The Rising Influence of Rising Affluence

[DewDiligence]

Feds Botched Response to Oil Spill (by their own admission)

[This is the cover story in Thursday’s WSJ.]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703627704575298851812383216.html

›JUNE 17, 2010
By JEFFREY BALL And JONATHAN WEISMAN

On May 19, almost a month after BP PLC's Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, the White House tallied its response to the resulting oil spill. Twenty thousand people had been mobilized to protect the shore and wildlife. More than 1.38 million feet of containment boom had been set to trap oil. And 655,000 gallons of petroleum-dispersing chemicals had been injected into the Gulf of Mexico.

That same day, as oil came ashore on Louisiana's Gulf coast, thousands of feet of boom sat on a dock in Terrebonne Parish, waiting for BP contractors to install it. Two more days would pass before it was laid offshore.

The federal government sprang into action early following the vast BP oil spill. But along the beaches and inlets of the Gulf, signs abound that the response has faltered.

A Wall Street Journal examination of the government response, based on federal documents and interviews with White House, Coast Guard, state and local officials, reveals that confusion over what to do delayed some decision-making. There were disagreements among federal agencies and between national, state and local officials.

The Coast Guard and BP each had written plans for responding to a massive Gulf oil spill. Both now say their plans failed to anticipate a disaster threatening so much coastline at once. The federal government, which under the law is in charge of fighting large spills, had to make things up as it went along.

Federal officials changed their minds on key moves, sometimes more than once. Chemical dispersants to break up the oil were approved, then judged too toxic, then re-approved. The administration criticized, debated and then partially approved a proposal by Louisiana politicians to build up eroded barrier islands to keep the oil at bay.

"We have to learn to be more flexible, more adaptable and agile," says Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the federal government's response leader, in an interview. Because two decades have passed since the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, he says, "you have an absence of battle-hardened veterans" in the government with experience fighting a massive spill. "There's a learning curve involved in that."

It is unclear to what extent swifter or more decisive action by the government would have protected the Gulf's fragile coastline. The White House's defenders say the spill would have overwhelmed any defense, no matter how well coordinated.

President Barack Obama, in his address to the nation Tuesday night, said that "a mobilization of this speed and magnitude will never be perfect, and new challenges will always arise." He added: "If there are problems in the operation, we will fix them."

Under federal law, oil companies operating offshore must file plans for responding to big spills. The Coast Guard oversees the preparation of government plans. In the event of a spill, the oil company is responsible for enacting its plan and paying for the cleanup, subject to federal oversight. If the spill is serious enough, the government takes charge, directing the response.

BP's plan, submitted to the Minerals Management Service, envisioned containing a spill far larger than government estimates of the Gulf spill. Among other things, it said it would hire contractors to skim oil from the water, spray chemical dispersants on the slick and lay boom along the coast.

The Coast Guard's spill-response plan for the area around New Orleans, updated in August 2009, said that laying boom would be one of the main ways to protect the coastline.

When Adm. Allen took charge of fighting the BP spill, he found that both sets of plans were inadequate for such a large and complex spill.

"Clearly some things could have been done better," says a BP spokesman about the company's response, which he says has been "unparalleled."

President Obama first heard of the problem the night of April 20, when a senior National Security Council aide pulled him aside to tell him a drilling rig 50 miles off the Louisiana coast had exploded. It would be "potentially a big problem," the aide said.

Adm. Allen, then the Coast Guard's commandant, was dispatched to the scene; he later said he knew right away the spill would be serious. The next day, Interior Department Deputy Secretary David Hayes flew to Louisiana to set up a command center, leaving Washington in such haste that he had to buy a change of underwear at a Louisiana K-Mart.

On April 22, the day the rig sank, the president convened his first Oval Office meeting on the disaster, with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and others. As far as they knew, no oil was leaking.

Two days later, the White House received word that oil was escaping into the Gulf. White House science adviser John Holdren, an environmental scientist, pulled aside two top security officials, White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan and National Security Council chief of staff Denis McDonough. He pressed them on what secret technology the government had—a submarine, for example—that could help, Mr. McDonough recalls.

The answer was none.

On the evening of April 28, the NSC's Mr. McDonough and a White House aide interrupted a meeting in the White House's secure situation room. Oil was gushing faster than previously believed. Officials now expected the oil sheen to reach the Louisiana coast the next day.

The federal government's priority was to keep the oil offshore, partly by laying boom. The coast has hundreds of miles of inlets, islands and marshes, which makes that strategy difficult. "There's not enough boom in the world to boom from Texas to Florida, so we're doing triage," Benjamin Cooper, a Coast Guard commander, told shrimpers and other residents in Dulac, La., in mid-May.

There were problems from the start. The first weekend in May, when the president made his initial trip to the region, the water was rough. Contractors hired by BP to lay boom off St. Bernard Parish, east of New Orleans, mostly stayed ashore, says Fred Everhardt, a councilman. Shrimpers took matters into their own hands, laying 18,000 feet of boom that weekend, compared to the roughly 4,000 feet laid by the BP contractor, Mr. Everhardt says. BP did not respond to requests for comment about the incident.

Edwin Stanton, the Coast Guard official in charge of the New Orleans region, says workers overseen by the government had laid tens of thousands of feet of boom the first week of the spill. But he acknowledges problems getting it to the right place. He says the Coast Guard decided it needed to accommodate local parish presidents, who all demanded boom even though they all didn't equally need it. Without the competing demands, he says, "we might have been able to use what boom we had to greater effect."

