En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) com­pli­ance of­fi­cers turned up at the beach­front in La Brea yes­ter­day to do air qual­i­ty tests, the day af­ter Petrotrin an­nounced that the oil spill clean-up was al­most com­plete.Yes­ter­day the over­all-clad of­fi­cers, ac­com­pa­nied by po­lice es­cort, were seen us­ing mul­ti­ray lite air-mon­i­tor­ing equip­ment to test the hy­dro­car­bon lev­els in the air at Cof­fee Beach.

While the T&T Guardian was view­ing clean-up ef­forts along Cof­fee Beach yes­ter­day, the team of EMA of­fi­cers en­tered the area and be­gan do­ing tests."With­in re­cent times we have been do­ing mon­i­tor­ing to de­ter­mine the lev­els of the volatile or­gan­ic com­po­nents in the air. We have to de­ter­mine the safe­ty of the air," an of­fi­cer said, on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty.The of­fi­cer said the EMA had not­ed that a "cer­tain amount of work has been done" along the La Brea coast­line, but the EMA has to con­tin­ue test­ing air qual­i­ty in the area.

The of­fi­cer said the read­ings so far have not found any­thing of con­cern.While the EMA of­fi­cers were do­ing their tests, per­son­nel at­tached to the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA) al­so vis­it­ed the area.Yes­ter­day, the tides were high along the shore­line and work­ers were un­able to car­ry out clean­ing op­er­a­tions.

How­ev­er, two work­ers, wear­ing white plas­tic cov­er­alls, were seen us­ing a pow­er-wash­er to re­move oil from the trees and rocks on the shore of Cof­fee Beach. North of the beach at Point Sable, work­ers and heavy equip­ment were seen clean­ing the sand.The sand along the shore­line, which had been blan­ket­ed with a thick lay­er of oil when the oil spill be­gan wash­ing ashore in mid-De­cem­ber, has re­turned to a healthy brown hue, in­di­cat­ing that con­di­tions at Cof­fee Beach had im­proved sig­nif­i­cant­ly from De­cem­ber 17.

The on­ly smell lin­ger­ing on the sea breeze yes­ter­day was the scent of salty sea­wa­ter.