Slippery Start: U.S. Response to Spill Falters

[mhatrw]

Source: Wall Street Journal

A Wall Street Journal examination of the government response, based on federal documents and interviews with White House, Coast Guard, state and local officials, reveals that confusion over what to do delayed some decision-making. There were disagreements among federal agencies and between national, state and local officials. ... Federal officials changed their minds on key moves, sometimes more than once. Chemical dispersants to break up the oil were approved, then judged too toxic, then re-approved. The administration criticized, debated and then partially approved a proposal by Louisiana politicians to build up eroded barrier islands to keep the oil at bay. ...

Under federal law, oil companies operating offshore must file plans for responding to big spills. The Coast Guard oversees the preparation of government plans. In the event of a spill, the oil company is responsible for enacting its plan and paying for the cleanup, subject to federal oversight. If the spill is serious enough, the government takes charge, directing the response.

There were problems from the start. The first weekend in May, when the president made his initial trip to the region, the water was rough. Contractors hired by BP to lay boom off St. Bernard Parish, east of New Orleans, mostly stayed ashore, says Fred Everhardt, a councilman. Shrimpers took matters into their own hands, laying 18,000 feet of boom that weekend, compared to the roughly 4,000 feet laid by the BP contractor, Mr. Everhardt says. BP did not respond to requests for comment about the incident. Edwin Stanton, the Coast Guard official in charge of the New Orleans region, says workers overseen by the government had laid tens of thousands of feet of boom the first week of the spill. But he acknowledges problems getting it to the right place. He says the Coast Guard decided it needed to accommodate local parish presidents, who all demanded boom even though they all didn't equally need it. Without the competing demands, he says, "we might have been able to use what boom we had to greater effect." To make matters worse, the government didn't have the right kind of boom. Boom built for open ocean is bigger and stronger than that made for flat, sheltered water. The bigger boom is expensive and was in short supply, Mr. Stanton says. "We really didn't have the appropriate boom sizes," he says. "I think we would have liked to put out open-water boom at the big passes, but we just didn't have enough." ...

On May 10, with the boom and berm plans foundering, Ms. Jackson met about 25 Louisiana State University scientists to discuss the spill. Most of the scientists urged her not to let BP spray dispersants directly at the leaking well without more research, recalls Robert Carney, one of the LSU professors. Ms. Jackson responded that the EPA was "under extreme pressure from BP" to approve the move, Mr. Carney recalls. An EPA official confirmed Ms. Jackson met with the LSU scientists. Five days later, the EPA said it would let BP spray the dispersant on the wellhead.


Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703627704575298851812383216.html

[bongbong]

1. It's got the Murdoch spin!

Remember, Fox "News" went to court to get approval to knowingly lie and call those lies "news".

http://www.relfe.com/media_can_legally_lie.html

[dgibby]

2. Here's the problem,IMO:

Way too many bosses in the gulf.
Posted by dgibby in General Discussion
Thu Jun 17th 2010, 08:34 AM
You can't run a war by committee and you sure as hell can't run a disaster by committee!

The time for a committee is BEFORE the disaster strikes, during the emergency planning stage, not in the middle of the damn thing.

I cannot even begin to tell you how many disaster planning committees I was on when I was in the Navy. We "planned the work and worked the plan",trying to anticipate everything that could possibly go wrong. We ran drill after drill after drill, noted what worked, what didn't, tweaked the plan accordingly, then drilled again.

When the REAL disaster hit (Hurricane Hugo), we were as ready as we could be, but even then things still went wrong at the last minute.

For example, even though we had anticipated that our patient load at the Charleston Navy Hospital would increase significantly, we had to scramble to make more room when we were tasked to take on several flooded out nursing homes and all the ventilator patients from the local VA hospital, as well as patients from a psych hospital in the area.

We were able to respond because the rest of our plan was in place, running smoothly, thus leaving us free to react to the unexpected.

When the back up power system went down, we had enough personnel on hand to manually ventilate patients on respirators.

When the toilets wouldn't automatically flush because we'd lost power and water, we formed bucket brigades, using the plastic trash cans we had on hand, and used the water from the large fountain in front of the hospital.

I'm not saying it wasn't a mess(especially the overflowing toilets-ugh!). It was, but it was controlled chaos because we had a plan, we executed the plan, but first and foremost, we had a well-delineated chain of command, and the buck stopped at the CO's desk. We had absolutely NO doubt about who was in charge (and neither did he).

The damage being done to the Gulf is 90 due to piss poor planning and execution, and lack of clearly defined LEADERSHIP.

[KoKo]

3. Yes...seems politics of the local parishes and deferring to BP were part of the problem...

and it's interesting to note that there wasn't enough of the "proper boom" for the gulf available. So, the scramble and squabbling.

Planning in advance should have been done. Particularly with the thousands of wells already in the gulf something was bound to happen one day. And, Katrina should have been a wake up call for that area. Yet, another tragedy happens and folks once again are scrambling without a plan.