Several hundred yards away from the dozens of workers toiling in the blazing sun to remove BP's globs of oil from Grand Isle beach is a clean up crew that just doesn't get tired.
Motoring back and forth across the beach, the "sandboni" is able to skim sand at the rate of about one mile a day, making it the new hero for many on Grand Isle.
Though there are other sandbonis -- actually called beach skimmers -- in private operation elsewhere, the six machines at Grand Isle State Park are the only such skimmers owned by BP, according to Gordy Stahl, specialist with North Dakota-based Cherrington Beach Services.
"When I came it was quite a shock for a northern guy to see a beach like this and the water, and no birds and animals," Stahl said, standing just to the side of the large orange boom that separates the sandbonis' work area from the rest of the beach. "And today there's lots of animals and everything smells fresh. It's amazing how this all kind of recovers."
But there is still much work to be done. Oil is still inundating the waters off Grand Isle and every beach on the island is closed to swimmers and fisherman. But Stahl said his machines, whose day job is picking up cigarette butts and bottle caps, are making a marked difference at a rate much faster than that of human labor.
Stahl said they got their nickname at the Beijing Olympics when similar machines tidied up the beach volleyball court.
"On a good day we can almost do a full mile of the beach," Stahl said. "On an average day I'm going to say half to three-quarters."
Workers continue to battle the blazing heat and stifling humidity. At one work station at the beach, four workers could be seen filling bags of sand and trudging them back to tents while far many more sat in the shade.
But Stahl was quick to point out that his machines aren't meant to replace workers on Grand Isle, a town short on jobs and long on hard luck stemming from the April 20 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
"We complement each other," Stahl said. "They get the areas that are difficult for us because of terrain variances, etc., and we get the areas that, where the parts are bigger, the pieces are bigger and more spread out."
Once the machines skim the sand, they dump it back out onto mounds that dot the beach.
Curtis Thomas, BP's spokesman on Grand Isle, said that the oily sand is then re-collected and run through a machine that separates the good sand from the bad. The clean sand is put back on the beach and the oil, reduced to fine particles, is tossed back into the ocean where it will be gobbled by microbes, he said, letting "nature take its course."
Grand Isle Town Councilwoman Leoda Sladbacker, who has taken it upon herself to try and rally the residents everywhere to goes, said she observed the sandbonis and was pleased with what she saw.
"We've been watching it for several days," she said. "It looked like it was going to work."
Sladbacker, herself covered in the sweaty glisten that adorns all on Grand Isle, said she understand how hot it is on the beach. Still, it's been frustrating to watch the workers' slow pace.
"Like the security man told me they're just killing time right there, they're not really cleaning it up," she said. "They're just making it look good. So these machines coming in, it might get rid of some of that."
Sladbacker said that from watching the cleanup crew and hearing estimates elsewhere, she figures the workers get in only about 2 ½ hours of clean up each per day.
"They work 20 minutes, take a break," she said.