Louisiana deep oil drilling disaster

[Magda Hassan]

http://www.commondreams.org/video/2010/07/02-0

[Magda Hassan]

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/890.html

[size=12] The US House of Representatives voted 420 to 1 to give the presidential commission investigating the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico full subpoena power.

The Senate blocked it.

No subpoena powers. No real investigation. [/SIZE]

[Peter Lemkin]

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/890.html

[size=12] The US House of Representatives voted 420 to 1 to give the presidential commission investigating the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico full subpoena power.

The Senate blocked it.

No subpoena powers. No real investigation. [/SIZE]

Having an 'investigation' that really investigates [and has the powers to].....hmmm....sounds pretty 'un-american' to me!!! It would certainly break with the long-established precedent! Why rock the boat?.....better idea to sink it...or just do nothing...it is sinking as we speak...

:thefinger:

[Jan Klimkowski]

The Volkland Security apparatus has been busy protecting BP, by insisting that the Joint Terrorism Task Force examined the photographs of a journalist after BP security arrested him near one of their refineries:

Photographer detained by police and BP employee near refinery

A photographer taking pictures of a BP refinery in Texas was detained by a BP security official, local police and a man who said he was from the Department of Homeland Security, according to ProPublica, a non-profit news organization in the U.S.

The photographer, Lance Rosenfield, said he was confronted by the officials shortly after arriving in Texas City, Texas, to work on a story that is part of an ongoing collaboration between PBS and ProPublica.

Rosenfield was released after officials looked through the pictures he had taken and took down his date of birth, Social Security number and other personal information, the photographer said. The information was turned over to the BP security guard who said this was standard procedure, ProPublica quoted Rosenfield as saying.

Rosenfield, a Texas-based freelance photographer, said he was followed by a BP employee after taking a picture on a public road near the refinery, and then cornered by two police cars at a gas station. The officials told Rosenfield they had the right to look at the pictures taken near the refinery and if he did not comply he would be "taken in," the photographer said according to ProPublica.

BP gave ProPublica the following statement after the incident:

"BP Security followed the industry practice that is required by federal law. The photographer was released with his photographs after those photos were viewed by a representative of the Joint Terrorism Task Force who determined that the photographer's actions did not pose a threat to public safety."

In response to BP, ProPublica's editor-in-chief Paul Steiger said:

"We certainly appreciate the need to secure the nation's refineries. But we're deeply troubled by BP's conduct here, especially when they knew we were working on deadline on critical stories about this very facility. And we see no reason why, if law enforcement needed to review the unpublished photographs, that should have included sharing them with a representative of a private company."

When msnbc.com contacted BP, spokeswoman Sheila Williams said there was nothing the firm wanted to add to its earlier comment.

ProPublica filed two recent reports about BP. One deals with the similartities between the 2005 explosion at the Texas City refinery and the blast at Deepwater Horizon, and another is about thousands of pounds of toxic chemicals that were release by the refinery earlier this year.

http://fieldnotes.msnbc.msn.com/_news/20...r-refinery

[Peter Lemkin]

Just in case you thought the Government worked for the People and not the Corporations....let me set you 'straight'.....

AMY GOODMAN: As we continue on the BP issue, covering BP’s massive oil spill disaster has been a challenge for journalists given the numerous restrictions placed by BP and in many cases, local law enforcement and federal officials. But reporting on the spill and the clean-up efforts just got even harder.

Last week the Coast Guard put new restrictions in place across the Gulf Coast that prevent the public–including photographers and reporters covering the BP oil spill–from coming within 65 feet of any response vessels or booms on the water or on beaches. According to a news release from the Unified Command, violation of the "safety zone" rules can result in a civil penalty of up to $40,000, and could be classified as a Class D felony, which carries one to five years in prison.

Appearing at a White House press briefing last week, Admiral Thad Allen defended the new rule.

ADMIRAL THAD ALLEN: It is not unusual at all for the Coast Guard to establish or safety zones around any number of facilities or activities for public safety and the safety of the equipment itself. We would do this for marine events, fireworks demonstrations, cruise ships going in and out of port.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Right, but we are so far into this disaster why do it now?

ADMIRAL THAD ALLEN: I have actually had some personal complaints from some County Commissioners in Florida and some other local mayors that thought there is a chance someone would get hurt or have a problem with the boom itself-–had not presented itself before but when presented with it, it was the logical thing to do.

