Long road to oil cleanup looms over Gulf Coast

GULF SHORES, Ala. (AP) - Residents along the Gulf Coast are increasingly realizing it's going to be a long time before their home is clean again.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen plans to give an update on the oil containment effort Monday morning at the White House. He warned Sunday that the overall battle is likely to stretch into the fall.

Twenty-three-year-old biology graduate Kelcey Forrestier of New Orleans had already reached that conclusion.

She visited Florida's Okaloosa Island over the weekend as tar balls began washing ashore. She says the oil "has to go somewhere, and it's going to come to the Gulf beaches."

A ruptured wellhead has been spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico since a BP rig explosion in April. A device began capturing some oil last week and is slowly siphoning off the flow.