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Title: Louisiana Wants U.S. Help, and Its Own Way
Source: NYT
URL Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/26/us/politics/26jindal.html?hp
Published: Jun 27, 2010
Author: NYT
Post Date: 2010-06-27 09:49:58 by go65
Keywords: None
Views: 3018
Comments: 18

NEW ORLEANS — For weeks, Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana has attacked BP and the Coast Guard for not having adequate plans and resources to battle the oil spill.

But interviews with more than two dozen state and federal officials and experts suggest that Louisiana, from the earliest days of the spill in the Gulf of Mexico, has often disregarded its own plans and experts in favor of large-scale proposals that many say would probably have had limited effectiveness and could have even hampered the response.

The state’s approach has also at times appeared divided: while some state officials work alongside the Coast Guard and BP every day, others, including the governor, have championed a go-it-alone approach.

Such a stance is popular in a place justifiably skeptical of federal disaster response after Hurricane Katrina. The federal response, at times slow and disorganized, has been a matter of grave concern to this state, with its fragile and complicated coastline.

Mr. Jindal, a Republican like all but one of the other gulf state governors, has been alone among them for his publicly critical stance toward the federal agencies in the response.

But experts said such antagonism could actually slow down that response.

“You can ask for the moon and say you didn’t get it, but I don’t think that’s going to add anything to the response capabilities,” said Doug Lentsch, who was chief of the Coast Guard’s Pollution Response Branch in Washington, D. C., during the Exxon Valdez disaster and helped develop the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. “When that stuff happens, you actually take away the ability of the unified command to get their job done.”

Melissa Sellers, the governor’s communications director, said in a statement that the state was forced to be proactive and act on its own because of the slow response and a lack of information from BP and the federal authorities.

“The bottom line is that this is an emergency situation,” Ms. Sellers said. “It demands quick action and quick thinking, and especially common sense. We continue to ask the federal government and BP to join us in this fight and battle this oil spill with the sense of urgency that the protection of our state demands.”

But a review of Louisiana’s prespill preparation suggests that the state may be open to the same criticisms that Mr. Jindal has leveled at BP and federal authorities.

The state has an oil spill coordinator’s office. Its staff shrank by half over the last decade, and the 17- year-old oil spill research and development program that is associated with the office had its annual $750,000 in financing cut last year. The coordinator is responsible for drawing up and signing off on spill contingency plans with the Coast Guard and a committee of federal, state and local officials.

Some of these plans are rife with omissions, including pages of blank charts that are supposed to detail available supplies of equipment like oil-skimming vessels. A draft action plan for a worst case is among many requirements in the southeast Louisiana proposal listed as “to be developed.”

State officials said that many of those gaps had been addressed but that the information had not yet been formally incorporated into the plan by the Coast Guard.

The plans, in conjunction with state and federal laws, do outline a response structure, called a unified command. In the event of a spill, state officials, the responsible party and the federal authorities, usually the Coast Guard, are supposed to work together to marshal resources and create day-to-day action plans.

From the first days of the spill, state representatives at a command center in Houma, La., have been following that script, signing off on the action plans with the Coast Guard and BP.

But on the first weekend in May, after the governor declared a state of emergency and weeks before heavy oil began to hit the coast, senior members of the Jindal administration decided the unified command was not working.

“We very quickly ran into challenges with the different entities carrying out their responsibilities under that framework,” said Garret Graves, the director of the governor’s office of coastal activities, citing a lack of urgency and decisiveness by the Coast Guard. “That’s where I think the inefficiencies were realized, and that’s why the state began taking an alternative path.”

“I don’t think the Coast Guard or BP had a familiarity with disaster posture,” Mr. Graves added.

On May 3, Mr. Jindal went public with his dissatisfaction.

“We kept being assured over and over that they had a plan, that there was a detailed plan, that it was coming; we never got that plan,” he said.

But under the law, oil spill experts said, there are only two kinds of government plans pertaining to spills, and the state is partly responsible for both.

There are area contingency plans, which the state helps draw up and are meant to be in place when a spill occurs; and there are action plans, which the state helps put together on a day-to-day basis after a spill.

It is just as much the state’s responsibility as anyone’s if a spill occurs and there is no up-to-date contingency plan, said Donald S. Jensen, a retired Coast Guard captain who coordinated the response to several major oil spills.

"After a spill happens is not the time to make a plan," he added.

Nevertheless, state and parish officials drew up their own response plan, a process that usually takes months, over that weekend.

The amount of hard boom the state requested, roughly 950 miles or about one and a half times the national stockpile, was more than three times what the southeast Louisiana area contingency plan said would be required to boom the state’s entire coastline.