AMY GOODMAN: The new restriction has incensed journalists trying report from the Gulf who would now need special permission to get within 65 feet of the beaches or the booms. This is CNN’s Anderson Cooper reacting to the latest barrier imposed on the media.

ANDERSON COOPER: Keeping prying eyes out of marshes, away from booms, off the beaches is now government policy. When asked why now after all this time, that Allen said he had gotten some complaints from local officials worried people might get hurt. We do not know who these officials are, we’d like to. Transparency is apparently not a high priority with Thad Allen these days. Maybe he is accurate, and some officials are concerned, and that’s their right. But we’ve heard far more from local officials not being able to get a straight story from the government or BP. I have met countless local officials desperate for pictures to be taken and stories written about what is happening to their communities. We’re not the enemy here. Those of us down here trying to accurately show what is happening, we are not the enemy. I have not heard of any journalist who has disrupted relief efforts. No journalist wants to be seen slowed down the cleanup effort or made things worse. If a Coast Guard official asked me to move, I’d move. But to create a blanket rule that everybody has to stay 65 feet away from boom or boats, that does not sound like transparency. Frankly, is a lot like in Katrina when they tried to make it impossible to see recovery efforts to people who died in their homes. If we can’t show what is happening warts and all, no one will see whats happening. That makes it very easy to hide failure and hide incompetence and makes it very hard to highlight the hard work of cleanup crews and the Coast Guard. We’re not the enemy here.

AMY GOODMAN: CNN’s Anderson Cooper on the new rule preventing journalists getting close to the oil covered beaches. Well last night, Anjali Kamat reached another journalist who has been reporting from the gulf for the past week, Mac McClelland of Mother Jones Magazine. This was her response to the new rule.

MAC McCLELLAND: Well its obviously a complete reversal from everything the Coast Guard has been telling us so far, right, that its total transparency, media can go wherever they want. That is already not true obviously, as everyone who is on the ground has been experiencing, but it is also strange that they’re saying that the reason they had to implement this rule is because local authorities are saying that they wanted it. And local authorities down here are denying that wildly. They’re saying they didn’t have anything to do with it, they didn’t know who said, it has nothing to do with them. It is hard see any reason for that happening other then trying to keep media access away, which is what they say they haven’t been trying to do this whole time.

ANJALI KAMAT: Mac, you were one of the first reporters to sound the alarm about the restrictions on the press, trying to report on the oil spill disaster. Describe some of the incidents and the level of cooperation between BP and local and federal law enforcement officials, even before this new ruling by the Coast Guard.

MAC McCLELLAND: My problems with access go back more than a month now. So there are roadblocks that are manned by sheriff’s deputies in any place that could be blocked off by a road. And places that you can’t block road access, where there are just open beaches, there are private security contractors telling people they have to leave. There are cleanup workers who are telling people they can’t go through. I have been kicked off several public beaches and wildlife preserves. I have been told by plenty of sheriff’s deputies they’re just doing their job, and that they don’t have any control over it because BP is mandating that they are supposed to keep people away. So there is no lack of instances—even on video, there was a local reporter went down here who went to Grand Isle and there were private security contractors telling him he wasn’t allowed on this beach and he wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone on this beach, which of course the ACLU and plenty of other people have pointed out is a violation of First Amendment rights. But no amount of lip service that the Obama Administration or the Coast Guard was paying to this issue of access is making any difference and now that they have actually banned it, I cannot imagine how much harder it is going to get.

ANJALI KAMAT: Mac, is this ban going to stop you from going near the cleanup sites, doing your job as a reporter?

MAC McCLELLAND: I am hoping that if I get arrested, which I really hope won’t happen, somebody will bail me out with that $40,000 fine. Yeah, that’s what I’m here to do, that’s what everybody who is down here is here to do. We can’t just stop working because the Coast Guard has said that we need to stay away from these various sites. And at this point there seems to be so little oversight of not just the spill itself, but of the cleanup operations, that the press is one of the only things that we have keeping an eye on this at this point.

AMY GOODMAN: Mother Jones reporter Mac McClelland via Democracy Now! video stream from New Orleans. Well for more on this story, I’m joined for just a minute now from northern Minnesota by independent journalist Georgianne Nienaber who has also been reporting from the Gulf Coast for the past several weeks. Her reports and photographs are available on Huffington Post. One of her latest posts is called "Facing the Future as a Media Felon on the Gulf Coast." Georgianne, we welcome you to "DEMOCRACY NOW!" Talk about your experience being stalked by private security company.

