….it appears they don’t know how to use it for absorbing oil from wetlands and for recovering oil off of beaches….

http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/go/doc/2931/558807/

DATE: May 21, 2010 20:02:10 CST
Unified Area Command announces it will not use hair boom in its Deepwater Horizon/BP response efforts
Key contact numbers
        *       Report oiled shoreline or request volunteer information: (866) 448-5816
*       Submit alternative response technology, services or products: (281) 366-5511
   *       Submit your vessel for the Vessel of Opportunity Program: (281) 366-5511
        *       Submit a claim for damages: (800) 440-0858
        *       Report oiled wildlife: (866) 557-1401
Deepwater Horizon Incident
Joint Information Center
Phone: (985) 902-5231
(985) 902-5240
ROBERT, La. – The Unified Area Command for the Deepwater Horizon/BP Response announces it will not use hair boom in its response efforts.

While this suggestion was submitted to BP as an alternative method for containing and recovering the oil spill, it was not deemed feasible after a technical evaluation.

In a February 2010 side-by-side field test conducted during an oil spill in Texas, commercial sorbent boom absorbed more oil and much less water than hair boom, making it the better operational choice.

“Our priority when cleaning up an oil spill is to find the most efficient and expedient way to remove the oil from the affected area while causing no additional damage.  One problem with the hair boom is that it became water-logged and sank within a short period of time,” said Charlie Henry, NOAA’s Scientific Support Coordinator in Robert, La.

Commercial sorbent boom is readily available and scientifically designed and tested for oil containment and absorption on the water.  Additionally, response teams are familiar with and properly trained to safely deploy, maintain, recover, and dispose commercial sorbent boom.

Individuals and organizations are asked to discontinue the collection of hair for the hair boom.
 
We appreciate the overwhelming response from the American and Canadian people who want to help in the response to this spill.  Please continue to send suggestions for alternate cleanup solutions.  All proposals are reviewed by technical experts for their feasibility and proof of application.  Among those recommendations submitted was the successful subsea dispersion process that is now helping break up oil before it reaches the surface.

We encourage the public to continue volunteering to help with this response.  People interested in volunteering can call 866-448-5816.
For information about the response effort, visit www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com.

 
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/science/earth/21conflict.html
 

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Taylor Kirschenfeld, an environmental official in Escambia County, Fla., got a waiver to have another lab test his samples.
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Jim Wilson/The New York Times
“I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but there is just too much overlap between these people,” Mr. Kirschenfeld said.
Hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake, since those readings will be used by the federal government and courts to establish liability claims against BP. But the laboratory that officials have chosen to process virtually all of the samples is part of an oil and gas services company in Texas that counts oil firms, including BP, among its biggest clients.

Some people are questioning the independence of the Texas lab. Taylor Kirschenfeld, an environmental official for Escambia County, Fla., rebuffed instructions from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to send water samples to the lab, which is based at TDI-Brooks International in College Station, Tex. He opted instead to get a waiver so he could send his county’s samples to a local laboratory that is licensed to do the same tests.

Mr. Kirschenfeld said he was also troubled by another rule. Local animal rescue workers have volunteered to help treat birds affected by the slick and to collect data that would also be used to help calculate penalties for the spill. But federal officials have told the volunteers that the work must be done by a company hired by BP.

“Everywhere you look, if you look, you start seeing these conflicts of interest in how this disaster is getting handled,” Mr. Kirschenfeld said. “I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but there is just too much overlap between these people.”

The deadly explosion at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig last month has drawn attention to the ties between regulators and the oil and gas industry. Last week, President Obama said he intended to end their “cozy relationship,” partly by separating the safety function of regulators from their role in permitting drilling and collecting royalties. “That way, there’s no conflict of interest, real or perceived,” he said.

