Little Boats

We got to talking with our waiter Saturday night and found out that he had spent the last two days working on a friends boat on the cleanup. When I started asking questions I found out that it was a 24 foot boat and they were out 50 to 60 miles. The boat only had a single engine and basic electronic equipment. They had no Personal Protection Equipment and little training. What they were doing was towing absorbent boom through the slick. If BP were to charter a crew boat they would have a list of requirements a mile long. But they have no problem hiring ill equipped vessels to clean up the spill. I think that the people chartering out to BP are putting there lives in danger.

Our discussion emphasized the lousy job BP is doing on the cleanup. They are using cutting edge technology at the well site but we might as well be back in the Middle Ages on the beaches. We're using hay and pitchforks when we should be using skimmers, vacuum trucks and frac tanks.

Where is the technology developed at Ohmsett? That is an oil spill research facility that was supposed to help test spill recovery equipment. Where are the skimmers that were developed there? Why is it that oil booms don't work even in small waves when we have had a research facility that was supposed to improve oil booms?

And where are the local scientists from OSRADP? That is an APPLIED research group that has tested various ways to clean up oil in Louisiana's marsh? Where are they?

It appears that BP's vessel of opportunity program is a copy of Dunkirk and the small boats. If I was BP's Risk Manager, I couldn't sleep at night knowing that Private citizens are being placed at risk.