While Congress and President Obama were taking their shots at BP in Washington, the government was standing in the way of preventing the oil leaking in the Gulf from doing any more damage. It occurs to me that since the government won't be paying for the damage done by the oil spill, their desire to clean it up quickly might not be as strong as it would be if they were footing the bill.
According to ABC News today, the Coast Guard yesterday stopped the crude-oil barges that Governor Jindal had sent to vacuum up the oil spill. There was sixteen barges sitting idle today after they had sucked up thousands of gallons of crude oil in the very recent past. The Coast Guard explained that their reason for stopping the barges was that the Coast Guard "needed to confirm that there were fire extinguishers and life vests on board, and then it had trouble contacting the people who built the barges."
According to the article:
"The governor (Alabama Governor Bob Riley) said the problem is there's still no single person giving a "yes" or "no." While the Gulf Coast governors have developed plans with the Coast Guard's command center in the Gulf, things begin to shift when other agencies start weighing in, like the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
""It's like this huge committee down there," Riley said, "and every decision that we try to implement, any one person on that committee has absolute veto power.""
It is sad that our government is so wrapped up in red tape that they are preventing actions that will lessen the environmental impact of this oil spill.
Leave a comment