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Packgen in Auburn Maine manufactures the booms used to contain the oil. They have about 80-90k feet in stock, and can ramp up 24/7 to manufacture all that's necessary. Someone in authority should give the order to fly a few C-130's up there, load the booms, and bring them down here to Florida before more beaches are devastated. Send BP the bill.
But they're going to buy a bunch of Kevin Costner's oil centrifuges. Actually, Kevin is just an investor, it's his BROTHER who helped develop them. WWL AM/FM/TV LINK
Of particular interest is a move sounded out by officials in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana.
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Costner's company is moving toward leasing 16 more oil sucking and separating machines to Plaquemines Parish officials directly. They say if BP won't pay for that, they may sell the oil local officials pull from the water and fund the machines that way.
Now watch BP try to say that the OIL BELONGS TO THEM. I happen to think that cooperatives consisting of out of work shrimpers should be set up where the fishermen buy into a centrifuge operation, sell off the oil and split the profits.
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Please don't assume that I am underestimating the size of the ecological disaster, but I want a hyperbole check.
That link uses the phrase "pristine environment." I beg your pardon? Granted I haven't spent more than 10 minute of my life anywhere near the Gulf so I can't speak from experience - but there are a lot of offshore rigs down there, and a lot of tankers, I suspect, go through there, and I know the manatees have been in trouble for years because they get tangled up in propellers.
Again, I do understand the hugeness of the problem. I just think statements like this one are, well, not helpful.
Other than that the article makes sense to me - but do we really expect the rich & powerful to abandon one of their own? I'd guess that any one of them would, and probably has, thrown the environment under a bus for the sake of a couple of pounds.
Julia A 45’s quicker than 409 Betty’s cleaning’ house for the very last time Betty’s bein’ bad
I can't look at the pictures of the birds. I saw a couple and that's enough for me. Seeing them just pisses me off. I avoid what the pictures convey. However, here is an article from a marine biologist who has written books on Exxon Valdez. This is why I now believe my government has been kissing BP's oily butt and why I'm beginning to think corpgov have already written off people along the coasts (and maybe further inland) of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and may much of the State of Florida.
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With oil undisputedly hitting the beaches and the number of dead wildlife mounting, BP is switching tactics. In Orange Beach, people told me BP wouldn't let them collect carcasses. Instead, the company was raking up carcasses of oiled seabirds. "The heads separate from the bodies," one upset resident told me. "There's no way those birds are going to be autopsied. BP is destroying evidence!"
I know absolutely nothing about marine biology. But Ott, having worked on the Valdez spill in Alaska is able to view what is or isn't happening with educated experience.
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The body count of affected wildlife is crucial to prove the harm caused by the spill, and also serves as an invaluable tool to evaluate damages to public property -- the dolphins, sea turtles, whales, sea birds, fish, and more, that are owned by the American public. Disappeared body counts means disappeared damages -- and disappeared liability for BP. BP should not be collecting carcasses. The job should be given to NOAA, a federal agency, and volunteers, as was done during the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.
If President Obama did kick anyone's ass over the response to the BP disaster, it would be difficult to find out who and what the results were. I haven't been critical of Obama other than to express great disappointment over the fact that he seems to be only slightly less of a hawk than President Bush. But this, the Katrina response to BP...there's no excuse. I'm rapidly beginning to think that like much of Washington, including the White House, has oil all over it. Washington is contaminated by oil and it is literally killing my country.
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NOAA should also be conducting carcass drift studies. Only one percent of the dead sea birds made landfall in the Gulf of Alaska, for example. That means for every one bird that was found, another 99 were carried out to sea by currents. Further, NOAA should be conducting aerial surveys to look for carcasses in the offshore rips where the currents converge. That's where the carcasses will pile up -- a fact we learned during the Exxon Valdez spill. Maybe that's another reason for BP's "no camera" policy and the flight restrictions.
Read the short, but jaw tightening article, here at Huffington Post.
The oil is "cooking" the birds. Oil toxicity isn't the only problem. There are volatile organic compounds released with the oil volcano. Hydrogen sulfide, benzine, and methylene chloride may prove more dangerous than even the toxic oil.
