“Three days after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, the Dutch government offered to help. It was willing to provide ships outfitted with oil-skimming booms, and it proposed a plan for building sand barriers to protect sensitive marshlands.The response from the Obama administration and BP, which are coordinating the cleanup: The embassy got a nice letter from the administration that said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’” said Geert Visser, consul general for the Netherlands in Houston.”
“Now, almost seven weeks later, as the oil spewing from the battered well spreads across the Gulf and soils pristine beaches and coastline, BP and our government have reconsidered. U.S. ships are being outfitted this week with four pairs of the skimming booms airlifted from the Netherlands and should be deployed within days. Each pair can process 5 million gallons of water a day, removing 20,000 tons of oil and sludge. At that rate, how much more oil could have been removed from the Gulf during the past month? The uncoordinated response to an offer of assistance has become characteristic of this disaster’s response. Too often, BP and the government don’t seem to know what the other is doing, and the response has seemed too slow and too confused. Federal law has also hampered the assistance. The Jones Act, the maritime law that requires all goods be carried in U.S. waters by U.S.-flagged ships, has prevented Dutch ships with spill-fighting equipment from entering U.S. coastal areas.’
“Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr Christopher T. O’Neil said that ‘all qualifying offers of assistance have been accepted.’ But this bureaucratic-speak did not mention that the Jones Act – an isolationist law passed in the 1920s that requires vessels working in American waters to be built and crewed by Americans – disqualified many of the offers of assistance. But Obama could have waived the Jones Act whenever he wanted to.”
All this dithering is destroying the economy in the Gulf region and has destroyed the environment. Guess what. It ain’t over.
“Trouble Brewing: The Atlantic hurricane season begins June 1, and forecasters expect it to be busier than usual. Meanwhile, oil continues to gush into the Gulf of Mexico from the site where the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20 and sank two days later in 5,000 feet of water. Since then, oil has been accumulating at the surface. And that could be raising the temperature of the surrounding water, says Kerry Emanuel, a hurricane expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”
“‘You have this black surface, and it’s doing two things,'” Emanuel says. “‘First of all it’s absorbing sunlight. And secondly, it is curtailing evaporation from the Gulf. Evaporation normally helps cool the Gulf waters, Emanuel says.'”
“‘So theoretically, the Gulf underneath this oil slick should be getting hotter than it normally would be.'” And hotter water helps create more powerful hurricanes. It’s hard to know if the water is actually getting hotter, though, because oil prevents satellites from taking accurate temperature readings.” http://www.vpr.net/npr/127036434/