GEORGIANNE NIENABER: Well, the most egregious I think was when I was on Grand Bayou with Rosina Philippe, I think you interviewed her too before. And we were simply taking a tour of Grand Bayou when Louisiana wildlife officials stopped our vessel—and insisted that we wear life vests, which are required if you are in less than a 16 foot boat. And when the official saw my camera, he said put it away, no pictures. It clearly felt more than their concern for our safety, it was a message that we’re not to be taking pictures down there.

AMY GOODMAN: You have said these restrictions remind you of working in The Congo.

GEORGIANNE NIENABER: Absolutely. I find myself before I plan to go back down to the Delta thinking how am I going to get access to places? How am I going to to hide my camera, how am I going to hide my film? What will I do if somebody demands I open my camera? And I never working in this country have had that feeling, and its really terrible feeling I’ll tell you that.

AMY GOODMAN:Georgianne Nienaber, thank you for joining us. We will continue to pursue this line in the next few days, looking at the crackdown on journalists in The Gulf. Thank you for joining us.

[Ed Jewett]

This one-year projection of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill will ruin your day

[Magda Hassan]

Government Bans Reporters in Gulf


Source: Raw Story, July 4, 2010 The U.S. Coast Guard put in place a new rule slapping journalists with felony charges, a $40,000 fine and one to five years in prison for coming too close to oil spill clean-up efforts without permission. Anderson Cooper of CNN says the new rule makes it "very easy to hide incompetence or failure." The Coast Guard rule prohibits vessels from coming within 20 meters (65 feet) of booming operations, boom or oil spill response operations "under penalty of law." But since oil spill cleanup operations are being conducted on most of the beaches, the rule bans reporters from just about everywhere they need to be. The new rule contradicts a statement made by Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen in June, when he promised that "Media will have uninhibited access anywhere we're doing operations, except for two things -- if it's a security or safety problem." Anderson Cooper, commenting on the new rule, said '"Those of us down here trying to accurately show what is happening -- we are not the enemy. I've not heard about any journalist who's disrupted relief efforts; no journalist wants to be seen as having slowed down the cleanup or made things worse. If a Coast Guard official asked me to move, I'd move. But to create a blanket rule that everyone has to stay 65 feet away from boom and boats, that doesn't sound like transparency."

[Peter Lemkin]

JUAN GONZALEZ: Leading environmental groups and a U.S. senator are calling on the government to pay closer attention to more than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells in the Gulf of Mexico and take action to prevent them from leaking even more crude following the BP disaster. The calls for action follow an Associated Press investigation that found federal regulators do not typically inspect the plugging of offshore wells or monitor for leaks years afterward. The AP uncovered particular concern with 3,500 of the neglected wells. Regulations forcing companies to plug the wells have been routinely ignored with no government intervention. The well beneath the Deepwater Horizon was being sealed for temporary abandonment when the rig explosion that caused the disaster occurred. Overall BP has abandoned about 600 wells.

AMY GOODMAN: Democratic Senator Mark Udall of Colorado sent a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar Wednesday asking him whether the department agrees with AP’s findings. Udall wrote "We can’t afford the leak that’s now occurring, we certainly couldn’t afford additional leaks in the future."

Jeff Donn is the AP reporter who co-wrote the story. He’s a member of the Associated Press’ national investigative team. He is joining us from Boston. We welcome you to "DEMOCRACY NOW!," Jeff. Let’s lay out what you found.

JEFF DONN: We found there are about 27,000 abandoned wells in the Gulf of Mexico on federal lease lands underneath the Gulf. And that’s more than half of the 50,000 or so oil and gas wells that have ever been drilled in the Gulf of Mexico. So there are a lot of wells out there, and we found out that on land, oil and gas wells that have been abandoned do frequently leak, even when they’ve been plugged correctly, and not just the ancient ones, but even wells that have been abandoned in recent decades. We also found out that there have indeed been leaks at offshore wells that have been abandoned in both state waters and the federal regulators finally acknowledged even some in the federal waters that are a little farther out.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Jeff, what’s the difference that you highlight between the temporarily abandoned and the permanently abandoned wells, and what are the federal requirements, if any, to monitor the two types?

