[emilamlom]

Florida is such a weird state. Their main income is tourism by a lot, yet the government keeps hurting their main money-maker by not taking care of their beaches and environment and, I guess, trying to be more like Texas. When the deepwater horizon oil spill happened, they didn't really clean the beaches or water that well and just dumped more sand on top of the oily film to hide it before the summer tourist season. For years afterwards, you'd always find tarballs and oil spots in the sand just a few inches down.

[paxys]

Not too surprising. After many decades of sensible policies which got the state to where it is today Florida is now in its "kill the golden goose" stage. In another decade or so the economy will mirror the rest of the deep south.

[likeabatterycar]

> they didn't really clean the beaches or water that well and just dumped more sand on top of the oily film

Is there a particular technical solution you had in mind? The world's largest bottle of Dawn soap?

It was one of the worst disasters ever, they were writing the book as they went along. Sometimes the repair is worse than the event (e.g. poisoning the sea life with cleaners or dispersants). Sand is inert, so it may have been the least risky method.

In fact, if you spill motor oil in your driveway, the initial recommended cleanup method is to cover it with sand or cat litter and let it soak up the oil...

[emilamlom]

I'm not an ecologist, so no, I don't have a particular technical solution in mind. I'm going off of memory from living there at the time. That said, I would expect any oil company operating so close to shore to have a proper disaster preparedness plan. As I remember it, BP drug their feet fighting over who was responsible for the cleanup which made it end up being worse than it potentially could have been.

[quantified]

Did that actually hurt the tourism?

[saxonww]

It did dip right after, but tourism by number of visitors picked up again shortly after. See e.g. figure 10.2 in https://repository.lib.fsu.edu/islandora/object/fsu:539161/d....

The Governor's office would like you to know that tourism is record breaking, has never been better, and Florida is amazing.

[emilamlom]

I don't know the actual statistics, so I can't say for sure. From what I remember, it did hurt tourism but people quickly forgot about it. The fishing/shrimping industry locally took a major hit though as far as I know. Even not considering the moral/ethical responsibility to take care of the environment, it seems incredibly risky to the state's main form of income to not take it seriously.

[FrustratedMonky]

Yeah, without clean beaches and water, why am I vacationing there?

[jMyles]

I don't want to take away from the importance of clean beaches and water, but there are many good answers to your question, at least as St. Pete goes:

* Live music

* Great food

* Bike and pedestrian friendliness

* Wildlife

* Sports and outdoor activities in winter

* Traditional outdoor craft and fruit markets

* Exposure to greater racial, ethnic, and lingual diversity than is present in most of the USA

[cjrp]

Disney’s the main draw for Europeans

[anthomtb]

Breaking up the travel on the way to the much, much better beaches and much, much clearer water in the Caribbean?

That's the only reason I'll be spending a night in America's wang.

[giantg2]

Probably for Disney et al.