Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has been on the front lines directing and coordinating action to stop the growing oil slick spreading toward the Louisiana coast since the BP oil rig explosion on April 20, 2010. Any action he takes must be approved by the federal government, which has been slow to coordinate its own actions. I reported in an earlier post that Jindal's request for approval to implement a plan for sand-booming and dredging was finally approved in early June after two weeks.
This week the Coast Guard shut down 16 oil-fighting vacuum barges that the Governor had deployed, claiming their operations needed to be halted until federal inspections and certifications could be done. After the barges were shut down for 24 hours before being allowed to resume operations, the Governor said:
"Before the shut down......, oil suction operations using military and civilian vacuum barges had suctioned thousands of gallons of oil out of the marsh already and thousands more could have been removed yesterday if these operations wouldn’t have been shut down.
The frustration here is that we spent weeks talking to the Coast Guard about this new, common sense idea for cleaning out the marsh. At first, we were only allowed to produce a prototype – and once that was seen to be successful, as we knew it would be, we asked for many more of these suction barges to be deployed to coastal communities across the state. Then, after about a week of use, they were shut down because the Coast Guard wanted to inspect them. Now, they have been told they don’t need these inspections.
It is frustrating because it doesn’t seem like the left hand knows what the right hand is doing. There is no streamlined system here. This is why we keep stressing that we need to see more of a sense of urgency from the Coast Guard, federal officials and BP. We are in a war here – we are in a war against this oil that absolutely threatens our way of life."
In addition, Governor Jindal and Grand Isle Mayor David Camardelle met with the Coast Guard on a plan to narrow the passes to the east and west of Grand Isle. Governor Jindal and the Mayor had been pushing to get the rock and barge plan finalized for weeks. The Mayor and the Governor met with President Obama almost two weeks ago about this plan and stressed the importance of the Coast Guard approving the use of the rocks and barge plan quickly in order to help block oil coming into the passes to Barataria Bay. The state needs multiple lines of defense to keep oil out of its wetlands and off of the coast. The Governor and the Mayor have also been pushing for more high sea boom and skimmers for weeks to protect the passes. Since the promised resources have not arrived, the state is now seeking a combination of barges, rocks, and vacuum barges.
Governor Jindal's frustration is understandable in view of the many agencies involved in approving any action the states want to take to clean the oil and prevent further damage from oil coming into the coast, bays and wetlands. The federal government Gulf Oil response team is under the command of Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, whose team is ironically called the Unified Command. This federal team, in addition to BP personnel, includes officials from 14 federal agencies. As Bobby Jindal's comments above indicate, it often seems that the left hand of this team does not know what the right hand is doing.
But lack of coordination among all the agencies in the Unified Command is not the only problem caused by the federal bureaucracy. The citizens of the Gulf Coast have also been harmed by the moratorium on deepwater oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico while the President's team investigates the causes of the oil rig explosion.
Even though this is the worst environmental disaster in US history, it is also the first and only rig explosion of this sort in over forty years of off-shore oil drilling in the Gulf. As many have noted, the moratorium is equivalent to stopping all airlines from flying after a single airline crash. In decades of airline flight, there have been many crashes, but rarely are there government orders to cancel all flights after any plane crash.
Last week, Bobby Jindal met with community groups, businesses, oil workers and local government leaders harmed by the shut down of oil drilling to protest the moratorium. A local newspaper website reported on this gathering as follows:
"In a rally atmosphere at an offshore-service dock ...., Gov. Bobby Jindal, local workers and lawmakers added to the growing outcry over a presidential ban on deepwater drilling.
'People in Louisiana shouldn't have to lose their jobs because federal officials failed to properly regulate the oil-and-gas industry', Jindal said to applause.
'People in Louisiana shouldn't have to lose their jobs because federal officials failed to properly regulate the oil-and-gas industry', Jindal said to applause.
'There's not a man or woman in Louisiana who wants an unemployment check,' Jindal told an audience of about 200 workers, lawmakers and other oil-and-gas industry members. They were assembled at a cavernous dock where oilfield ships pull up for service at Edison Chouest Offshore's C-Port 2. 'We shouldn't have to choose between saving our coast and safe domestic energy production." http://www.houmatoday.com/article/20100611/FEATURES12/100619813/0/ARTICLE
A few days ago, President Obama gave his first address to the nation from the Oval Office to discuss his plans for resolving the disaster in the Gulf. He seemed to acknowledge the concerns of the people on the Gulf Coast when he said:
"As the cleanup continues, we will offer whatever additional resources and assistance our coastal states may need. Now, a mobilization of this speed and magnitude will never be perfect, and new challenges will always arise.... So if something isn’t working, we want to hear about it. If there are problems in the operation, we will fix them.
But we have to recognize that despite our best efforts, oil has already caused damage to our coastline and its wildlife. And sadly, no matter how effective our response is, there will be more oil and more damage before this siege is done."
Apparently, Governor Jindal will have to go on letting Obama's team hear about what isn't working. The question is whether any of those problems can be fixed quick enough to minimize the continuing damage being done to the Gulf Coast. Governor Jindal has not been satisfied with the speed and urgency demonstrated by the federal bureaucracy so far.
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