We are approaching that time of the year when reflections on events and lessons learned from the previous twelve months are in vogue – and, depressingly more often than not, the events are tragic and no lessons were learned. It has not been the habit of Through the Sandglass to indulge in such reflections, but this year the timing of a report on a topic that your humble correspondent devoted much attention to is too compelling to ignore. I refer, of course, to the draft report of the Presidential Commission investigating the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. As reported in the New York Times, “A chain of sand berms built by the State of Louisiana to block and capture oil from BP’s runaway well in the Gulf of Mexico stopped a “minuscule” amount of oil and was largely a waste of money.”
A waste of a very large amount of money. The political posturing and dissembling (there are other words that I’m tempted to use, but I won’t) beggars belief – but it continues, as does the mindless bulldozing (the image above is from last week). Anyone who has read the numerous dispatches in this blog and, more importantly, the links to reports and views of people who actually know what they are talking about, will have no problem discerning the absurdity of some of the statements of Louisiana officials quoted below; the idea that this has now transmuted into a barrier island restoration project would be laughable if it were not so dangerous. This whole project has been, for want of a better word, a scam.
I will take the liberty of quoting from the New York Times writer, John Collins Rudolf, who, in his report of the 16th December, wrote:
A chain of sand berms built by the State of Louisiana to block and capture oil from BP’s runaway well in the Gulf of Mexico stopped a “minuscule” amount of oil and was largely a waste of money, the staff of the presidential commission investigating the spill said in a report issued on Thursday.
The report, a draft, found that a decision by Thad W. Allen, the retired Coast Guard admiral who led the spill response, to approve construction of the berms was made under “intense political pressure” from federal, state and local politicians and against the advice of an expert panel advising on the spill response.
“The decision to green-light the underwhelmingly effective, overwhelmingly expensive Louisiana berms project was flawed,” the commission staff wrote.
The berms were first proposed by a Dutch engineering firm and became a top priority for Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, who exhorted President Obama and federal agencies to authorize the project. The state drew up plans for 101 miles of berms and requested a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers.
The panel of experts advising the response effort determined that the structures could not be built quickly enough, and federal responders initially leaned toward rejecting the plan, the report found. But after aggressive lobbying by state and local officials and intervention by the White House, Admiral Allen approved the construction of six segments of berms in late May. BP then agreed to pay $360 million for construction of approximately 40 miles of berms.
In a statement, Admiral Allen said that responsibility for authorizing the barriers rested solely with him. “The ultimate approval of this proposal was my decision,” he wrote.
By October, about 10 miles of berms had been built several miles from the gulf coastline at a cost of $220 million, with construction paid for entirely by BP. Louisiana officials estimate that the berms stopped 1,000 barrels of oil from the spill.
By contrast, more than 800,000 barrels were captured at the wellhead, and roughly 270,000 barrels were burned off by Coast Guard vessels. Skimming operations recovered at least 34 million gallons of oil-water mixture.
“$220 million for a spill response measure that trapped not much more than 1,000 barrels of oil is not a compelling cost-benefit tradeoff,” the commission staff wrote.
In a letter to the commission on Thursday, Garret Graves, director of the Louisiana Office of Coastal Activities and leader of the sand berm project, insisted that the berms had achieved their purpose. “A number of photographs, surveys and interviews suggest that the berms were successful at stopping oil,” Mr. Graves wrote.
Governor Jindal criticized the report’s conclusions as “partisan revisionist history,” and drew attention to the coastal restoration benefits of the sand berms. “We are thrilled that this has become the state’s largest barrier island restoration project in history,” Mr. Jindal said.
Louisiana officials continued to build the berms months after BP’s well was capped, when much of the rest of the oil spill response had shifted from stopping oil to long-term restoration.
In October, under criticism from federal officials and environmental groups, the state declared it would largely halt construction of new berms and shift about $100 million of the remaining project money into a long-term coastal restoration effort.
The report acknowledged that the berms could potentially have a positive impact on Louisiana’s degraded coastline, but said that issue should be considered separately from their value as an oil spill response.
The Washington Post carried an article on the report in which it stated that:
The report cites an e-mail from Thad W. Allen, the retired Coast Guard admiral who was the federal government's point man on the spill, in which he asked, "What are the chances we could pick a couple of no-brainer projects and call them prototypes to give us some trade space on the larger issue and give that to [Louisiana Gov. Bobby] Jindal this weekend?"
I am, like, I suspect, many people, lost for further words. I will simply end with a few seasonal lines penned by the poet-in-residence at Through the Sandglass, Richard Bready:
Jindal berms, Jindal berms,
Swindle all the way,
Hardly stopped a drop of oil but got a lot of pay.
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