To make matters worse, the government didn't have the right kind of boom. Boom built for open ocean is bigger and stronger than that made for flat, sheltered water. The bigger boom is expensive and was in short supply, Mr. Stanton says.

"We really didn't have the appropriate boom sizes," he says. "I think we would have liked to put out open-water boom at the big passes, but we just didn't have enough."

As the oil spread east, Alabama Gov. Bob Riley wanted to stop it from crossing into Perdido Bay, a key to Alabama and Florida's fishing and tourism industries. In mid-May, the governor and Coast Guard officials worked out a plan to hold the oil back using heavy boom built for open ocean.

Alabama authorities scoured the globe for the boom they needed, says a spokesman for the governor. In late May, they found it in Bahrain and flew it to the Alabama coast. Days later, the Coast Guard gave it to Louisiana.

Mr. Riley was furious. The Coast Guard and Alabama authorities instead deployed lighter boom. On June 10, oil breached Perdido Bay.

"This isn't a fight between Louisiana and Alabama, it's not between governors," the governor's spokesman says. "But it is incredibly disappointing to have those resources taken from us."

A spokesman for Adm. Allen says the boom was needed to protect a bay in Louisiana, and was taken "well before oil was in sight off Alabama."

Louisiana officials, frustrated that the boom wasn't working, proposed building sand "berms" along the coast to block oil from reaching shore. Dredges would suck sand from the sea floor and spray it in a protective arc along barrier islands. On May 11, state officials asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for an emergency permit to build some 130 miles of berms.

Several federal agencies criticized the proposal. In written comments to the Army Corps of Engineers, the Environmental Protection Agency said the berms might not be built in time to stop oil from hitting shore. It worried the process might spread oil-tainted sand and change the water's flow, possibly hurting marshes. White House officials also were skeptical.

Frustrated by the delay, Louisiana's Republican governor, Bobby Jindal, sent the Louisiana Army National Guard to plug gaps in barrier islands, for which the state had legal authority.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson was worried about another threat: the use of dispersants, chemicals designed to break oil into particles that can be digested by bacteria. BP was using unprecedented amounts—about 1.3 million gallons so far, according to federal officials.

According to EPA data, one dispersant, Corexit 9500, is especially toxic to the shrimp and fish used in tests. But it was available in large quantities, so that's what BP was using.

On May 10, with the boom and berm plans foundering, Ms. Jackson met about 25 Louisiana State University scientists to discuss the spill. Most of the scientists urged her not to let BP spray dispersants directly at the leaking well without more research, recalls Robert Carney, one of the LSU professors. Ms. Jackson responded that the EPA was "under extreme pressure from BP" to approve the move, Mr. Carney recalls. An EPA official confirmed Ms. Jackson met with the LSU scientists.

Five days later, the EPA said it would let BP spray the dispersant on the wellhead.

In mid-May, large globs of oil started washing ashore.

The EPA, under pressure from scientists and environmental groups, abruptly turned against using the dispersant Corexit. On May 20, a day after Ms. Jackson was grilled by lawmakers, the EPA said it had given BP until that night to find a less-toxic alternative or explain why it couldn't. "We felt it was important to ensure that all possible options were being explored," Ms. Jackson said.

BP responded in a letter that makers of other dispersants wouldn't be able to supply large volumes for 10 to 14 days. It said it intended to keep using Corexit, which it said "appears to have fewer long-term effects than other dispersants."

In Terrebonne Parish, BP contractors still hadn't installed the boom, angering Coast Guard officials. "I could just see the fury in their eyes," Michel Claudet, parish president, says of the Coast Guard officials. The poor coordination with BP contractors, he says, "was just a common occurrence." Boom installation finally began on May 21.

Interior Secretary Salazar lit into BP on a trip to Louisiana, threatening to "push them out of the way" and let the government take over ground-level operations. He was contradicted by the Coast Guard's Adm. Allen, who suggested the government didn't have the technical know-how to fight the spill alone.

On May 24, the EPA's Ms. Jackson said the agency wouldn't stop BP from using Corexit, after all, given the lack of alternatives. She said BP would have to "significantly" cut the amount it was using while it and the EPA looked for a better approach.

Louisiana's Gov. Jindal was losing patience. That same day, Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano traveled to Gulf and poured cold water on Louisiana's berm plan. The administration, she said, was looking into "some responses that would be as effective" without the environmental risks.

Standing by Ms. Napolitano, Mr. Jindal didn't disguise his frustration. "We know we have to take action and take matters into our own hands if we are going to win this fight to protect our coast," he said.

On May 27, the administration changed course on the berms. The Corps of Engineers authorized construction of about 40 miles of the 130 miles of berm proposed by Louisiana. Complicating matters, Adm. Allen ordered BP to pay for only a small portion of the 40 miles, to "assess" their effectiveness.

Mr. Obama got an earful when he met state and parish officials the next day on a visit to Grand Isle, a barrier island south of New Orleans. BP crews had arrived prior to the president's arrival and worked feverishly to tidy up the beaches. They left after he flew out.

Before leaving, the president ordered Adm. Allen to look into building more berms. On June 1, Adm. Allen convened a meeting in New Orleans, where Gov. Jindal and parish chiefs demanded BP pay for more berms. The next day, Adm. Allen said the administration was ordering BP to pay for all 40 miles authorized. The work began Sunday.‹