What Obama is doing about the oil spill

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/5/25/869846/-What-the-Obama-Administration-is-Doing-About-The-Oil

This is a great piece from Kos

<i>Total response vessels: more than 1150
Containment boom deployed: more than 1.73 million feet
Containment boom available: more than 275,000 feet
Sorbent boom deployed: more than 730,000 feet
Sorbent boom available: more than 1.25 million feet
Total boom deployed: more than 2.46 million feet (regular plus sorbent boom)
Total boom available: more than 1.52 million feet (regular plus sorbent boom)
Oily water recovered: more than 10.24 million gallons
Surface dispersant used: approximately 685,000 gallons
Subsea dispersant used: approximately 100,000
Total dispersant used: approximately 785,000
Dispersant available: more than 340,000 gallons
Overall personnel responding: more than 22,000

If he was I would of heard it on the right wing controlled news, which I've all of a sudden started to believe again.

26 with environmental review waived.

Obama's doing plenty.

To bad our government couldn't do something to PREVENT the mess in the first place.

to prevent it..but it's done and now we're dealing with the reality.

as this hole is plugged. Drill, baby drill with pitiful and ineffective 'regulations' being ignored again.

the government, specifically the MMS wasn't doing their job because it is filled with Bush cronies.

Obama has done nothing to correct this, Salazar is an oil insider and Obama is pushing for more offshore drilling, which he has not backed off from even after this spill.

The Gov is doing their job in spite of all the lies swirling around from rwhacks and cheap shots over the internet.

Protecting the Corps.

11 people dead

thousands of animals killed

lives ruined

coastlines ruined for decades, Alaska still hasn't recovered from the Valdez

yet the CEO's of BP, who's policies were the direct cause of this spill, will never do one minute of time in jail

just like the CEO's of Exxon. they will be fined but it will be a small percentage of their profits.

this spill should have been skimmed, they recovered 75% of the spill in Saudi. Yet that chance has been ruined because of the dispersants, which BP is using to hide the amount of oil that has been spilled. Because they are fined by the amount.

What is wrong about what I'm saying?

Please also tell us why Obama is letting BP use a dispersant that was banned in BP's home country because it's too toxic?

why are they allowing BP to dump toxic dispersants on top of toxic oil?

since Day ONE..

Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

Since the moments after the oil rig explosion on the night of April 20, DHS has played a lead role in federal response efforts—deploying the U.S. Coast Guard to search and rescue the 126 people aboard the rig, and quickly leading efforts to establish a command center on the Gulf Coast to address the potential environmental impact of the event and to coordinate with all state and local governments. Secretary Napolitano leads the National Response Team, an organization of 16 federal departments and agencies responsible for coordinating emergency preparedness and response to oil and hazardous substance pollution events.

U.S. Coast Guard

The Coast Guard has played a major role from the very beginning, when it responded to the explosion on a search and rescue mission to save lives. Pursuant to the National Contingency Plan, Rear Admiral Mary Landry was named the Federal On-Scene Coordinator to lead a Regional Response Team which was stood up that included DHS, DOC/NOAA, DOI and the EPA, as well as state and local representatives. As the event escalated, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen was announced as the National Incident Commander for the administration’s continued, coordinated response—providing additional coordinated oversight in leveraging every available resource to respond to the BP oil spill and minimize the associated environmental risks.

Department of the Interior (DOI)

The morning after the explosion, Secretary of the Interior deployed Deputy Secretary David J. Hayes to the Gulf Coast to assist with coordination and response to the event, and provide hourly reports back to the administration. Since then, DOI has played a vital role in overseeing BP’s response efforts while—at the President’s request—working to deliver a report with recommendations on what, if any, additional safety measures should be required for offshore operations. Secretary Salazar has announced that inspections of all deepwater rigs and platforms are underway.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

Since the BP Oil Spill, EPA has provided full support to the U.S. Coast Guard and is monitoring and responding to potential public health and environmental concerns. Environmental data, including air quality and water samples, will be posted and frequently updated on this site as it is collected and validated by EPA’s response teams along the impacted coastlines. This data is meant to determine potential risks to public health and the environment: http://www.epa.gov/bpspill

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

As the nation’s leading scientific resource for oil spills, NOAA has been on the scene of the Deepwater Horizon spill from the start, providing coordinated scientific weather and biological response services to federal, state and local organizations: http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/deepwaterhorizon
Weather Forecast: http://www.srh.noaa.gov/lix/