JEFF DONN: Well, it’s interesting. The companies that drill in the Gulf temporarily abandon wells, this is a status that the federal government grants, when they are done drilling for a time, when there’s perhaps a problem with the well or they want to reassess the well or they want to wait until the price of oil or gas gets higher, so they are allowed to temporarily abandoned a well. We found about 3,500 of those wells in the Gulf and they’re supposed to undergo annual reviews. Within a year, the owner of the well is supposed to come back to the federal government and say, "Hey, we plan to reuse the well in this way or, you know what, we plan to permanently abandon it." And part of the problem there is, we found wells in that temporary status for decades, since the 1950’s and 1960’s. And that means they don’t have quite the level of safeguards that the permanently abandoned wells are supposed to have. They’re not cut off all the way at the bottom of the sea floor. They don’t tend to have as many of these cement plugs that prevent oil or gas from coming up the wells. So they’re allowed to remain in that temporary status for decades. The rules are basically, I wouldn’t say that they’re, that the rules are flatly ignored, I would say that the rules don’t really have any teeth. The companies that abandon wells submit paperwork. Federal regulators simply accept that paperwork; accept that the job is done. They do not routinely come and inspect the work as they do in some states. And then after the well is abandoned, nobody goes back, neither the industry nor the government goes back and checks on whether these wells are leaking. And yet we know from experience with wells elsewhere, that abandoned wells, a certain number of them, will eventually leak. We know from the Deepwater Horizon, which was in the midst of a temporary abandonment job, we know that those kinds of sealing jobs can fail.

AMY GOODMAN: Jeff Donn, can you explain what you just said? I don’t think that most people understand that, that it was in the midst of a temporary abandonment?

JEFF DONN: Yeah, I think you’re right, I don’t think most people understand that. BP had been drilling a well there to look for oil, and the reports are that they had found what they were looking for, that they had found oil. And they’ve been clear that they were, had just pumped in cement to create one of these plugs that’s supposed to temporarily seal the well so that they could leave the well for a time—nobody has said exactly how long—and then come back when they were ready to produce with the well. And they can actually drill back through these cement plugs and get at the hydrocarbons underneath. So they were temporarily abandoning the well. We found the paperwork showing that they intended for the well to enter into that kind of limbo status where, that some wells have had for decades now.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Jeff, your report also indicates that the federal government has been warned for the better part of two decades now. There was a GAO report back in 1989 warning of potential problems of, possibly even disasters, from these plugged wells?

JEFF DONN: Yeah, that’s right. I think that report was in 1994. The GAO, that’s of course Congress’s investigative arm, warned that these abandoned wells could pose serious environmental problems and even used the phrase "environmental disaster." And it said the federal government ought to come up with some reasonable program of inspecting these kinds of wells. It never happened. We found records of the EPA saying that on land, these kinds of wells pose a significant threat to the environment, even when they’ve been fully depleted, because, people should understand that even when a well has that was used for production and it no longer is producing anything and paying quantities, it can become reenergized, re-pressurized again, sometimes from the aquifers that are underneath that push upward, sometimes from work on other wells nearby. So these wells always have the potential to produce pressure again and the danger, of course, is that the gas or the oil underneath the sea floor then can push up through spaces in the well and escape into the ocean. Of course, the oil and gas are toxic, they’re not supposed to be in the ocean and they can affect the aquatic species in the oceans.

JUAN GONZALEZ: What kind of personnel did MMS, the agency in charge of this, have devoted to monitoring these wells?

JEFF DONN: Ask your question again, I’m not sure I got the sense of it.

JUAN GONZALEZ: What kind of personnel did MMS, the agency that was supposedly in charge of, you know, of offshore drilling, have to monitor these plugged wells?

JEFF DONN: Well, MMS, they’re the new Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement, that’s their new name, where their safety functions have been peeled off to this new agency, they have really very limited personnel. They have some scores of people who are available for inspections in the Gulf, but remember, we’re talking about thousands and thousands of active wells either in some stage of drilling typically in the Gulf. So they really, common sense tells you that they have serious constraints on what they can look at and they’ve chosen to focus on the wells that are active. It’s not clear that they have the resources even to look at the abandoned wells. And I think that was part of what Senator Udall was getting at in his letter to Ken Salazar. Udall is a member of the energy committee. Salazar is a fellow Coloradoan, like Senator Udall. I think that’s part of what Udall was getting at when he said "Do you need some kinds of additional tools to keep these abandoned wells safe?"

AMY GOODMAN: This has provoked outrage among many leading environmental groups calling on some kind of regulation. Melanie Duchin you quote, a spokeswoman for Greenpeace, said she was shell-shocked by the AP report, upset the government isn’t doing a thing to make sure they weren’t leaking. Jeff Donn, what do you think has to be done first right now? I mean, this is quite remarkable to talk about tens of thousands of abandoned wells in the Gulf of Mexico.

