Congratulations to BP and all the others responsible for the Deepwater Horizon disaster. You’ve officially managed to screw up every U.S. state along the Gulf of Mexico. Texas had been the only of the five states bordering the greasy body of water to be untainted by the spill, but that changed over the weekend when the first batch of tar balls washed up on the shore of the Lone Star State.

According to the Coast Guard, about five gallons of tar balls were found Saturday on the Bolivar Peninsula, northeast of Galveston, with another two gallons found Sunday on the peninsula and Galveston Island.

“It was just a matter of time that some of the oil would find its way to Texas,” said a science guy from the University of Miami.

Meanwhile, the mayor of Galveston sees a silver lining to all this.

“This is good news,” he said, not sounding at all like Murray Hamilton in Jaws. “The water looks good. We’re cautiously optimistic this is an anomaly.”

While the spill has barely touched Texas, it’s making inroads in Louisiana. Tar balls were spotted on Monday in the Rigolets, one of two waterways that connect the Gulf with Lake Pontchartrain.

And though the mayor of New Orleans said they are deploying assets to protect the Lake Pontchartrain basin, an official from the Louisiana Office of Fisheries expects the oil will eventually make its way into the lake.

As for the spill’s lasting effects, a commercial fisherman from Mississippi puts it best:

This isn’t going away. This isn’t a sneeze or a hiccup. This is diarrhea for a long time… My lifestyle is screwed. It’s over. The thing that I love the most I’m not going to be able to do anymore.

Tar balls hit Texas beach; oil from blown-out ocean well washes up along all 5 Gulf states [Chicago Tribune]

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