Bobby Jindal's 'Crummy' Sand Berms Didn't Really Stop Any Spilled Oil

[meegbear]

The GOP's rising star, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, was the driving force behind the construction of sand berms to curb the Gulf oil spill. They were considered environmentally unsound, and a presidential commission has found that they didn't even work.

A draft of the commission's report was released yesterday, and aside from the obvious (BP), Jindal comes out looking pretty scummy. That shouldn't really shock anyone, but the particulars of the berm deal are pretty bad. So what really happened? Well, the berms cost about $220 million to build with another $140 million committed to finish the project. The report describes them as "underwhelmingly effective, and overwhelmingly expensive." The sand berm project got nearly three times more money than any other oil spill relief project in Jindal's state of Louisiana.

But how does Jindal himself feel about the berms' effectiveness? According to Bloomberg, on November 15, Jindal appeared on the Today Show touting the project's effectiveness: "The reality is, it worked. And the reality is, it prevented that oil from getting into the wetlands 15 to 20 miles away." Hmm. How well did it work? According to the presidential commission's report, the berms only stopped about 1,000 barrels of oil... out of about 5 million barrels that were spilled into the Gulf of Mexico. Nice try, Bobby!

And Jindal could have listened to skeptical experts during a June meeting to weight the pros and cons of moving ahead with the project. According to the report, "A Coast Guard officer present at the summit offered a similar assessment. According to that officer, the experts ‘all said it's pretty crummy' and offered no ‘glowing endorsements' of berms as a spill response measure." That sure doesn't sound like something a fiscally responsible Republican would get behind.

Jindal responded with a typically shitty statement, calling the report "partisan revisionist history at taxpayer expense," which means we can call Bobby's Berms "the result of very little scientific evidence, at the environment, and people of Louisiana's expense," right? So, to all of the Gulf residents struggling to squeeze money out of BP in the wake of the oil spill, you can thank Bobby Jindal for sucking up hundreds of millions of dollars for a joke of a relief project.

http://gawker.com/5714484/bobby-jindals-crummy-sand-berms-didnt-really-stop-any-spilled-oil

[Hubert Flottz]

1. If Poopy Pants Vitter can get elected in Louisiana

Bobby can do no wrong.

[Tippy]

2. Wonder how much Jindal made off the deal......????

[FLPanhandle]

3. As opposed to the coast guard/BP plan of doing nothing.

I give him credit for stopping 1,000 barrels of oil at BP's expense. It's 1,000 more barrels than BP would have stopped.

That doesn't take away from the fact his another in a long line of swarmy LA politicians.

[Roy Rolling]

6. Unnecessary

The slam at Louisiana is unnecessary, every state has their share of worthless politicians. Florida is no exception, but I will not be so crass as to name names. Jindal is worthless because he is a Republican ass-kisser, not because he comes from Louisiana. Comments like these distract from the real cause of corruptions---Republican and corporate policy---by making it seem there is "someting in the water" of a particular locale. Louisiana is not to blame, greedy politicans and money interests that fund them are. It is the same for Louisiana as Florida.

[Roy Rolling]

4. It's Obama's fault

for catching all the oil before it had the chance to be deposited on sand berms. Why does Obama hate giving jobs to US corporations? :sarcasm:

[FSogol]

5. Bobby Jindal's 'Crummy' Political Ideas Don't Really Do Anything.

:shrug:

[Johonny]

7. think of all the Volcanoes you could have monitored for that dough

[meegbear]

8. +1