Oil-spill panel calls Jindal's sand berms a $220M waste

[sabra]

Source: USA Today

The presidential commission investigating the BP Gulf of Mexico spill has concluded that Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal wasted $220 million building controversial sand berms that captured a "minuscule amount" of oil and proved to be "underwhelmingly effective" and "overwhelmingly expensive."

The 36 miles of berms, constructed over the objections of many scientists and federal agencies, trapped only about 1,000 barrels of oil out of the nearly 5 million barrels that spilled between April and July, the National Oil Spill Commission said in a draft report released today.

Retired Coast Guard admiral Thad Allen, who headed the spill response, reversed himself and approved the berms amid public pressure from Jindal and other Gulf Coast officials and politicians.

Jindal, a Republican, has called the berms a "great success" and "our last line of defense." His office would not comment, directing reporters to Garret Graves, the state official coordinating the berm project. He rejected the commission's conclusions.

Read more: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/12/oil-spill-panel-calls-jindals-sand-berms-a-220m-waste/1

[Crazy Dave]

1. Given the high toxicity of the oil dispersants used...

If I have a choice I'd take the sand berms.

[social_critic]

18. The oil dispersants aren't stopped by berms

On the other hand, the berms impede the flow of oxygenated water into the wetlands, which leads to oxygen depletion and fish kills.

[The Flaming Red Head]

2. Yeah dumping corexit and poisoning the environment for next thousand years has been a great success

I'll take the berms, too.

[FLPanhandle]

3. I'll give him credit for trying

My complaints:

1) Comparing the 1,000 barrels captured against the entire 5 million spilled is either stupid or disingenuous. It should be compared to how many barrels of oil that ended up in the marshes. for example: If 1,000 barrels ended up in the marshes, then the barriers stopped half the oil that would have ended up there.

2) As for the cost, it was paid for by BP. If it cost BP 100 million to stop even 1 barrel of oil, I'm okay with that. I'm not sitting around wishing that BP had a bigger profit.

3) It was still better than the Coast Guard/BP plan of letting it wash ashore.


Now that I've defended a republican, I need to go take a shower.

[The Flaming Red Head]

4. You're not defending a Repug. You're defending an ecosystem.

This isn't really about politics, it's about the environment.

[pitohui]

28. no that person is NOT defending an ecosystem, they are destroying it

i wish people who don't have a dog in the hunt would have gotten their happy asses down here and seen what the sand berms really did to the birds and the marshes

the sand berms were KILLING us and jindal knew it, he just didn't fucking care because he wanted to steal that damn money

as for people who don't have a clue and have never seen a marsh or apparently ever stepped foot in louisiana, why don't you try to inform yourself first?

do you know how many nests were killed while jindal moved sand around to line his fucking pockets? no you don't and you don't care

you are supporting theft and it makes me sick, frankly

the other poster SHOULD take a shower, that person SHOULD be deeply ashamed of the evil they are supporting

[The Flaming Red Head]

38. So you support dumping corexit to hide the problem then.

[immoderate]

42. Good example of the false choice fallacy.

--imm

[social_critic]

19. Big if, that's $200,000 per barrel of oil stopped

It must be nice to support wasted money. It's like the guys who support the war in Afghanistan...nothing one says can convince them it's a huge waste of money.

[FLPanhandle]

25. When it;s oil in your own backyard, its not a "waste of money"

It's less BP profits. Maybe if you lived on the Gulf Coast, you won't consider is "wasted money"

[pitohui]

27. for trying, after he robbed our state of hundreds of millions?

it really pisses me off that those of you who don't have to live w. the consequences of this bold theft want to "give him credit for trying"

i cannot say what i really feel and stay w.in DU rules

but people just get a conscience

our universities have been cut back, our hospitals have not been re built, ALL SO JINDAL COULD POCKET HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS TO GO TO STEALING REPUBLICAN SCUMBAG CONTRACTORS

that is not fucking "trying," that is just evil, and those who support evil need to look hard in the mirror

[GoCubsGo]

5. Too bad the article doesn't mention...

...the amount of environmental damage the construction of those berms likely CAUSED. What damage did all that trucked-in sand do to nesting shorebird habitat. Or, to the area from where the sand was dredged? How much of the remaining shellfish population was screwed up because those berms altered the currents? How many fish nurseries were obliterated when that sand was dumped on the seagrass beds? What a fucking waste.

