Business View Civil Municipal - July 2023

211 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 4, ISSUE 7 fouling the Gulf waters as well as tourism. BP-funded promotional campaigns, created to help entice visitors to the Gulf Coast, drove many people to discover Orange Beach, and as Handley observed, the city became an even more treasured tourist destination. “This was one of the worst manmade disasters in American history,” he said, “and it really taught us the importance of balancing our economy and our environment. It put Orange Beach and Alabama on the map. We actually have beautiful beaches here. After everything was cleaned up, tourism really boomed for us.” Still, much oil did wash ashore, closing the city’s beaches for some months. But today, normalcy has returned. “One thing we started after the spill was the campaign to make sure our visitors ‘leave only footprints,’” he said. “Orange Beach invests a lot in cleanliness and maintaining first-class amenities for our residents and guests.” The City makes use of volunteer beach ambassadors. They help protect nesting birds and sea turtles and ensure that the elimination of trash and collection of recyclable plastics are carried out properly. Tourists are encouraged to pick up their beach chairs and leave nothing on the beach after dark. The beaches are cleaned daily by the City’s coastal resources department. “It’s all about good stewardship,” Handley said, adding that such environmental awareness helps make sure Orange Beach stays pristine and continues to attract folks for years to come. Preparing for hurricanes Hurricanes are annual factors, potentially causing untold billions of dollars in damage anywhere along the Gulf Coast and the Eastern Seaboard. For Orange Beach, Hurricane Ivan in 2004 and Hurricane Sally in 2020 were the ORANGE BEACH, ALABAMA