What government does
Why does neither the U.S. government nor U.S. energy companies have on hand the cleanup technology available in Europe? Ironically, the superior European technology runs afoul of U.S. environmental rules. The voracious Dutch vessels, for example, continuously suck up vast quantities of oily water, extract most of the oil and then spit overboard vast quantities of nearly oil-free water. Nearly oil-free isn’t good enough for the U.S. regulators, who have a standard of 15 parts per million — if water isn’t at least 99.9985% pure, it may not be returned to the Gulf of Mexico.
So, the Dutch vessels get it less than 99.9985% pure. And it’s obviously better to do nothing than do that. Because bureaucracy says so.
June 30th, 2010 at 12:29 pm
These are the same sort of idiots from whom we have zero-tolerance knife policies in public schools.
June 30th, 2010 at 1:12 pm
It just tells you where Obama’s priorities are, that’s all – with the unions and the golf course.
June 30th, 2010 at 1:21 pm
The only thing I can figure is that this is somehow going to be turned into a huge modern day WPA make-work program (WPA = “we piddle around”)
Obama has not suspended the Jones Act either, which would let other nations help with the spill. Apparently Bush did it on day 3 as a reaction to Katrina.
Local governments also have been threated with arrest if they seal off inner waterways from the gulf. Here’s one argument for sealing off the inner waterways. If anyone can point to a well argued reason against saving inland waterways, I’m all ears. There does not seem to be anything out there, and the mainstream press isn’t asking any of the tough questions either.
Does the administration want the disaster to be as bad as possible?
June 30th, 2010 at 2:44 pm
“Does the administration want the disaster to be as bad as possible?”
Yes They Do ! ! ! !
The foreign companys that don’t get the oil clean enough could just go outside the territorial waters and dump.
June 30th, 2010 at 3:07 pm
Try getting a permit to rebuild a deck on your own home, in any high-income neighborhood. When the questions from the permit office got down to the level of what type of galvanized nails I was using, I started asking what type of paper their permits were printed on. And then I started taping “fasteners” to the permit application form, and stapling the application to pieces of pressure treated wood, before dropping them off at the permit office. Strangely enough, they thought that was really great, as it eliminated all their questions.
I would have thrown the “decking sample” through the glass door of their office, had not better sense prevailed.
So no, I am not surprised the EPA is hindering cleanup efforts. That is their reason for being, to stop anyone from doing anything without their permission.
I once bought an oscillating fan through GSA. Took only 4 months, 2 months less than the purchase of locking cabinets to store valuable materials in my lab. Come back in a year or so, and all the cleanup efforts will be rolling merrily along, as will the EPA “stewardship” of teh effort.
June 30th, 2010 at 9:26 pm
I’d sure like to see the stalwart citizens of those communities turn those deployed barges into an armed picket-line.
If a couple hundred such communities did so, the bureaucratic ballon might just deflate a bit. And, it’d be great fun to watch.
Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX
June 30th, 2010 at 10:30 pm
Is it just me being cynical here, or does anyone else think that the feds are waiting for the oil to foul the inland waterways as a premise to place them under federal control, in order to ‘properly’ clean them?
And this will be a “temporary, emergency measure”, natch (something about never letting a crisis go to waste…)
July 1st, 2010 at 1:11 am
Hell, the water in the Gulf wasn’t 99.9985% pure *BEFORE* the spill.