[The Flaming Red Head]

7. What about the continued damage the corexit is doing

And just for the record I hated Jindal when he was head of the department of Health and Hospitals in Louisiana and want to puke at the idea of him being President, so I am not defending him, but this current (Obama) administration really fucked over the gulf coast and we all know it.

[GoCubsGo]

9. What about it?

The corexit will disperse and break down a lot faster than those sand berms will. The berms were a goddamn stupid idea, and only made a bad situation worse. They were warned before they even started that this wasn't going to work. That habitat is now permanently altered, and likely not for the better. You can harp all you want about corexit, but it doesn't change the fact that this was an idiotic boondoggle.

[The Flaming Red Head]

12. Bullshit the GOM is a food source for animals as well as people

When we look back at how this was handled (historically) Corexit is going to be the biggest mistake not the berms.

We might see famine in the US in our lifetimes, because of this, once that shit got into the Mangrove Swamps it was all over.

[GoCubsGo]

41. Nobody is arguing which is the bigger mistake.

THE TWO ARE NOT RELATED!!!!! Whether or not they used corexit is irrelevant. to this story. The berms were a mistake. They would have been a mistake even if the corexit wasn't used. The damage caused by the berms would be the same either way. What about that do you not understand????

[social_critic]

20. Corexit isn't doing any continued damage the berms are stopping

Jindal is a real idiot, but I guess there's people willing to defend idiocy.

[The Flaming Red Head]

8. The berms will wash away but the corexit will cause lasting damage

And one more time. I hate Jindal!

Edit to add:

Sorry I meant for this post to answer #6 but got it in the wrong order

[GoCubsGo]

10. No. They won't

And, I really don't care that you hate Jindal. This was still a stupid idea.

[The Flaming Red Head]

13. You've never walked the coast after a hurricane have you?

nt

[pitohui]

30. neither have you, red head

it's obv. from your posts what you are, and it isn't a person from louisiana who has ever walked on a beach and seen what the berms do

it isn't a person who has seen what happens to fake barrier islands/sand berms but i'll give you a clue, they don't stay where they're put!

if you have ever stepped closer to the coast than bossier city i'd be damn amazed

the only people who supported jindal's crap are the racists who jump on any bandwagon to get obama's goat and the stealing contractors who are happy to steal millions to move sand around

[The Flaming Red Head]

31. Yes I have. I used to live in Franklin in St Mary Parrish and no I'm not racist.

I won't tell you what my last name used to be, but it's alot like Smith down there.

[The Flaming Red Head]

33. Accusing me of being racist because I disagree. I have a little of every race in my family tree.

They talked about building berms before this spill just about all my life and I'm 47. It's not something they just pulled out their ass. They tried something and it didn't work, but what about the poison? How much did that cost? How many people are ill? How much wildlife are we going to loose because of that?

[GoCubsGo]

34. You do understand my state gets hurricanes, don't you?

Ever hear of Hurricane Hugo? Yes, I have seen what hurricanes do to coastlines. Do you know anything about ocean currents and dilution? I do.

[trud]

14. Yes. They will.

As someone who lives on the coast in New England, I can tell you there is zero permanent about the coastline. One good hurricane and those berms are history.

If that oil had been headed towards the cove I live on, I would have been out there shoveling myself.

[The Flaming Red Head]

15. I'd rather have sand blown in my face than poison any day.

I'm tired of the politicization of this crisis and the Obama apologist and one side blaming the other, this is global, this is forever.

[social_critic]

32. It's not global, it's not forever, and the berms are a failure

I know melodrama is easy to write, but this is just about a governor showing he doesn't know how to govern in a crisis. The best way to stop oil getting into a swamp is to put absorbent boom in front of it. And please don't bring up the corexit. Corexit breaks down in sunlight. There's nothing left by now, if it reached shallow water. It's gone.

[GoCubsGo]

36. I am well aware of that.

My point was not that the berms will last forever. It was that they will be around long after the corexit is gone.

