhere.

“There’s no doubt in my mind it is in between sand bars. They can’t get out there. What they call the snorkel scat crews, they’re only going in waist-deep water. Anything over waist deep, there’s nothing to say they are there or not there.”

Currently Alabama Department of Environmental Management officials are walking the beaches in Gulf Shores and providing a big help.

“I’d say 90 percent of it is from ADEM. They’re walking the beach and looking,” Franklin said. “I’m not sure how much longer the funding will be there for ADEM from the state. When that happens we will be strictly relying on the city and the public and the public’s just not making that many calls.”

When the calls come in, Coast Guard personnel are the first on the scene to assess the situation.

“They’ll either pick up the tarballs if it’s small enough where they can get it,” Franklin said. “If not, they’ll call in a team certified to clean up oil.

BP has a crew here and if it’s more than the Coast Guard can mitigate, BP crews go out and take care of it. That has happened on a few occasions.”

BP is also still paying the bill through the Pollution Removal Funding Authorization which is also paying for the ADEM staff.

“That comes from the fund set up where the Coast Guard, all the federal agencies in the response, they are paid out of this fund, a federal fund, and BP has to reimburse the fund,” Franklin said. “But I think it’s tightening down on who’s getting paid what.

“Right now the taxpayers aren’t paying. BP’s still paying. But we’re getting very close to the point where that’s going to stop and they taxpayer is going to be asked to put ADEM out in the field.”

When that happens and ADEM workers are pulled from the patrols, Franklin says the beach monitoring will suffer.

“I haven’t been out there as much simply because ADEM is out there and they’ve been monitoring,” he said. “But if they stop, I don’t know where we go from there. We’re going out some, but we just don’t have the staff to designate someone to go out all the time.”

The busy summer season is typically when less oil and tar is found, Franklin said.

“It’s not as much as what we see during the fall when we get the north winds start pushing the tide back,” he said. “There’s more beach in the fall and you really start seeing a lot more.

“They got 40 pounds last month. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but if you bag it up, it’s a lot.”