JEFF DONN: Well, I think part of what happened is this was a significant problem that was way off everybody’s radar. The industry and the government just acted like it was a problem that didn’t exist. These wells are gone and forgotten. A federal petroleum engineer told me they’re not supposed to leak. So it was something that people weren’t paying attention to, even people in the industry were surprised to realize that there were so many abandoned wells out there. I think what Udall is driving at, what people will begin to think about, is whether there might be some value for starters, at least as a first step, to consider maybe whether there should be inspections of at least some of these well sealing jobs as the company’s get ready to abandon them. We know that it can be done in a practical way. California, for example, does it, and they make a special effort to inspect the wells that are being abandoned offshore because they know that if anybody has to come back to an offshore well, it’s going to be harder and more expensive. Some of these offshore jobs in the deep wells, they can be thousands of feet deep. Some of them can cost millions of dollars just to abandon the well. And part of the problem is that can’t be a profit center for the companies.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Jeff, one final question. I am shocked by the number that you have here. 50,000 wells over six years have been drilled in the Gulf? You’re talking about 8,000 a year. That is about 25 wells per day for the last 60 years have been drilled in the Gulf of Mexico?

JEFF DONN: That’s right. It started off, of course, a little bit more slowly and the curve kind of went upward, but there has been a tremendous amount of drilling. It started in the 1940’s and it’s increased ever since. There has been more drilling in deeper water, a thousand feet deep, that kind of depth, even deeper than that, in recent years, and that’s picking up. Part of the problem with that, in this context is, is that it’s just harder to get at the wells to abandon them when they’re that deep. It can be done, it just takes a little bit more time and money to make sure that it’s done right, so that’s part of the concern as well, that some of these more recent wells that are now being abandoned are going to take more effort to seal properly.

AMY GOODMAN: Jeff Donn, we want to thank you for being with us, national writer for AP, member of the AP’s National Investigative Unit that has reported this piece, "Gulf Awash in 27,000 Abandoned Wells," we’ll link to it at democracynow.org.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, before we go on to our next story, I want to make a correction in my math over that last segment. That was about 8,000 every 10 years of the number of wells being drilled in the Gulf. That comes out to about 3 wells a day.

AMY GOODMAN: Still remarkable in the Gulf of Mexico.

JUAN GONZALEZ: An enormous number for that long a period of time.

[Ed Jewett]

The BP Gulf Oil Gusher Represents: An Historic Failure of Government And Industry, A Tragic Violation Of The Public Trust And Social Contract

July 10th, 2010

Oil Spill Solution

For all of us who live on and near the Gulf Coast of Mexico, we exist in a state that alternates between exasperation and incredulity, between anger and grief, between shock and awe at what this oil spill has come to represent. Where do we start? How do we begin to express our collective disillusionment with so many instances of betrayal and letdown? As well as the relentless falling short of what used to be considered reasonable expectations of government and corporate social responsibility.

Is it unreasonable to expect our governments – federal, state, county – to ensure that industry (Oil & Gas in this case) complies with the laws of our land. Should we be concerned that basic regulatory oversight, put into place to protect people, property and environment, were completely ignored, suspended and not enforced? Do we accept that such disasters occur through a highly unlikely series of human errors, bureaucratic mistakes, equipment malfunctions and technological breakdowns? How can everything go wrong, at the worst possible time, in the perfectly wrong place, unless … … …

The BP Gulf Oil Spill was created by man; it was not an act of God as some would have us believe. It was an utterly manmade event; not an accident or conspiracy of circumstances where fate would have everything accidentally go wrong that could go possibly go wrong. Not only have these disasters happened many times before; they will happen many more times in the future, if the status quo does not change quickly. When the prevailing mentality (Drill Baby Drill), which so dominates certain sectors of the Energy Industry, is defined by an Operate to Failure MO, what else could be expected?

Here we are on Thursday, July 8, day # 79 of this nonstop oil gusher and what has occurred to instill confidence in the hearts and minds of the people regarding an enduring solution? Let’s put aside the gushing well, as it is clear that BP and the Coast Guard are completely out of their league on that one. We’re now talking about a coordinated, deliberate and well thought out response to the polluted waters and tainted coastline of the Gulf of Mexico. What have the US Government and BP really endeavored to do in order to protect coastlines, embargo estuaries and pluck the still living marine life from the depths of this petrochemical cesspool. Have they at least released pertinent and vital information on a timely basis, which can assist many of us in our mitigation efforts?