Critics say a “revolving door” between industry and government is another area of concern. As one example, they point to the deputy assistant secretary for land and minerals management at the Interior Department, Sylvia V. Baca, who helps oversee the Minerals Management Service, which regulates offshore drilling

She came to that post after eight years at BP, in a variety of senior positions, ranging from a focus on environmental initiatives to developing health, safety and emergency response programs. She also served in the Interior Department in the Clinton administration.

Under Interior Department conflict-of-interest rules, she is prohibited from playing any role in decisions involving BP, including the response to the crisis in the gulf. But her position gives her some responsibility for overseeing oil and gas, mining and renewable energy operations on public and Indian lands.

Officials in part of what will remain of the Minerals Management Service, after a major reorganization spurred by the events in the gulf, will continue to report to her.

“When you see more examples of this revolving door between industry and these regulatory agencies, the problem is that it raises questions as to whose interests are being served,” said Mandy Smithberger, an investigator with the nonprofit watchdog group Project on Government Oversight.

Interior officials declined to make Ms. Baca available for comment. A spokeswoman said Ms. Baca fully disclosed her BP ties, recused herself from all matters involving the company and was not currently involved in any offshore drilling policy decisions.

Patrick A. Parenteau, a professor at Vermont Law School, said that concerns about conflicts of interest in the cleanup are cropping up for reasons beyond examples of coziness between the industry and regulators.

He noted that because of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, which was passed after the Exxon Valdez spill, polluters must take more of a role in cleanups.

“I do think the law brings the polluter into the process, and that creates complications,” Professor Parenteau said. “That doesn’t mean, however, that the government has to exit the process or relinquish control over decision-making, like it may be in this case.”

Dismissing concerns about conflicts of interest at his lab, James M. Brooks, the president and chief executive of TDI-Brooks International, said his company was chosen because of its prior work for the federal government.

“It is a nonbiased process,” he said. “We give them the results, and they can have their lawyers argue over what the results mean.” He added that federal officials and BP were working together and sharing the test results.

Federal officials say that they remain in control and that the concerns about any potential conflicts are overblown.

Douglas Zimmer, a spokesman for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, said the agency simply did not have the staff to handle all the animals affected by the oil spill. BP has more resources to hire workers quickly, he said, and letting local organizations handle the birds would have been impractical and costly.

“I also just don’t believe that BP or their contractor would have any incentive to skew the data,” he said. “Even if they did, there are too many federal, state and local eyes keeping watch on them.”

But Stuart Smith, a lawyer representing fishermen hurt by the spill, remained skeptical, saying that federal and state authorities had not fulfilled their watchdog role.

Last month, for example, various state and federal Web sites included links that directed out-of-work fishermen to a BP Web site, which offered contracts that limited their right to file future claims against the company.

This month, a federal judge in New Orleans, Helen G. Berrigan, struck down that binding language in the contracts.

Collaboration between industry and regulators extends to how information about the spill is disseminated by a public affairs operation called the Joint Information Center.

The center, in a Shell-owned training and conference center in Robert, La., includes roughly 65 employees, 10 of whom work for BP. Together, they develop and issue news releases and coordinate posts on Facebook and Twitter.

“They have input into it; however, it is a unified effort,” said Senior Chief Petty Officer Steve Carleton, explaining BP’s role in the shared command structure.

He said such coordination in oil spill responses was mandated under federal law.

But even if collaboration were not required, Mr. Zimmer said, it would be prudent because federal and state authorities could only gain from BP’s expertise and equipment.

“Our priority has been to address the spill quickly and most effectively, and that requires working with BP — not in some needlessly adversarial way,” he said.

In deciding where to send their water, sediment and tissue samples, state environmental officials in Florida and Louisiana said NOAA instructed them to send them to BB Laboratories, which is run by TDI-Brooks.

Though Florida has its own state laboratory that is certified to analyze the same data, Amy Graham, a spokeswoman for the Department of Environmental Protection there, said the state was sending samples to B & B “in an effort to ensure consistency and quality assurance.”

Scott Smullen, a spokesman for NOAA, said that two other labs, Alpha Analytics and Columbia Analytical Services, had also been contracted, but officials at those labs said B & B was taking the lead role and receiving virtually all of the samples.

