Coast Guard approves protective sand barrier

[Barrett808]

Source: The New York Times

Adm. Thad Allen of the Coast Guard on Thursday approved part of a plan by Louisiana officials to repel oil from the BP spill by building a barrier of dredged sand along islands off the state’s southeast coast.

The decision allows Louisiana to immediately begin construction of barriers directly to the east and west of the Mississippi River. There, oil is already swamping the coast.

Roughly half of an 86-mile barrier originally proposed by the state was approved, with construction authorized under an emergency permit granted by the Army Corps of Engineers.

Read more: http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2010/05/coast-guard-approves-protective-sand.html

[Oregone]

1. Wow....just in time, no?

"There, oil is already swamping the coast."

[Pirate Smile]

2. It is supposed to take 6-9 months to do.

[aquart]

4. So...pointless and useless? Is that what you're saying?

What have they got that could have been started on the day of the spill and would have been ready by now?

[Jennicut]

6. Some of the sand berms could inadvertently

send oil to Mississippi. The Army Corp of Engineers needed to approve it, they approved some of the sand berms. Not sure why it took that long to approve it but most experts think it is a really tough thing to do this quickly even if they had started awhile ago. It is not the catchall answer. But Jindal whined a lot, so there you go. And he kept changing the plans of HOW to do the sand berms, so the Army Corp of Engineers had to redo their study a few times.

"But while Jindal and the state's congressional delegation have waged an us-vs.-them battle with the federal government over what they term a slow, bureaucratic response, the state's plan itself is a work in progress that raises considerable financial and ecological questions.

In the two weeks since the idea was introduced, it has already been radically reshaped. Originally, the sand for the islands would have come from the nearby sea bottom. In its current form, the plan will require the sand to be taken from as far as 50 to 100 miles from the construction site, adding $100 million to the original $250 million projected cost."
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/05/sand_barrier_idea_faces_bureau.html

[Traveling_Home]

8. AP Report 5/26 "We could have had 10 miles of it built by now..."

"We could have had 10 miles of it built by now if they had given us the green light," said Garret Graves, chairman of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority. "We're not going to do anything that would cause shoring of oil in Mississippi."

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_GULF_OIL_SPILL_BARRIER_ISLANDS_MSOL-?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

[FreeJG]

3. Over a month? What a joke!

[thecrow]

5. Why didn't they do this about a month ago?

Because nothing says "coast" and "guard" more than the Coast Guard.
Didn't they see this as a problem when it was like 40 miles away?????
I know that people take too long to make decisions, but I think everyone KNEW that the oil was coming.

Maybe we need computers to make these difficult decisions for us?
At least they would be logical and unRepublican.

[Oregone]

7. They were too busy earlier developing talking points to debunk the notion this is his Katrina

Only Politicians 2.0 can multi-task

[Lucky 13]

11. See my explanation below...

[Lucky 13]

9. This wasn't approved earlier because...

... it's not a great idea. Look I'm an environmentalist by profession and want to do anything to save habitat, but this isn't going to do it. Not only do I work with EPA, FWS, NOAA, but I have close contacts in US Army Corps of Engineers and have gotten detailed explanations on this....

1) They will take months to construct.... too late to make a difference. Even if they had started building them the DAY the oil rig blew, it would have been too late.

2)Where will they get the sand/sediment? Dredging nearby? That will destroy bottom habitat. Possibly HEALTHY bottom habitat (if the dispersants haven't sunk the oil to the bottom... which in most cases it looks like it hasn't. It's either at the top or in the water column)

3) Being oiled is like being pregnant. You can't be a little bit oiled. Just like you can't be a little bit pregnant. The wetlands are either oiled or they aren't. And they are already oiled. It's too late.

4) These berms will ultimately fail for the same reason the booms failed. The minute the waves get high, the water (and oil) will wash right over top and hit the shoreline anyway. One major storm in the Gulf and they will be ineffective. And it's hurricane season, BTW.

SO... building these things is a huge fucking waste of time and could actually destroy more habitat than they save.

[Oregone]

10. So what should they have done?

Like, ya know, 35 or so days ago?

[Lucky 13]

12. There were no good solutions.

That's the problem.

One idea was to have surrounded the rig with heavy booms to keep the oil from escaping that area... but at the depth it was coming from, it would have drifted beyond that zone anyway.

There should have been fail safes on the rigs, but BP never installed them and our agencies never inspected. They should have had a contingency plan, but BP and our agencies never bothered to develop one.

Once the rig was blown, there were no good solutions. None. Or at least none that I'm aware of.

We are completely unequipped to deal with this kind of ecological disaster.

And what's worse is there is no way to clean the wetlands once they are oiled. To "clean" them would be to destroy them.

This is why for the past month, I've felt like hurling myself off a bridge. There are no good solutions. I believe it's over for the northern Gulf. A dead zone for years, decades to come.

[Oregone]

13. So give up?

Well, since there are no good solutions (or approaches), then I guess the administration did nothing wrong, right? The response was therefore 100% appropriate under that consideration, no matter what the response was.

[BeFree]

14. Obama admitted some mistakes today

Blew me away. You can bet BP told him that they had this: don't worry. Obama knows better now.

We'll see what happens from this day forward, but I'm betting we see it getting better because the administration is no longer being treated like a mushroom by BP.

[Lucky 13]

16. I didn't say that.

I think the problem is we are out of good ideas, so people are resorting to bad ideas.

I hear all these people screaming, "DO SOMETHING"...

and I want to scream with them...

but think rationally with me for a moment... WHAT are we supposed to do? Seriously WHAT? I am totally open to hearing any good ideas. Hell, forget "good". Just ideas. Gimme anything you got.

WHAT are we, as a people, as a government, are supposed to do? Engineers with Ph.D.'s and years of experience in drilling operations are scratching their heads. Environmentalists are scratching their heads. No one has any experience with anything of this size under these conditions.

This is beyond our scope. We do not have the technology or capabilities to deal with this. BP doesn't have them. The government doesn't have them. Because they don't exist.

Our opportunity to avoid this was 1) by not allowing drilling at that depth or preferably drilling at all, 2) by requiring fail safes on the rigs and inspecting them, 3) thinking about a worst case scenario BEFORE it happened and developing contingency plans. We failed to do all those things and now THIS is the consequence of which we have little or no control over the outcome.

Could we have done some things different POST explosion? Yeah. We never should have used dispersants. It's gonna make things worse in my estimation. But in terms of stopping the oil from escaping or preventing the oil from doing harm... I just don't know...

I've dedicated my whole life to conservation, both personally and professionally. And I'm sick about it. Just sick. Angry. Hopeless. And praying for a good idea.

[phleshdef]

15. In other words, Jindal is wasting more money so he can keep the fake tough guy act up.

[Lucky 13]

17. Probably. Or people are out of good ideas so they are resorting to bad ones.

Or it's $$$$$ for Louisiana...

I dunno.