These are our beaches, after all. We live here. We play here. We work here. For many, the Gulf is like a second back yard – a place where we go for fresh seafood and fun in the sun, on the beach and in the water. For boating and fishing, swimming and snorkeling. We go to the Gulf when we seek the peace and comfort that only the Gulf and Her beautiful beaches and wetlands can bring. And now that is all gone, with no prospect of returning in our lifetime. Truly, many are silently weeping in the privacy of their homes due to the sheer enormity and gravity of this heart-rending event.

So, where are we today? Or, where will we be tomorrow with this completely unacceptable state of affairs? More importantly, where will the BP-US Government tag team be on day # 80. Will BP still spray poisonous dispersants in and on the Gulf? Is the Coast Guard now spraying toxic dispersants from their own planes, as we have been told? Has BP relinquished any control over what is essentially a federal disaster area, as well as a crime scene – theirs. Given these facts, any official response should be legally and operationally directed by the US Federal Government?

As Dr. Thomas B. Manton, former CEO/President of the International Oil Spill Control Corporation, has wisely pointed out in his articles – British Petroleum is an oil company that makes its money drilling for and extracting oil. They are positively not in the oil spill control business, as their history clearly demonstrates. And yet the US Federal Government has given BP complete command and control over the Gulf of Mexico. For all practical purposes, a foreign multi-national corporation is enforcing Martial Law in US Territorial Waters. BP, the largest corporation in the UK, is to this day the chief component of a unified command structure from which all concerned US jurisdictions are taking orders.

Please know that British Petroleum has hired on a security staff and small paid-for-hire mercenary army that would make most small nations jealous. They allocate more time and resource in securing than they do in cleaning up. They spend more in marketing warm and fuzzy slogans around this PR disaster than they do mitigating and remediating the water and shoreline. They direct more personnel in the affected geographic area toward tasks that are peripheral to oil spill control than they do toward protecting the fragile Florida wetlands, Louisiana bayous or Alabama beaches.

Now we get to the real kicker here. The reader will find four proposals formulated by two different organizations (at the hyperlink below), which have a great interest in capping the gushing well and, at the very least, containing and capturing the leaking oil. Both groups have an equally strong desire to implement an integrated implementation plan to protect, mitigate and remediate all affected areas in the Gulf of Mexico. The challenge has been to get a response from anyone at BP, the Coast Guard, the concerned State governments or the impacted counties in North Florida, Alabama or Mississippi. These proposals have also been sent to the White House, specifically to the Office of Energy and Climate Change policy, as well as to the Co-Chair of the Gulf Oil Spill Commission Investigation.

As of today, Thursday, July 8, we have yet to receive a single response or acknowledgement from any of the aforementioned parties. Should we be concerned!? The consensus from those directly impacted and observers alike is that those who created this problem cannot be relied upon to fix it. Therefore, We The People are left with no alternative but to take matters into our own hands, wherever our lives and property have been put into jeopardy. We will act, and hopefully the unified command structure will follow our lead.

What would all the citizens and seasonal residents who populate the SouthEast say if they knew about this complete lack of response from the very governmental agencies which are tasked to protect them and their property. We also try to imagine what must be going on in the minds of those who staff the unified command structure, every time they receive a perfectly sound and efficacious proposal to get this job done right and expeditiously. In this same regard, we ask ourselves why the offers of assistance from various foreign nations have been either turned down or outright ignored, as have those from other international entities and NGO's.
We wonder out loud about whether it is now time to establish a Regional Citizens' Initiative (NGO that effectively functions as a parallel government) to step in where government and industry have completely failed and betrayed the people.

-###-

Concerned Citizens of the Gulf Coast
http://oilspillsolutionsnow.org
POC's:
Dr. Tom Termotto
National Coordinator
Gulf Oil Spill Remediation Conference (International Citizens' Initiative)
(850) 671-1444 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (850) 671-1444 end_of_the_skype_highlighting
OilSpillSolution@comcast.net
Sir Daniel Bilbruck
CEO/President
Bison Resource Development Group
bisonpetroleum@yahoo.com
Dr. Thomas B. Manton
Chairman/President
International Oil Spill Control Organization
tbm.ioscc@gmail.com

[Keith Millea]

We wonder out loud about whether it is now time to establish a Regional Citizens' Initiative (NGO that effectively functions as a parallel government) to step in where government and industry have completely failed and betrayed the people.

Great idea!But first buy some body armor because after all,you're just the "small people".

Just Sayin'