The samples being collected are part of the Natural Resource Damage Assessment, which is the federal process for determining the extent of damage caused by a spill, the amount of money owed and how it should be spent to restore the environment.

The samples are also likely to be used in the civil suits — worth hundreds of millions of dollars — filed against the companies and possibly the federal government.

While TDI-Brooks and B & B have done extensive work for federal agencies like NOAA and the E.P.A., TDI-Brooks is also described by one industry partner on its Web site as being “widely acknowledged as the world leader in offshore oil and gas field exploration services.”

The Web site says that since 1996, it has “collected nearly 10,000 deep-water piston core sediment samples and heat flow stations for every major oil company.”

Hundreds of millions of dollars are also likely at stake in relation to the oil-slicked animals that are expected to wash ashore in coming weeks.

While Fish and Wildlife Service officials say that BP’s contractor will handle virtually all of the wildlife and compile data about how many — and how extensively — animals were affected by the spill, they add that they will oversee the process.

The data collected will likely form the basis for penalties against BP relating to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. In the case of the Exxon Valdez spill, Exxon was fined more than $100 million, partly for violations of that federal law.

John M. Broder, Andrew W. Lehren and Michael Luo contributed reporting.

A version of this article appeared in print on May 21, 2010, on page A1 of the New York edition.
 Special thanks to Ashley Hotz

BY DELORES SAVAS – Is it time to write an obituary for the Gulf of Mexico? Not yet, although hospice is standing in the wings.

Boca Grande is alive and well for now. So tourists should not stay away. Come to the island and enjoy the shores while everything is how it should be. You may not be so fortunate in the future.

Many are wondering: Can the oil reach the island’s beaches? Domenica Ventura, director, Provitapax Marine Research Association independent volunteer researcher) and area resident said, “Major surface currents in the Gulf of Mexico are essentially the same distribution and direction in winter, although average velocities may differ (in summer).

The west Florida gyre (vortex) may split into two circulations; the northernmost to the west of Cape St. George, the southernmost forming off the Tampa area. Think of where the “dead zone” landed a couple years back off Tampa south of Englewood. However, the wind direction today as opposed to then, is a variable that cannot be predicted but is a potential factor.”

Right now residents in the Keys are apprehensive and watch the sea, while other Gulf shore residents are keeping a vigil, hoping that all will be well.

It seems like all involved in this spill have gone into overdrive to put the blame on others and to downplay the seriousness of what is exactly happening, and the amount of oil reportedly spewing out of the site has been questioned by experts. There seems to be no doubt the amount of leakage has also been downplayed as many are referring to this event as “the 911 oil spill.”

The New York Times reports, “The oil that can be seen from the surface is apparently just a fraction of the oil that has spilled into the Gulf of Mexico since April 20, according to an assessment by the Natural Institute for Undersea Science and Technology. Significant amounts of oil are spreading at various levels throughout the water column. Scientists looking at a video of the leak suggest that as many as 3.4 million gallons of oil could be leaking into the Gulf every day – 16 times more than the current 210,000-gallon-a-day estimate.” (csmonitor.com)

Now there is another major concern that experts claim is just as damaging to all sea life – the use by BP of oil spill dispersants. These dispersants are chemicals applied to the spilled oil to break down the oil into small droplets. However, some say this is creating a toxic soup in the Gulf capable of killing off many species of the sea. See motherjones.com.

Many countries have banned the chemicals that are being used. Reportedly 308,885 gallons of dispersant have been spread over the oil site.

Dr. James M. Cervino, visiting scientist for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute said, “The chemicals that are being disbursed on the sea surface remove oil in the form of clumping it up so that it can then be removed by bacteria; however, my concerns are that these chemicals pass toxins up the food chain into fish and shellfish.

