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President's most costly initiatives. the stimulus plan and his health care reform. her resignation takes effect early month. she'll turn to her teaching job at the university of california-berkeley. it's day 109 of the gulf oil disaster and this could well be the beginning of the end. crews have wrapped up their static kill operation and the cement that they poured into that ruptured well is now hardening. but the work is not over. crews will continue to drill two relief wells. once they reach the pipeline within the next week or two, they will pump more cement in through the bottom. the bot...

Ocean floor. the man overseeing operations in the gulf, admiral thad allen, called it "a significant milestone." >> this is not the end but it will virtually assure us that there will be no chance of oil leaking into the environment. >> allen says bp is still drilling two relief wells to make sure that this thing stays dead. but the long-term clean-up effort, the effects of the oil that ran on unchecked for months are another story. federal government's on-scene coordinator says tar balls may be washing ashore for years. the oil has stopped. a lot of what did leak out is gone but still so ma...

Particularly along the florida and alabama clothesline, we have moved from manual clean-up to machine-based clean-up. so these beach-cleaning machines we're using quite frequently now, and we use those at night, have replaced many of the clean-up workers, which are doing that by hand. these machines are much more efficient. so i think we'll continue to see that. but we've got a lot of work to do out there. there is still oil to clean up, still tar balls coming ashore. we'll have to be there to pick those up. and i don't know when the numbers will shift. i think that will just be determined by ...

Other reconnaissance of the gulf. the grid out in the gulf every day, all we're seeing right now is light sheening. so light, it's not recoverable on skimmers so it's good news. we don't want people to let their guards in. there's still a lot of oil. so we're not ready to pull back and say, hey, look, the danger's over. we're prepared with the aspects, our barges, our booms, and skimmers to protect the coast if oil does surface. >> in the meantime, what does it look like down there now, as compared to what it was at the height of this disaster? >> well, most of the heavy oil has been removed o...

And i talked to the night crew, and they witnessed the same thing last night with tar balls and tar patties. >> is there any hypocriticals that this is going to be scaled back now because of the optimistic reports? >> no, what you're going see happen is the next faze of the cleanup process, they're going to clean it to the point it's reopened. remove the heavy oil. washing the sand with a big washing machine. and now we're going to be sitting down with the environmental agencies. department of environmental quality, epa, department of assessment guide, what criteria do we need, to be able to r...