Small Business Administration

SBA is making low-interest loans available to small businesses in the Gulf Coast regions of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi suffering financial losses following the April 20 Deepwater BP oil spill that shut down commercial and recreational fishing in the Gulf of Mexico. SBA’s Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL) are available immediately in designated counties and parishes of each of the four states to help meet the financial needs of qualifying small businesses following the oil spill: http://www.sba.gov/services/disasterassistance/

Department of Defense (DOD)

DOD continues to support the ongoing response effort by lending Naval and Air Force bases to provide vital staging areas for boom deployments and other activities, and providing C-130 aircraft equipped with Modular Aerial Spray Systems, which dispense chemical dispersant—capable of covering up to 250 acres per flight. DOD also plays a significant role in the National Response Team, helping to lead the coordination of response actions for the federal government. Secretary of Defense Gates has authorized use of Title 32 status for up to 17,500 National Guard members in four states: Alabama (3,000), Florida (2,500), Louisiana (6,000) and Mississippi (6,000).

Department of the Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service

The Fish and Wildlife Service continues to support the joint agency response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico with experienced specialists, land managers, and support personnel. Booms to capture and deflect anticipated oil are being deployed at Breton National Wildlife Refuge, where thousands of brown pelicans and shorebirds are currently nesting. The Service also is initiating Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration activities in this incident to assess and address the long-term damage to impacted resources: http://www.fws.gov/home/dhoilspill

Department of the Interior’s National Park Service

The National Park Service is focused on human safety and resource protection in eight national parks in the Gulf area. These parks are working to assess resources, collect baseline data, coordinate boom placements, plan for responsible cleanup, install barriers for shore bird and turtle nest protection, and plan for potential park closures, if necessary: http://www.nps.gov/aboutus/oil-spill-response.htm

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

Oil spill response workers may be exposed to many different chemical, physical, biological, and psychological hazards. These hazards vary depending on the type and location of the oil spill, type and stage of response, degree of coordination between entities involved in response and recovery, and the workers’ specific tasks. Therefore, occupational and environmental hazards need to be identified, assessed, and monitored in each oil spill response: http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/oilspillresponse

http://www.whitehouse.gov/deepwater-bp-oil-spill

Booms don't do crap once you get a little surf or wind action. Just look at all the pics of oil past the booms. It's a feel good thing that doesn't really work.

the dispersants make the problem worse, dumping toxic crap on top of toxic crap. The only reason it's being used is because it hides the oil, makes it less visible. It makes it harder to calculate how much has been spilled because the EPA fines are calculated by the quantity. In addition the dispersant is produced by a BP owned company.

the only thing that really works are the skimmers, like they used on the Saudi spill, but they won't be as effective once the dispersant has been used because it keeps the oil from floating on the surface. So because BP is hiding the oil with dispersants it makes it harder to collect.

The first thing Obama should have done was ban BP from the clean up and ban dispersants. They should have only been on the task of stopping the leak. BP is making matters worse because they benefit from hiding the quantity.

Obama has failed in many ways. The first was not re-regulating from all the bush de-regulation and not removing all the bush cronies in the management of MMS, the oversite that was supposed to catch the safety problems that caused the leak.

What he should do is break BP up and put the CEO's in prison. It will never happen because Obama is a sold out corporatist.

and Obama isn't king. He isn't above the law, and government has been starved for 30 years,
most of the bestest and the brightest that would know what to do in the case of this unprecented
disaster work for oil firms.

As for what Obama is, he ain't a socialist.....that's quite true.

When he promoted more offshore drilling.

And this hasn't been a democracy since Kennedy was shot.

It's a plutocracy, a corporatocracy.

The TV tells us who to vote for and the TV is 100% corporate owned. They aren't going to promote someone that doesn't pass their vetting.

You have to hope that when they win the office they change their tune a little and try to do something for the people.

Obama has any authority at all to break up a British company (BP) and "sold out corporatist" has become one of those vague, broad brush assessments tossed around as a general slam. :hi:

Sure Obama has no authority over BP, so just boot them out of the country. I'm sure there's criminal charges available but with the corporatists at Obama's "justice" it's snowballs in hell.

So instead of sold out corporatist we'll just say he gave away tax dollars to the crooked bankers that intentionally caused the problem, then appointed those same crooked bankers to oversee themselves.

He pushed for more offshore drilling when he had to have known that the corresponding regulatory agency was broken having been under Bush for 8 years.

Half again as much total boom deployed is still "available".

What. The. Fuck?

22,000 personnel responding equals something like one person per square mile of area affected.

Good stuff.