“Corexit 9500, Corexit 9527, and Corexit 9580 have moderate toxicity to early stages of marine embryos, fish, crustaceans and mollusks. They say that lower water temperatures in lab investigations reveal much lower toxicity and lowered intake of the chemical dispersant.

“BUT the problem is that we’re going to be seeing an increase in higher sea surface temperatures, not a decrease in sea surface temperatures.

“The higher the food chain fish that will be severely affected, are the silver-sided fish that are heavily used as bait, not to mention a primary source of food for other large fish all the way up the food chain that humans consume.

“Oil is toxic at 11ppm while Corexit 9500 is toxic at only 2.61ppm; Corexit 9500 is four times as toxic as oil itself. This is the approach the oil companies are taking, which are the lesser of two evils, as both situations kill primary producing phytoplankton and zooplankton, which are at the VERY top of the food chain. Exposing these creatures locally could collapse the LOCAL food chains next week.

“I have not even discussed if this material makes it to the coastal zone, as the ecological disaster and persistence of these chemicals will destroy the wetlands and ecological niches for a long long time. If this ever happened in NYC, it would wipe out the 30 plus years that it took to clean these waters up and place them in the same polluted waters that were back in the ’50s and ’60s. Let’s hope this never happens here.”

Cervino is headed to the Florida Keys to conduct experiments on the side effects of these chemicals on coral and seagrasses.

Just recently 150 sea turtles have been found washed up or dying along the Gulf Coast. All scientists are concerned about the safety of all sea turtles as they are heading into their nesting season.

Other animals at risk in the open water, along the coast and wetlands are sharks, whales, dolphins, brown pelicans, oysters, shrimp and blue crab, menhaden and marsh-dwelling fish, beach-nesting and migratory shorebirds and migratory songbirds, warblers, orioles, buntings, flycatchers, swallows and others.

Fishermen are also endangered as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has extended the boundaries of the closed fishing area in the Gulf. The closed area now represents 45,728 square miles, which is approximately 19 percent of the Gulf of Mexico federal waters. The newly closed area is more than 150 miles from the nearest port and primarily in deep water used by pelagic longline fisheries that target highly migratory species.

Will a call be made to hospice, like in many bedside vigils? Time will tell.

email: gaiasvigil@gmail.com

Special thanks to James Cervino

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gMDwSQxnNOslGs1meZXx3ssFqxKAD9FRJL6O4
By MATTHEW DALY (AP) – 1 hour ago May 22, 2010
WASHINGTON – Days after the Gulf Coast oil spill, the Obama administration pledged to keep its “boot on the throat” of BP to make sure the company did all it could to cap the gushing leak and clean up the spill.

But a month after the April 20 explosion, anger is growing about why BP PLC is still in charge of the response.

“I’m tired of being nice. I’m tired of working as a team,” said Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish in Louisiana.

“The government should have stepped in and not just taken BP’s word,” declared Wayne Stone of Marathon, Fla., an avid diver who worries about the spill’s effect on the ecosystem.

That sense of frustration is shared by an increasing number of Gulf Coast residents, elected officials and environmental groups who have called for the government to simply take over.

In fact, the government is overseeing things. But the official responsible for that says he still understands the discontent.

“If anybody is frustrated with this response, I would tell them their symptoms are normal, because I’m frustrated, too,” said Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen.
“Nobody likes to have a feeling that you can’t do something about a very big problem,” Allen told The Associated Press Friday.

Still, as simple as it may seem for the government to just take over, the law prevents it, Allen said.

After the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, Congress dictated that oil companies be responsible for dealing with major accidents – including paying for all cleanup – with oversight by federal agencies. Spills on land are overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency, offshore spills by the Coast Guard.

“The basic notion is you hold the responsible party accountable, with regime oversight” from the government, Allen said. “BP has not been relieved of that responsibility, nor have they been relieved for penalties or for oversight.”

He and Coast Guard Adm. Mary Landry, the federal onsite coordinator, direct virtually everything BP does in response to the spill – and with a few exceptions have received full cooperation, Allen said.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was even more emphatic.

