In remarks this morning, President Obama again vowed to hold BP responsible for the damage caused by the Gulf Coast oil spill.
“This will be contained,” Obama said. “It may take some time, and it’s going to take a whole lot of effort. There’s going to be damage done to the Gulf Coast, and there’s going to be economic damages that we’ve got to make sure BP is responsible for and compensates people for.”
A poll put out this morning by the Washington Post and ABC News shows that “more Americans have given negative ratings to federal reaction to the BP spill then poll respondents gave to the government’s initial handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.”
Coast Guard Admiral Thad W. Allen, the official in charge of the government’s handling of the spill, said that BP needs to speed up its response to claims from residents affected by the disaster. Individuals have begun to receive payments, but businesses who have filed claims face a complicated processing procedure.
“I do not want to see BP nickel-and-diming these businesses that are having a very tough time,” Obama said.
The president’s remarks came as BP was sending a second ship to collect oil funneled from the containment cap that was put in place last Thursday. According to Allen, oil production from the well has reached a rate of about 15,000 barrels a day. With a second ship, BP is hoping to reach 20,000 barrels a day. The company is trying to increase production so that it can slowly close vents in the cap that prevent clogging, but allow oil to escape.
But even as the containment cap continues to funnel oil from the well, the oil slick on the surface of the water is breaking apart, making it harder to contain. The floating booms, or barriers, that have been deployed along the coast have not stopped oil from reaching the coast.
The government is now planning to hire about 1500 of what they are calling “vessels of opportunity” to help with the clean-up along the surface.
So far, the oil has reached about 120 linear miles of coastline, but the figure does not account for places like marshes and swamps where the oil may have moved inland, the Washington Post reports. Estimates for how much oil is still leaking run between 12,000 and 25,000 barrels per day.
Two environmental groups, the Gulf Restoration Network and the Sierra Club, have filed a claim in Federal Court that BP’s 2009 Gulf of Mexico Regional Oil Spill Response Plan “grossly exaggerated” how much oil the company could recover. The company claimed that it could recover 197 percent of a spill that leaked 250,000 barrels a day, the Courthouse News Service Reports. The plan was approved by both the Department of the Interior and the Minerals Management Service. The groups are seeking to prohibit the agencies from using the plan in BP’s future permit applications
Meanwhile the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is monitoring the health and safety of clean-up workers. In an online statement, OSHA said it has been on the ground in multiple worksites, testing the equipment and the level of exposure of the workers, and is posting some of the test results online.
The Environmental Protection Agency has also put out reports, explanations, test results and even photos of their response to the Gulf Coast on their website.
