WHO'S GOING TO PAY?!!!

 

From the Times-Picayune:

On a Sunday of expanding coastal destruction from the Gulf oil disaster and little progress in containing it, frustrations bubbled to the surface from local and state leaders in Venice to federal officials in Houston and Washington, D.C.

Parish leaders and Gov. Bobby Jindal emerged from an afternoon strategy session at a Venice fishing harbor to complain about a lack of urgency from federal agencies and BP to address the oil washing into coastal marshes day after day.

Jindal said he supported a decision by local and Jefferson Parish leaders on Grand Isle on Saturday to commandeer about 30 fishing vessels that BP had commissioned but hadn't deployed to lay down protective boom as the oil came ashore.

On a Sunday of expanding coastal destruction from the Gulf oil disaster and little progress in containing it, frustrations bubbled to the surface from local and state leaders in Venice to federal officials in Houston and Washington, D.C.
....

With each criticism of BP and the federal government's inability to force the company to move faster when oil is spotted coming ashore, local officials have started to clamor for President Barack Obama to federalize the disaster response under the Oil Pollution Act.

But Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen, the national incident commander, reiterated on the Sunday morning talk a message he's been sharing almost since the disaster struck April 20: Industry, and not the federal government, has all the resources to deal with the leak 5,000 feet below the sea and as it comes toward land.

The fear is that if Obama federalizes the response and supplants BP, not only will it be more difficult to get the company to pay for the response efforts, but the federal government may not have the capacity to get the job done.

If less than the best efforts to protect the coast are being implemented by either BP or the federal agencies because of concerns about who will pay the costs, then shame on them. Let's not have the blame game about protecting the coast from further damage going back and forth between BP and the feds, if something can be done now. Whatever you can do, do it! Give the local people the go-ahead to implement their plan, which seems to have worked.

The disconnect between state and federal governments was clear as Salazar trumpeted 1.73 million feet of boom and more than 1,000 vessels deployed on the front lines, while Jindal complained that during a boat tour of oiled coastline Sunday he saw only two vessels trying to protect the shore.

Jindal said 143,000 feet of boom sat in staging areas while oil damaged 65 miles of Louisiana coastline. It has been 20 days since the state asked for 5 million feet of hard boom, but only 786,185 feet of hard boom has been delivered so far, he said.

Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser, along with Jindal and other parish leaders, said the White House's first priority should be granting an emergency permit to skip federal environmental reviews and allow coastal parishes to follow their 3-week-old plan to place dredged sand as berms between barrier islands so oil won't get into delicate marshes, something that wouldn't require any change in BP's role.

"The president has the authority to issue an emergency permit," Jindal said.

"This is proof that the parish plans work," he added, pointing at a picture of sand berm in Fourchon laid by Louisiana National Guard troops in four days that kept oil out of an estuary.

Then he pointed to a picture of a oiled pelican at a bird sanctuary on Cat Island, off the coast of Plaquemines Parish, unable to fly or swim because of the oil, and another picture of pelican eggs discolored with brown gunk, saying: "This is the danger of not acting."

What are the chances for the oiled pelican? What are the chances that the eggs will hatch into healthy pelican chicks and grow to maturity?

Look at the numbers and varieties of birds just from one picture of Cat Island. The threat is the same for the other rookeries and bird sanctuaries across the coast and in the marshes.


As my friend Elizabeth said in the comments to another post:

Sad. Sad. Sad. Mother Earth is weeping for her children.