jeffrey kofman with an exclusive sper you have with tony haywood. >> reporter: for a month, they hoped the oil would stay offshore. the oil is here. with more than 65 miles of louisiana coastline now covered in a copper-colored goo, cleanup crews cannot stay ahead of it. there's now a sense of frustration, of urgency. >> let's be clear. every day this oil sits and waits for cleanup is one more day that our marsh dice. >> reporter: this video shows the oil permeating the water from 5 to 50 feet. just a few months ago, the state bird was removed from the endanger list. now sit very much in danger. until recently, katrina was a common curse word here. now they use bp. >> it stands for beyond patience. what we need to tell bp is exclueses don't count anymore. >> reporter: at the certainty of it all, bp ceo tony hayward. today, abc was given exclusive access. >> we're going to fight it subsea, on the surface, on the shore. >> reporter: sounds like you're referring to church yn ill who i know you like to quote. >> i believe we're fighting a battle. i thing it's the appropriate approach. abso

jeffrey kofman with hard questions for the man at the top of bp. jake tapper at the white house and my town hall last night. we begin with ryan. >> reporter: we spent the day a little bit west of here, i have to tell you, the oil is furiously coming ashore there. and they are doing the best they can, the clean crews. this is a very frustrating fight right now. in port buchon, they're knee deep in the oil. teams of cruise have descended on the beach here. sopping up and bagging up countless ball lons of crude. there's so much oil here the layers of boom have to be replaced all the time. coast guard lieutenant michelle curry is on the beach. >> they're having to remove that. they'll put that back down. >> reporter: no one has to look far to see what is at stake. while beaches can be cleaned up, marshes can't. they make up most of louisiana's coastline. the governor warns that the entire shore could look like this. >> we need more boom, more barges still in short supply. let's be clear. every day this oil sits and waits for clunup is one more day that

mountain of chemicals into the ocean, which may only have done more damage, and that's where jeffrey kofman begins tonight. he had a long trip out into the ocean today. jeffrey? >> reporter: that's right, diane. we spent the day on the water. we went to barrier islands 45 miles east of us here in louisiana, 45 miles south of mississippi. now, this is the oil. this slime is the oil on the surface. and there's a lot of it. when you get to the islands, 60, 70 miles from the oil leak. this is what you see. it's kind of a brown slime. the fishermen believe this is chemical disperseant. bp said they are no longer going to use those chemicals because they don't know its affects. they are going to stop. environmentalists have been asking them to do this. this is adding to a lot of anxiety here. the well continues to leak. the con tamement vessel is on its way. they hope to lower this on top of the well, and suck up the oil, but this is an experiment, diane. we're really in unchartered waters here. they don't know if it will work. >> what's the latest prediction of when it might hit shore, the worst

jeffrey kofman, abc news, burress, louisiana. >>> the historic flooding that has virtually submergedashville is slowly beginning to recede. property owners face a monumental cleanup job. businesses are still closed, power is out throughout much of the city. crews are searching flooded-out homes and cars looking for more possible victims. so far the storms are blamed for 29 deaths. >>> skiers and snowboarders in western oregon could not be happier with the weather they've been having. several inches of snow fell on mt. hood over the weekend. those lucky enough to have a day off took advantage. a powder day up there. wintry conditions expected to stay for the next few days. wow, that's awesome. >> that looks beautiful, doesn't it. >> it does, bluebird conditions. >>> here's a look at your national forecast. on this cinco de mayo. snow in the northern rockies. up to 1 foot possible in great falls and helena. hot and dry and sunny in the southwest. perfect weather for a cinco de mayo celebration. severe weather as possibility from cleveland to buffalo, from indianapolis to detroit. >> th

jeffrey kofman is in venice, louisiana. has the latest for us. good morning, jeffrey. >> reporter: robin, good morning. this is it. this brown, caramel-colored, for lack of a better word, goo. this is the week it starts to make landfall. really from the beginning of this disaster, b.p. has been saying that what's coming out of that well is not that much oil. and the dispersements we're using is no more harmful than dish soap. now, we're finding that none of that is true. you can now watch an environmental disaster unfold at the bottom of the ocean, live. and the more we see of it, the more we are learning how bad it really is. >> these videos stand as a scalding, blistering indictment of b.p.'s inattention to the scope and size of the greatest environmental catastrophe in the history of the united states. >> reporter: for a month, b.p. assured us that the leaks were spewing about 5,000 barrels of oil a day. now, they concede that the pipe that is siphoning some of the leaking oil is, on its own, bringing that much oil to ships on the surface, whic

our jeffrey kofmans is on the mouth of the mississippi, with the latest on the spill. od morning, jeffrey. >> reporter: good morning, juju. that's right. an alarming admission by b.p. the spill may be much worse than previously acknowledged. as much as 60,000 barrels of oil could be spilling from the broken wellhead on the floor of the gulf of mexico. more than was first reported. this pelican was brought in for cleaning. with oil spewing from the ocean floor, b.p. is hoping this huge contraption will be a temporary fix. it will be put on a ship this afternoon and transported to the site of the leaking sea well. >> what it's meant to do is funnel and channel the flow of the oil from the seabed up to the surface. >> reporter: it is a containment vessel. it will be lowered to the sea floor, where they hope it will capture oil from the biggest of the leaks. a hose will transfer it to the surface. this has never been tried at this depth. 5,000 feet below sea level. they hope to have it working in less than a week. with seas calm, planes carrying dispersant over the huge sli