“I think it’s proven to be not real reasonable,” said Todd Paxton, general manager of Cook Inlet Spill Prevention and Response Inc., an Alaska company. “For one, it’s just a huge amount of boom.”

A call to put out large amounts of that boom immediately, experts said, was also problematic, as boom can quickly be rendered useless by waves and tides if deployed too early.

Still, the unified command put much of the state and parish plan into effect over the next few weeks, while also continuing to draw up its day-to-day action plans.

A little over a week later, Mr. Jindal began to push a sand berm strategy.

Working off an idea put forward by a pair of Dutch marine research and engineering firms, the plan called for the construction of 140 miles of sand barriers, in 24 segments, to protect the inner coastline from oil. Such an idea is also discussed, though not in great detail, in one of the state’s area contingency plans.

Just before midnight on May 11, the state requested an emergency permit for the project from the Army Corps of Engineers. At just three pages, it was intentionally vague, Mr. Graves said, on the understanding that it was likely to need modifications.

Within days the governor began to decry the slow wheels of government.

“While we’re continuing to push the Corps to give us this permit and the Coast Guard and BP to approve this, we’re not letting the bureaucracy stop us,” Mr. Jindal said on May 14.

By that time, federal agencies had already raised serious concerns about the sand berm project, which, by one estimate, could cost nearly $1 billion.

The project would take months — at least three for the first berm to be built and six or more for the whole project to be finished — causing some experts and federal officials to wonder whether it would do any good. Others questioned whether it could make the problem worse: as the berms were being constructed, an analysis from the Environmental Protection Agency read, “the flow of water through unbermed portions could accelerate, potentially creating a funneling effect for the oil.”

A panel of local coastal scientists was put together by the state to direct the handling of the project. But even some members of that panel have expressed deep skepticism about the plan, though none wanted to be quoted on the matter.

While a series of revisions was being made by state and federal agencies, Mr. Jindal kept up the political pressure, saying on June 2 that 10 miles of berms could have already been constructed if the federal government had immediately granted the permit.

The next day, Adm. Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard, the national incident commander for the spill, approved the building and financing, at BP’s expense, of six of the berms at a cost of $360 million, saying he was satisfied that they “will effectively stem potential damage” to the shoreline.

But the public disagreements have not stopped. This week federal authorities halted the dredging of sand for the berms in a certain part of the Chandeleur Islands, saying it violated the state’s permit and could jeopardize the islands themselves.

Mr. Jindal replied by urging the federal government to “get out of the way” of a necessary defense strategy.

The state engineering firm has nevertheless suspended dredging for several days while it moves the equipment to comply with the permit.

The first barrier will be completed “no sooner than August,” said Gentry Brann, a spokeswoman for the Shaw Group, the engineering firm.

“It is a large construction process,” she said. “And it doesn’t happen overnight.”

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#1. To: no gnu taxes, badeye, lucysmom, fred mertz, war, sneakypete, brian s, skip intro (#0)

Jindal's accomplishments:

- slashing the budget of the state oil spill coordinator's office

- a contingency plan including "pages of blank charts that are supposed to detail available supplies of equipment like oil-skimming vessels." A plan for a worst-case scenario was labeled "to be developed."

- Signing off on all coast guard response plans

- requesting three times as much boom as the state's plan had called for -- and 50% more boom than existed in the entire nation.

- blaming the federal government for everything

Typical tea bagging Republican.


Being a Republicans means you get to choose your own reality

go65  posted on  2010-06-27   9:53:26 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#2. To: go65 (#0)

Did you actually read this article to determine what a lack of substance there is in this apology for the Kenyan's incompetence?

no gnu taxes  posted on  2010-06-27   9:57:12 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#3. To: go65 (#0)

Sacrificing the Most Pro BigOil folks on the altar of US EMpire.

The NOGC+Florida will now secede from the Collapsing US.

“The offshore trajectory maps … have been temporarily suspended because the northern end of the Loop Current has been pinched off into a large eddy (Eddy Franklin) so there is no clear path for oil to enter the Loop Current from the source,”

Your next Huey P Long:

Search Results

1. Plaquemines Parish Government Jun 25, 2010 ... Plaquemines Parish Government Official Web Site. ... us in this war against the oil,” said Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser. ... Parish Departments - Government - News & Events www.plaqueminesparish.com/ - Cached - Similar

Plaquemines Parish Government Billy Nungesser 504-297-5000 504-274-2463 fax ... The people of Plaquemines did not give up after Betsy or Camille, and we certainly won't give up after ... www.plaqueminesparish.com/Government.php

BP's dead corp walking. The South will eat it alive. This week.

mcgowanjm  posted on  2010-06-27   9:58:25 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#4. To: no gnu taxes (#2)

I read it.

