Barack Obama flies into the Gulf tomorrow to try to take charge of an environmental disaster that is spreading beyond human control, with a stinking tide of oil from BP's ruptured well now advancing on the white sand beaches of Alabama and Florida.

Obama's visit is his fourth since the gusher began, but the first so far to Mississippi, Albama, and Florida, which are now joining Louisiana on the frontline of the spill. Several miles of Alabama's beaches were splattered with a thick sludge of oil at the weekend, with a slick now three or four miles off the Florida resort of Pensacola. Two barrier islands off Mississippi were also covered in oil. In Panama City, Florida, 190 miles from the ruptured well, a steel tank was discovered, oozing oil, that appeared to come from the sunken Deepwater Horizon rig.

Obama's two-day visit is the latest attempt by the White House to assert the president's mastery over the spill crisis – a difficult case to make given that BP and his administration admit the oil will continue to spew until at least August.

He also has a tricky task of balancing public pressure to get tough on BP with economic and diplomatic concerns. That task will be put to the test on his return from the Gulf with a television address from the Oval Office on Tuesday night, and a meeting with BP's chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, on Wednesday.

At Alabama's Orange Beach, at the western edge of a stretch of highrise hotels and condominiums that some call the Redneck Riviera, the oil was washing up in thick lumps faster than the hundreds of cleanup workers could shovel it up.

"This absolutely sucks," said Carolyn Kerin, coming off the beach with her three children. None were swimming. Two red flags were flying, indicating that swimmers would face fines and penalties – not that Kerin would let her children in the water anyway. "Ewww," she said.

Was she impressed with Obama's handling of the crisis so far? "I don't think he did everything he could do. I think he was way too slow to act like he was serious."

Further down the beach, opinion was divided. A man held up a sign for TV cameras reading: "We've been BPeed on." Overhead, a propeller plane flew a banner reading: "Look Obama 54 days and still nothing."

The summer holidays have just started here and normally the beaches would be a crush of umbrellas and tanned bodies, with traffic jams stretching for miles. But this weekend, the car parks were packed with pickup trucks and tractors from the cleanup crews.

The sands were mainly empty, barring the workers in their rubber boots and gloves shovelling up the clumps of oil that washed up to 3.5 metres (12ft) up the beach, and dumping the stuff in plastic rubbish bags. But the oil was landing ashore as fast as they could clean. A few workers admitted they had cleaned the exact same patch of sand earlier in the day.

"It is a liquid and it is very difficult to pick it up mechanically and pick it up physically," Alabama's governor, Bob Riley, told CBS television today. "We are trying to find something to coagulate it today so we can pick it up."

Others also had problems to attend to. At 3pm yesterday, Judy Robertson was so jittery, walking up to each new arrival to ask if they were with the wedding party she was organising. The event planner has had three brides cancel – and that was before any of the oil reached the beach.

Now she said she was expecting a wave of lost bookings. Looking down the beach at a tractor pulling bundled up bags, she said: "My grandkids are not going to know what a beach is if it continues like this. We are not going to be able to swim here. It's going to destroy our economy."

Robertson, like many of the people in this solidly Republican part of the country, was never a supporter of Obama. "To me he's not presidential material," she said.

Obama's earlier attempts to show his control over events, including the threat to "kick ass", may have made Robertson dislike him even more. "That's what teenagers say. It's not official. He talks like he's just some worker on a beach," she said.

Striking the right balance will be a difficult challenge for Obama during his visit. This was hostile territory even before the oil spill. On the ground a lot of people accuse their fellow Americans of rushing to New York's aid after 9/11 while ignoring hurricane Katrina and this latest tragedy to befall the Gulf. "It's like we are Haiti," said one popular US radio host.

BP is also less than willing to act as Obama's fall guy. As preparations got underway for the White House visit the oil company was moving to mollify local opinion, with BP's chief executive, Tony Hayward, appearing in local TV adverts to offer a personal apology for the spill.

"The gulf spill is a tragedy that never should have happened," he said. "We will get this done. We will make it right."

The governors of Mississippi and Alabama want reassurances that Obama will continue to support offshore oil drilling, and are pressing him to end his six-month moratorium on new projects. Florida's governor, however, wants the president to introduce an outright ban.

But all three want assurances from Obama that BP will make good on its promise to pay for the spill cleanup and any economic losses. Such fears have heightened in recent days, with Louisiana's treasurer warning that BP could face bankruptcy.

The governors are also trying to stave off the collapse of their tourist industries. "Most of the experience of coming to the Gulf coast is still as great as it's ever been," Riley said. "Rent a condo, play golf."

Or take souvenirs of the spill. At Orange Beach, a few people came with cameras to take snaps of the sludge. Kevin Kaullen, an environmental engineer from near San Diego, California, arrived with battles to take samples of the water.

Otherwise the idea of helping Alabamans out by taking an eco-disaster holiday was not finding many takers, even among neighbouring Louisianans, who are going through their own economic pain owing to the spill.

On a local talk radio station, a host mused about how much of a discount on a condo it would take to make a beach holiday without an actual beach experience an attractive proposition. "A 40% discount?" he said. "I don't think I would go for 40%. It would have to be at least 60."