[pitohui]

29. thanks, cubs, it caused a LOT of damage and destruction

the nesting shorebirds were killed where they sat on some of the beaches and that's just for starters

[GoCubsGo]

37. You're welcome.

Seems some can't see the forest for the trees around here.

[bongbong]

6. Truest analogy I can think of

"repigs & FAIL go together like Mom & Apple Pie"

[hedgehog]

11. Granted, the money came from BP, but who was paid to supply

and move the sand? I'm betting some of Jindal's friends made out well on this deal.


My understanding is that the creation of a sand beach, or berm, or barrier island, whatever you might cal it, can have unexpected effects on nearby existing structures. For example, I build a beach here and all of a sudden a beach over there washes away. I know around here in Upstate New York, you can't reinforce a creek bank or haul away gravel from a sand bar without checking with a number of agencies. That's to protect your neighbors from the consequences of your actions. Eighteen Mile Creek ain't the Gulf of Mexico, of course, but you get the picture.

[social_critic]

23. but BP writes it off taxes - it cost $80 million to the US taxpayer

The BP subsidiary paying for the berms was a US based corp paying 36 % income tax. This means the US Federal government paid 36 % of the total cost - because BP will write it off taxes as a business expense. Which means the US tax payer got nicked for about $80 million

[Roy Rolling]

16. not zero sum game

It is not a question of dispersants or sand berms, that is as bogus as tax cuts or unemplyment benefits. They are two separate issues. The berms were a bad idea regardless of the bad idea of dispersants, and would not have caught much more oil (1,000 barrels out of 5,000,000 leaked) if dispersants were not used. The point here is that, for political purposes and to enrich their corporate friends, $200 million was spent on a scientifically dubious theory.

Shaking down BP for $200 million is unethical regardless of how bad they screwed up the GOM. If someone does a shred of investigation they will see that the idea was unworkable and little more than a p.r. stunt and a political payback to favored contractors. It was also a way for Republicans to demonstrate that Obama was not doing the right thing to fight the pollution. Mixing politics with the science of this as dangerous as mixing politics with the science of global warming.

The $200 million spent could have been spent elsewhere and captured much more than 1,000 barrels of oil.

[The Flaming Red Head]

17. It's just a distraction away from the dispersant's and the spill

The people and wildlife suffering in Louisiana and not seeing a penny of BP money would love to know that people like you are so worried for that poor little multi-billion, multi-national corporation.

Everything is dead and dying down there and you aren't seeing it in the MSM and that is the issue!

[FLPanhandle]

21. and yet you use an invalid zero sum game argument

"The $200 million spent could have been spent elsewhere and captured much more than 1,000 barrels of oil."

That assumes that BP had a set amount of money, they used it all, and the $200 million took away from some other undefined solution. Pure Zero Sum argument. First off, BP had billions allocated for the effort, the administration/BP said everything can could be done was being done, and what is this "solution" that wasn't funded because of the berm effort?

[pitohui]

22. i told you that when he first came out w. this crap

jindal robbed this state blind, giving hundreds of millions to his backers -- meanwhile the schools and colleges are being told to fuck it, there isn't even money for ATHLETIC scholarships, forget about education

if you ever think a republican is well meaning and trying to do good, well, just go to the doctor and get your head examined

they are ALL thieves, every last one of them

jindal is the lowest of the low to exploit and rob the state like this

what really made me sick was some DUers supported his theft, and now the students are paying the price of highway robbery

it takes v. little knowledge of previous sand berms built in this country to know they do not, can not, never have worked -- it was a bold theft, i'll hand him that, stealing hundreds of millions to move sand around

[social_critic]

26. It was a scam

I bet the companies building the berms paid off - and Jindal's bank account is fatter. The cash is out there somewhere.

[KamaAina]

24. How did the phrase "sand berms" end up in there?

Otherwise, spot on. :P

[robinlynne]

35. I would check who the contractor is.

[hugo_from_TN]

39. 1000 barrels of oil not in the marshes

Screw BP if it was expensive stopping those barrels.

[CLANG]

40. Government waste! Hurry, call a Republican! er,, what? Oh, crap!

[truthisfreedom]

43. Might want to read the entire article. Remaining money (which came from BP, not taxpayers) is being

used to restore barrier islands. $160M left to do that project.