And it's a CYA by the US gov't blaming the state.

Anyone siding with BigOil is getting cut up.

Notice the non attributions in the article. The accusations not backed up by Anything?

By the same people who've been lying about this 100 000 bbl per day Dragon King from Day 1?

And btw, the Depression the US is in is being magnified by the Zero Activity from NO to Jacksonville South.

mcgowanjm  posted on  2010-06-27   10:01:39 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#5. To: All (#4)

All Offshore will be banned.

Just as EVERY pol went on record days/weeks before the DeepS hit Horizon saying we're going to Drill offshore everywhere.

The 180 degree Whiplash still hasn't been adjusted for.

The belief system that grasps the human brain around the notion of perpetual growth seems more damaging than advanced Alzheimer's, or Mad Cow Disease, if that’s a better metaphor..

The next Cat 5 and US Empire is dead. For you doubters, imagine the US trying to back Israel's play while at least 5 million refugees are wandering the South.

mcgowanjm  posted on  2010-06-27   10:08:12 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#6. To: mcgowanjm (#4)

I read it.

And it's a CYA by the US gov't blaming the state.

I think it's just Larry Sinclair wannabees at The NYT trying to deflect the incompetence of the Kenyan.

no gnu taxes  posted on  2010-06-27   10:10:13 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#7. To: no gnu taxes (#6)

The NYT trying to deflect the incompetence of the Kenyan.

Your writing that tells me you don't want to talk about the power of BigOil.

Obama's a tool. But he'll make sure that the GObP dies before him. ;}

Or that you won't mention cheney either.

It doesn't matter. The US Empire now dies on the vine as that Cat 5 approaches the GoM.

After that the Deathly Silence emanating from the Imperial City will be all the tell needed.

Watch as bp stock dives to 20 this week. And what TPTB will have to do to 'save' it while trying to keep 35 million NOGC +Florida Non Trivial Residents neutralized. ;}

mcgowanjm  posted on  2010-06-27   10:23:54 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#8. To: All (#7)

This kind of lying could be sustained as long as energy growth was maintained.

It is no longer. PO was May 2005. That Summer lumber mills shut down ALL over Arkansas.

Today:

" New home sales crashed 33pc in May to an all-time low of 300,000 after the homebuyer tax-credit expired, confirming fears that the housing market has been propped up by subsidies. Unemployment is stuck at 9.7pc. Manufacturing capacity use is at 71.9pc. The Fed's "trimmed mean" index of core inflation is 0.6pc on a six-month basis, a record low.

Ilargi: Neil Irwin in the Washington Post has no clue which way the wind blows either:

Economic recovery threatens to run sideways

Just two months ago, a strong, self-sustaining economic expansion seemed to be taking hold,

Ilargi: People like Irwin get paid royal salaries to provide you with this sort of bullcrap. "A strong, self-sustaining economic expansion..." Yeah, right.

"We're not going to keep accelerating," said Alan Levenson, chief economist at T. Rowe Price. "It looks like we're either settling into a cruising speed for growth, or even decelerating."

Ilargi: Nonsense, quatsch, blubber. The man's a nincompoopish fool. His sort of creature makes me both mad and hugely tired. There are scores of hard-working well-meaning Americans who base their decisions on what they think is a neutral news source.

And we haven't even got a full talley of the FIRE economy on the Gulf Coast. It's dead.

mcgowanjm  posted on  2010-06-27   10:27:27 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#9. To: All (#8) (Edited)

And another thing in the article above:

The US/bp have been lying from Day 1 about what is going on- example-how long did they stick with 5 000 bbls per day.

Thru at least the first 3 weeks. An oil expert showed that amount would not have even been noticed. Evaporation would have taken care of most it.

And Barbour of MS still to this day(!!!) thinks the 100 000 bbls is no big deal.

The incompetence at ALL levels is overwhelming while bp does Everything to CYA.

Responses on the Internet remind me of those moms letting their babies walk thru oil to go wading in a pea green gulf(blue, clear before the DeepS hit Horizon).

Just don't get it.

