GALVESTON (June 2, 2010)—The Texas Gulf Coast could benefit from the oil spill as vacationers weigh their options in light of the threat to beaches in Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, but officials aren’t ignoring the possibility that shifts in winds or currents could put coastal communities here at risk.

The Texas General Land Office has deployed booms in five low spots along the Bolivar Peninsula to protect marshes in the event the spill drifts this way and in Galveston, officials are discussing what the response would be if the state’s beaches are threatened.

The spill is at least 150 miles from the Texas coast and the message coastal communities are sending to vacationers is to keep coming.

On Wednesday, an oil sheen was confirmed about nine miles off the Florida coast and officials say it could reach the white sand of Pensacola Beach later in the day.

Officials in Escambia County, Fla. deployed booms and began to make other plans to for dealing the arrival of the oil, which has already been reported along barrier islands in Alabama and Mississippi.

The spill has already impacted about 125 miles of coastline in Louisiana.

In Mississippi, Gov. Haley Barbour said a two-mile long, three-feet wide strand of oil was found on Petit Bois Island, near the Alabama border.

The director of Alabama's Department of Public Health said patches of oil have washed up on Dauphin Island near the mouth of Mobile Bay.

Crews Wednesday were shooting chemical dispersants at oil that began to leak after a saw blade got stuck in a pipe attached to the blown-out well a mile beneath the surface of the gulf.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said the goal Wednesday is to free the saw and finish the cut.

BP’s plan is to clear the broken pipe from the well and then to lower a vessel that would allow the company to capture much of oil.

The best chance at plugging the leak involves a relief well that is at least two months from completion.