Summer is on its way to Biarritz, France, the surfing capital of Europe — but despite the surf and sun, no one is yet riding the waves. That’s because surfing is banned in Biarritz and along some 160 miles of coastline in southwestern France, due to lingering environmental problems from the oil spill of the tanker Prestige, which sank last November off the coast of Spain. Some 10,000 metric tons of fuel oil coated the northwestern and northern coasts of Spain and the beaches of southwestern France. Those beaches remain closed to the public as authorities desperately try to clean them in time for the summer holidays to save the region from economic disaster. Roland Heguy, a hotelier in central Biarritz, said, “It’s terrible. An incident like this can wipe out the whole region.”