“There’s nothing that we think can and should be done that isn’t being done. Nothing,” Gibbs said Friday during a lengthy, often testy exchange with reporters about the response to the oil disaster.

There are no powers of intervention that the federal government has available but has opted not to use, Gibbs said.

Asked if President Barack Obama had confidence in BP, Gibbs said only: “We are continuing to push BP to do everything that they can.”

The White House is expected to announce Saturday that former Florida Sen. Bob Graham and ex-EPA Administrator William K. Reilly will lead a presidential commission
investigating the oil spill. Graham is a Democrat. Reilly served as EPA administrator under President George H.W. Bush. The commission’s inquiry will range from the causes of the spill to the safety of offshore oil drilling.

BP spokesman Neil Chapman said the federal government has been “an integral part of the response” to the oil spill since shortly after the April 20 explosion.

“There are many federal agencies here in the Unified Command, and they’ve been part of that within days of the incident,” said Chapman, who works out of a joint response site in Louisiana, near the site of the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.

Criticism of the cleanup response has spread beyond BP. On Friday, the Texas lab contracted to test samples of water contaminated by the spill defended itself against complaints that it has a conflict of interest because it does other work for BP.

TDI-Brooks International Inc., which points to its staffers’ experience handling samples from the Exxon Valdez disaster, said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service helped audit the lab and approved its methods.

“A typical state laboratory does not have this experience or capacity,” TDI president James M. Brooks said.

The company’s client list includes federal and state agencies along with dozens of oil companies, among them BP, a connection first reported by The New York Times. TDI-Brooks said about half of the lab’s revenue comes from government work.

Test results on Deepwater Horizon samples will figure prominently in lawsuits and other judgments seeking to put a dollar value on the damage caused by the spill.

Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes, who traveled to the Gulf the day after the explosion and has coordinated Interior’s response to the spill, rejected the notion that BP is telling the federal government what to do.

“They are lashed in,” Hayes said of BP. “They need approval for everything they do.”
If BP is lashed to the government, the tether goes both ways. A large part of what the government knows about the oil spill comes from BP.

The oil company helps staff the command center in Robert, La., which publishes daily reports on efforts to contain, disperse and skim oil.

Some of the information flowing into the command center comes from undersea robots run by BP or ships ultimately being paid by BP. When the center reported Friday that nearly 9 million gallons of an oil-water mixture had been skimmed from the ocean surface, those statistics came from barges and other vessels funded by BP.

Allen, the incident commander, said the main problem for federal responders is the unique nature of the spill – 5,000 feet below the surface with no human access.

“This is really closer to Apollo 13 than Exxon Valdez,” he said, referring to a near-disastrous Moon mission 40 years ago.

“Access to this well-site is through technology that is owned in the private sector,” Allen said, referring to remotely operated vehicles and sensors owned by BP.

Even so, the company has largely done what officials have asked, Allen said. Most recently, it responded to an EPA directive to find a less toxic chemical dispersant to break up the oil underwater.

In two instances – finding samples from the bottom of the ocean to test dispersants and distributing booms to block the oil – BP did not respond as quickly as officials had hoped, Allen said. In both cases they ultimately complied.
“Personally, whenever I have problem I call (BP CEO) Tony Hayward” on his cell phone, Allen said.

Associated Press writers Frederic J. Frommer and Ben Feller in Washington, Janet McConnaughey in New Orleans, Matt Sedensky in Marathon, Fla., Ray Henry in Atlanta and Holbrook Mohr in Jackson, Miss., and Michelle Roberts in San Antonio contributed to this story.

Thanks to Richard Charter as ever!

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gIXWYBTpLtSayJtg41LKXpxSxVPAD9FRDUHG0

By GREG BLUESTEIN (AP) – 6 hours ago–May 22, 2010
ROBERT, La. – BP now says it will likely be at least Tuesday before engineers can shoot heavy mud into a blown-out well spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

Three ultra-deepwater rigs and other equipment are at the site where the Deepwater Horizon oil platform exploded April 20. They’re preparing for a delicate procedure called a “top kill” that BP hopes will stop the flow of oil from the well.

