"Please don't listen to some of the ads you see -- we are not being fixed, we are not OK," says Ann Costello, a ship supplier from Pensacola, Florida, where tar balls are collecting on the beach.

Costello says Americans need to find energy alternatives to oil. "At what cost do I want to have lights so that I can look out there and see nothing in the way of wildlife, and have the waters all around me polluted and then look at my child and say, 'I'm sorry son, you've got to leave this area if you want to have a life, because for the duration, Pensacola is finished for you.'"

Read the complete story from The Maine Public Broadcasting Network.