And don't expect to see any more dolphins, turtles, blue fin tuna. They're dead.

mcgowanjm  posted on  2010-06-27   10:36:27 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#10. To: All (#9)

Evac now. You are on your own:

Verified YES Chemical smell in Mid-City New Orleans - yesterday and today

* Location Canal Street at North Carrollton Avenue, New Orleans, LA

The Bailout is now the permanent socioeconomic paradigm in the US and Europe. The new regime is Bailout America. Globalization was the final frontier for one last massive colonial plunder expedition at the summit of the oil age. Now there’s no longer a new plunder frontier over the horizon. All sectors are in decay, and we’re at Peak Oil. There won’t and can’t be any more shifting costs to the outside. Now the gangsters can only terminally cannibalize the inside. Western domestic corporatism was the first level of this assault, and the Bailout is the accelerated and intensified version.

mcgowanjm  posted on  2010-06-27   10:55:42 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#11. To: mcgowanjm (#5)

All Offshore will be banned.

Hey, even Sarah Palin is now against offshore drilling!


Being a Republicans means you get to choose your own reality

go65  posted on  2010-06-27   11:07:12 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#12. To: All (#10)

Remember the Spaghetti Map throwing Alex into Mexico?

Sure thing at 7 AM CDT Sunday:

New News:

The Spaghetti Map is changing. LA/Tex border coming in range:

http://i.flhurricane.com/images/2010/clark1latest.png

Alex Model Tracks 12Z 27 June 2010

Wunder Blog : Weather Underground Jun 27, 2010 ... Posted by: JeffMasters, 8:52 AM GMT on June 27, 2010 ... The 12Z global model runs will have more accurate forecasts than

And this is a correct observation I picked up at Maddowblog:

Coverage of the spill seems to be dropping off. The area affected is so large and is home to so many living things, I think a channel dedicated to covering it would have plenty of stories to tell. I'd watch it. I can't even find a blog. Anybody out there know of a good news blog on the spill?

Reply#5 - Thu Jun 24, 2010 6:06 PM EDTs changing:

mcgowanjm  posted on  2010-06-27   11:09:23 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#13. To: go65 (#11)

All Offshore will be banned.

Hey, even Sarah Palin is now against offshore drilling!

8D

As I've been saying over at lp before Goldi banned me ;}.

Facts are irrelevant. History was yesterday.

But it costs money/energy to avoid reality and keep the spin going that you're right on top of the situation.

Lots and lots of it. And after this Dragon King, the lies are exposed in real time. Like this:

US Navy JCOS Mullen goes to Karzai day after McChrystal fiasco. He hasn't been to the NOGC+Florida yet. If he has, it was under cover of darkeness. Kinda like the illegal fishing they're doing there now.

mcgowanjm  posted on  2010-06-27   11:14:29 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#14. To: mcgowanjm (#7)

Obama's a tool.

That's true. He is nothing more than Bush 4.0,and it is hilarious to see the partisan hacks on both sides try to deny this basic truth.

But he'll make sure that the GObP dies before him. ;}

BullBarrack! The GOP died when Reagan left office and that weasel bastard Poppy Bush and his fascist RINO pals took over.

"I adore John McCain, support him 100 percent and will do everything I can to support his reelection. As everyone knows, I was honored and proud to run with him. And Todd and I were with him in D.C. just a week ago." (Sarah Palin,Dec 2009) ************************************ DID Palin say or write these things or not? (Me) I don't know or F ing care. (Mad Dog posted on 2009-12-26 16:36:33 ET,post # 105 http://libertysflame.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=5510&Disp=114#C114)

sneakypete  posted on  2010-06-27   11:41:55 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#15. To: sneakypete (#14)

The GObP will never outlive Joe Barton's apology.

And if the Dems don't roast the GObP over an open fire, it's to keep the zombie party alive for cover. ;}

And Poppy took over the Day Reagan was shot.

mcgowanjm  posted on  2010-06-27   12:01:55 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#16. To: go65 (#1)

Don't waste my time with the daily talking points.

Its not like I give a shit about Jindal. Sheesh.

News Update: Owe-bama ordered eggs and toast for breakfast. ABC/NBC/CBS/MSNBC/CNN all agree the decision to avoid bagels was 'Brilliant!' (eyes rolling)

Badeye  posted on  2010-06-27   15:59:53 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#17. To: Badeye (#16)

I thought you were the Gulf Oil Gusher expert.

Fred Mertz  posted on  2010-06-27   18:30:08 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#18. To: Fred Mertz (#17)

You 'thought'?

(laughing)

Riight.

News Update: Owe-bama ordered eggs and toast for breakfast. ABC/NBC/CBS/MSNBC/CNN all agree the decision to avoid bagels was 'Brilliant!' (eyes rolling)

Badeye  posted on  2010-06-28   9:15:05 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


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