Old clean-up tactics for high-tech drill spill

[madmax]

By James C. McKinley Jr. and Leslie Kaufman
updated 1 hour, 4 minutes ago

Old clean-up tactics for high-tech drill spill
‘It is like building the fire truck when your house is on fire,’ consultant says
HOUSTON - As hopes dim for containing the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico anytime soon, more people are asking why the industry was not better prepared to react.

Members of Congress are holding hearings this week and demanding to know why the federal Minerals Management Service did not force oil companies to take more precautions. Environmentalists are saying they tried to raise the alarm to Congressional committees that the industry had no way to respond to a catastrophic blowout a mile below the sea.

Local officials in the gulf are beginning to ask, “What was Plan B?” The answer, oil industry engineers are acknowledging, was to deploy technology that has not changed much in 20 years — booms, skimmers and chemical dispersants — even as the drilling technology itself has improved.

“They have horribly underestimated the likelihood of a spill and therefore horribly underestimated the consequences of something going wrong,” said Robert G. Bea, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies offshore drilling. “So what we have now is some equivalent of a fire drill with paper towels and buckets for cleanup.”

MORE: Caution continue only if you've taken your blood pressure meds.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37078448/ns/us_news-the_new_york_times/

[90-percent]

1. Root Cause

TOO MUCH REGULATION

If they didn't have to waste resources following all those silly rules they could have given more to fixing potential disasters.

Don't any of you DU'ers believe in the FREE MARKET anymore?

-90% Jimmy

:sarcasm:

[madmax]

2. Corporations and the Rightwing only

want to regulate what THEY WANT to regulate. Like my uterus, what I smoke, who I pray to.

Think about this. How much media time was devoted to MJ's untimely death. I loved MJ but, 9 days!! 24/7 So far I would venture to say that there was more air time devoted to the Staten Island Ferry bump in which no one died. THIS is a mega monster disaster and receives negligable reporting.

Completely forget it with this weeks nomination of Kagan for USSC.