Month: May 2010

BP Workers Imperiled. Imagine That.

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

I really could back a law that carried the death penalty for environmental damage – because nothing else seems to work:

WASHINGTON — Federal regulators complained in an internal memo about “significant deficiencies” in BP’s handling of the safety of oil-spill workers and asked the Coast Guard to help pressure the company to address a litany of concerns.

The memo, written by a Labor Department official last week, reveals the Obama administration’s growing concerns about potential health and safety problems posed by the oil spill.

BP said it has deployed about 22,000 workers to combat the spill.

David Michaels, assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health who wrote the memo, raised the concerns Tuesday, the day before seven oil-spill workers on boats off the coast of Louisiana were hospitalized after experiencing nausea, dizziness and headaches.

In his memo to Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, Michaels said his agency has witnessed numerous problems at several work sites.

“The organizational systems that BP currently has in place, particularly those related to worker safety and health training, protective equipment, and site monitoring, are not adequate for the current situation or the projected increase in cleanup operations,” Michaels wrote.

He added that BP “has also not been forthcoming with basic, but critical, safety and health information on injuries and exposures.”

Rats

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

I was supposed to go to a barbecue today, but it’s on the other side of town and I don’t think I should drive on the expressway until I get my car fixed. Grrr.

Yep

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Atrios:

Occasionally when I chat with DC folks I run up against an idée fixe of one type or another, a belief so ingrained and reinforced culturally that there’s zero chance of nudging them towards a different way of thinking. And, well, hey, they’re the professionals and maybe they’re right! But there are certain things which are obviously foolish and wrong, yet somehow, perhaps caused by something in DC’s water fluoridation system, everybody in that town believes with an unshakable faith. That social security is in some kind of crisis and people care more about deficits than jobs are two of them.

The Otters And Seals

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Via Vanity Fair:

Newsweek has done a close reading of B.P.’s plan to contain oil spills should they occur in the Gulf Coast, a strategy outlined in a report approved by the Minerals Management Service last year. As you may have guessed, judging by the reaction to an actual oil spill in the Gulf, its emergency-response preparations are lacking, to say the least. According to Newsweek, “The plan mentions the need to protect walruses, sea lions, sea otters, and seals—all animals that do not actually exist in the gulf. This suggests that at least parts of the gulf plan could have been cut-and-pasted from response plans for other regions, like Alaska.”

The report, which includes little information about how to attend to deep-sea spills and is riddled with broken hyperlinks. Overall, the strategy report does not exhibit “much serious thought,” according to the magazine. Skeptics, do not take Newsweek’s word for it. The 583-page document is available online, for free, and this weekend’s a long one!

Now What?

~ susie ~ 5 Comments

It’s a terrible mess, and anything they try to fix it will be nothing more than educated guesswork. Yes, there was culpability from every direction, but I can’t focus on blaming anyone right now. I just want this nightmare to stop:

HOUSTON — BP engineers struggled Friday to plug a gushing oil well a mile under the sea, but as of late in the day they had made little headway in stemming the flow.

Amid mixed messages about problems and progress, the effort — called a “top-kill” — continued for a third day, with engineers describing a painstaking process of trying to plug the hole, using different weights of mud and sizes of debris like golf balls and tires, and then watching and waiting. They cannot use brute force because they risk making the leak worse if they damage the pipes leading down to the well.

Despite an apparent lack of progress, officials said they would continue with the process for another 48 hours, into Sunday, before giving up and considering other options, including another containment dome to try to capture the oil.

President Obama, who visited the Gulf Coast on Friday, spoke broadly about the government’s response to the environmental disaster, saying that “not every judgment we make will be right the first time out.”

He also added, seemingly capturing the mood of engineers working to plug the well: “There are going to be a lot of judgment calls here. There are not going to be silver bullets or perfect answers.”

Nor were there perfect answers Friday about the status of the top kill effort. For the second day, public statements early in the day from BP and government officials seemed to suggest progress. Only later in the day did they acknowledge that the effort was no closer to succeeding than when they started.

“We’re going to stay with this as long as we need to,” Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer for exploration and production, said late Friday afternoon. “We’re not going to rush.”