[StBernard] Oil spill command structure ineffective, officials across coastal Louisiana lament

[Westley Annis]

Oil spill command structure ineffective, officials across coastal Louisiana
lament
By Chris Kirkham, The Times-Picayune 
May 27, 2010, 6:51PM

In St. Bernard Parish last weekend, officials identified a patch of oil
getting close to marsh grass. But when they requested the skimmer boats they
thought were available, they discovered the boats had been moved to Venice.

And despite constant warnings from Jefferson Parish officials about oil
approaching Grand Isle late last week, the boats needed to stop it weren't
around when they were needed. As a result, oil washed up on beaches and
authorities in Jefferson "commandeered" shrimp boats from BP in order to get
booms out to the passes near the island.


View full sizeGerald Herbert/The Associated PressWorkers load boom onto a
boat at the Coast Guard command center in Venice on Thursday."It wasn't a
surprise to us. We had people in the air; we were aware it was coming," said
Jefferson Parish Councilman Chris Roberts, who represents Grand Isle and
Lafitte. "It'd be like a house on the same street as the fire department is
burning down, and the fire trucks didn't get there in time."

In places like Venice, Grand Isle and Hopedale, local leaders are decrying a
lack of urgency on the part of BP and the federal government after more than
a week of seeing cleanup crews sluggishly reacting to oil from the Gulf of
Mexico spill washing up on beaches and getting snared in marsh grasses
across the state. As questions mount over the balance of power between BP
and the federal government in the response to the oil spill, the same
concerns being raised in committee halls in Washington are trickling down to
local government officials in command posts on the front lines of the
Louisiana coast.

Though outlined in the federal Oil Pollution Act of 1990, the twin duties of
a private-sector responsible party and a government command structure
overseeing BP's work have created a frustrating arrangement for local
leaders across the Louisiana coast as the spills drags into its second
month. Many say it's unclear who is answering to whom, an issue that
President Obama took head-on in an hourlong news conference Thursday.

"I think we gave the Coast Guard and BP their opportunity," said St. Bernard
Parish Councilman Ray Lauga. "Whether the disaster has overwhelmed them, or
they have not been doing their jobs ... Whatever it is, it's not working on
the local level for us."

The hazy division of responsibility has been particularly galling to
government officials who are contending with the BP/Coast Guard division at
local command centers as well as at the area command center in Houma. The
chain of command creates layers of bureaucracy that make a targeted reaction
to a problem largely impossible, many local officials have said this week.

"There's nobody in charge; nobody has a clue about how to deploy these men,"
Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser added, describing what he
called a severely disorganized command center in Venice where task orders
for more boom and supplies can take days to process.

Trying to blunt the mounting criticism, Obama emphasized Thursday that "The
United States government has always been in charge of making sure that the
response is appropriate."

"If BP's contractors are not moving as nimbly or as effectively as they need
to be, then it is already the power of the federal government to redirect
those resources," Obama said on the day before he was scheduled to arrive in
coastal Louisiana to view the spill firsthand.

But the president went on to say that "even if we've got a perfect
organizational structure, spots are going to be missed."

"The problem, I don't think, is that BP is off running around doing whatever
it wants, and nobody is minding the store," Obama said. "Inevitably in
something this big, there are going to be places where things fall short.
... We've got the authority we need, we've just got to make sure that we're
exercising it effectively." 

Responding to a steady chorus of criticism about the lack of decisive
on-the-ground leadership, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the national incident
commander for the oil spill, said Thursday that he wants to quickly
reorganize local command posts to give BP and Coast Guard officials in each
locale more authority to act swiftly when oil approaches.

Allen acknowledged the delays and miscommunication that occurred with the
oil response in Grand Isle over the weekend.

"There's a famous saying, 'No plans survive first contact with the enemy,'"
he said. "We need to continue to assess what's going on here and we need to
continually learn and improve, and I made that indelibly clear to the folks
in Houma and the folks down here in Venice and Port Fourchon."

Officials with BP did not respond to three days of requests seeking comment.

In Venice on Thursday, Allen heard firsthand from Lt. Cmdr. Pat Eiland that
there is a severe shortage of boom and manpower, despite 75 miles of boom
having been already deployed throughout the Mississippi River delta. Eiland
told Allen that some local boom providers are holding out for higher prices
as a boom shortage develops. Some dealers are refusing to sell boom,
preferring to rent it at sky-high daily prices.

"There's plenty of boom out there, but they're reserving it until they get
the price they want - and there's no boom," Eiland told Allen.

While Obama and his top oil spill coordinator sought to reassure coastal
residents that the government is taking charge, local responders are still
contending with a command structure that they say doesn't empower them to
have immediate access to skimmers, booms or other cleanup equipment when the
latest patch of oil pops up.

"That Unified Command has to empower people to be in place, to have a fast
response, make quick decisions and have authority on the ground, so we don't
have the situation of running from Venice, Grand Isle, Port Fourchon, St.
Bernard, Plaquemines, up to Houma so that a group of people can sit in a
room somewhere and digest it, and debate it, and scientifically analyze it
and then spit something out two or three days later to go respond to
something that's no longer where it was when it was reported," St. Bernard
Parish President Craig Taffaro said. "Why are we running this disaster from
Houma? You need to run the disaster where the disaster exists. We learned
that in Katrina, and that's not what's happened here."

Deano Bonano, the Jefferson Parish emergency management director who led the
effort to commandeer fishing boats in Grand Isle last weekend, said he
thinks things with BP at the local command have improved since last week,
when he said, "They couldn't go to the restroom without asking Houma."

But whether they will be better prepared for the next band of oil is an open
question, he said. 
"We haven't seen any significant oil in the past few days," