Mayor Robert Craft detailed efforts to finish a plan dealing with hurricanes and oil debris Monday at the Gulf Shores work session.

“We have put together and formulated a plan that we will continue to work to try to get approved by FEMA,” Craft said. “We are trying to get some concurrence about how we identify and deal with oil debris.”

The City of Gulf Shores is looking for accord with FEMA and the Alabama Department of Environmental Management to meet their guidelines. The City is working on having a strategy in place in the event of a storm stirring up oil debris and depositing it on the beaches.

The Council expects to finish the strategy by the end of the week. Whether or not the policy will be approved by FEMA will not affect its completion.

The City has been developing the plan since last July.

“Hopefully we’ll get FEMA to embrace it before we have an event,” Craft said. “We can’t sit here and wait, and wonder.”

The Alabama Health Department is also involved in assessing the safety of the water and possible oil particles, dealing with reopening of beaches.

“We already have concurrence with them that’s there’s no reason at this time to believe that the toxicity will be any greater than what it was at its worst,” Craft said. “We have not yet been told that we can’t occupy our beach or evacuate.”

The City is also currently in the middle of implementing a beach re-nourishment plan. Re-nourishment is the man-made process of replacing sand on the shoreline after naturally corrosive events, such as erosion and hurricanes.

The City is currently locating “beach quality” sand and negotiating contracts. The re-nourishment will begin after Labor Day, to be completed by next spring.

“There are a lot of internal discussions going on to make sure we are completely recovered from this event,” Craft said.

BP reports picking up less oil particles as the summer season begins. The oil company will have personnel cleaning up the beach as long as oil washes up on the shore.

An economic analysis is also being performed by the Alabama Attorney General’s office; the report is meant to detail the financial impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on Alabama’s corner of the Gulf Coast. After the report is completed, fines un

“Eventually, there is going t be fines and moneys distributed for economic impact under the Clean Water Act. We’re trying to make sure that we know exactly, from a financial standpoint, how we’ve been impacted,” Craft said. “We’ll use their numbers to tell our story.”