By the CNN Wire Staff
Venice, Louisiana (CNN) -- Local teams in Louisiana will start a cleanup Saturday aimed at protecting coastal marshes while BP continues its efforts to stop oil from gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.
Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said that machines would start sucking oil out of marshes Saturday after crews determine where to deploy them.
"We will begin to clean up some of those areas that fell by the wayside for the last couple weeks," he said. Oil giant BP's focus has been trying to put a stop to what officials say is the largest oil spill in U.S. history, with as many as 19,000 barrels of crude gushing into the ocean daily.
By Sunday morning the company could know whether the "top kill" procedure -- pumping heavy drilling mud into the breached oil well at high pressure -- is working, said Robert Dudley, BP's managing director.
"It's like an arm-wrestling match of two equally strong forces," he said.
If "top kill" fails, the next step would be to place a custom-built cap known as the "lower marine riser package" over the leak, BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said. He said several versions of the device are "waiting to go."
And if they fail, he said, BP engineers would try placing a second blowout preventeron on top of the first, which failed to cut of the oil flow after the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig. The failed blowout preventer is a 48-foot, 450-ton apparatus that sits atop the well 5,000 feet underwater.
Government scientists on Thursday said as many as 19,000 barrels (798,000 gallons) of oil were spewing into the ocean every day, making this disaster perhaps twice the size of the Exxon Valdez incident.
Previously, BP officials and government scientists had said 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons) of crude were flowing out daily.
"This is clearly an environmental catastrophe," BP CEO Tony Hayward said Friday. "There's no two ways about it."
Under intense political pressure to take control of the situation, President Obama toured the region Friday.
"We want to stop the leak, we want to contain and clean up the oil and we want to help the people in this region return to their lives and livelihoods as soon as possible," the president said.
About 25 percent of the Gulf of Mexico exclusive economic zone has been put off limits, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and fishermen are worried the gushing oil will take a more serious toll than Hurricane Katrina did in 2005.
"Katrina was nothing but rain, water and wind. This is poison. It's gas," oysterman Arthur Etienne said.
Obama said Friday that federal officials were prepared to authorize moving forward with "a portion of" an idea proposed by local officials, who want the Army Corps of Engineers to build a "sand boom" offshore to keep the water from getting into the fragile marshlands.
That did not satisfy Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who has advocated immediate construction of the booms. Noting in a written statement that 107 miles of the state's coast have been oiled, he said, "We continue to ask federal officials to approve our entire sand-boom plan from the northern Chandeleurs to the Isle Dernieres chain."
Obama said he has directed federal officials to triple the manpower in places where oil has hit shore or appears within a day of doing so.
A Gulf Coast official said several hundred workers BP sent to the scene Friday left Grand Isle, Louisiana, shortly after Obama did.
Jefferson Parish Councilman Chris Roberts told CNN's "Situation Room" that the workers were offered $12 an hour to work while Obama was there.
Suttles downplayed the claim Friday evening, telling CNN it is not unusual to see people wrapping up work in the afternoon.
"These individuals are working out in the heat of the sun. These are long days. They start early in the morning and they stop early in the evening," he said. "So the fact that they were leaving the location late in the afternoon was not unusual. It's not associated with the president arriving."
Suttles said the workers would be back Saturday morning to continue cleanup efforts.
CNN's Anderson Cooper contributed to this report.
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