Crews will pump in heavy drilling mud, which is a thick, viscous fluid that’s twice the density of water. That should stop the oil, and then they’ll use cement to keep more from gushing out.

BP’s Doug Suttles says this hasn’t been tried at 5,000 feet underwater before, so engineers want to make sure everything is just right.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.
GRAND ISLE, Louisiana (AP) – Officials closed the public beach here Friday as thick gobs of oil resembling melted chocolate washed up, a very visible reminder of the blown-out well that has been spewing crude into the Gulf of Mexico for a month.

Up to now, only tar balls and a light sheen had come ashore. But oil was starting to hit the beach at this island resort community in various forms – light sheens, orange-colored splotches and heavier brown sheets – said Chris Roberts, a local official who surveyed the area Friday morning.

At least 6 million gallons (22 million liters) have gushed into the Gulf since the explosion, more than half of what the Exxon Valdez tanker spilled in Alaska in 1989. A growing number of scientists believe it’s more.

BP PLC was leasing the Deepwater Horizon rig when it exploded April 20, killing 11 workers and triggering the massive spill. The company conceded Thursday what some scientists have been saying for weeks: More oil is flowing from the leak than BP and the Coast Guard had previously estimated.

Brown and vivid orange globs and sheets of foul-smelling oil the consistency of latex paint have also begun coating the reeds and grasses of Louisiana’s wetlands, home to rare birds, mammals and a rich variety of marine life.

A deep, stagnant ooze sat in the middle of a particularly devastated marsh off the Louisiana coast where Emily Guidry Schatzel of the National Wildlife Federation was examining stained reeds.

Ralph Morgenweck of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said countless animals could be feeling the effects of the spill, though workers have found only a handful hurt or injured.
The BP executive in charge of fighting the spill, Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles, said he understands the public is frustrated with the response. He told the CBS “Early Show” on Friday that in the worst case scenario, the gusher could continue until early August, when a new well being drilled to cap the flow permanently could be finished.

But Suttles said he believes the rich Gulf environment will recover, in part because it is a large body of water and has withstood other oil spills.
“I’m optimistic, I’m very optimistic that the Gulf will fully recover,” Suttles said on CBS.

A live video feed of the underwater gusher, posted online after lawmakers exerted pressure on BP, shows what appears to be a large plume of oil and gas still spewing into the water next to the stopper-and-tube combination that BP inserted to carry some of the crude to the surface. The House of Representatives committee website where the video was posted promptly crashed because so many people were trying to view it.

BP spokesman Mark Proegler told The Associated Press that the mile-long tube inserted into a leaking pipe over the weekend is capturing 210,000 gallons (800,000 liters) of oil a day – the total amount the company and the Coast Guard have estimated is gushing into the sea – but some is still escaping. He would not say how much.

Washington, meanwhile, has turned up the pressure on BP.

The Obama administration asked the company to be more open with the public by sharing such information as measurements of the leak and the trajectory of the spill. BP has been accused of covering up the magnitude of the disaster.

Also, the Environmental Protection Agency directed BP to employ a less toxic form of the chemical dispersants it has been using to break up the oil and keep it from reaching the surface.

BP is marshaling equipment for an attempt as early as Sunday at a “top kill,” which involves pumping heavy mud into the top of the blown-out well to try to plug the gusher.

If it doesn’t work, the backup plans include a “junk shot” – shooting golf balls, shredded tires, knotted rope and other material into the well to clog it up.
“We’re now looking at a scenario where response plans include lighting the ocean on fire, pouring potent chemicals into the water, and using trash and human hair to stop the flow of oil,” said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, in a letter to President Barack Obama calling for a formal moratorium on new offshore drilling permits. “If this is the backup plan, we need to rethink taking the risk in the first place.

Special thanks to Richard Charter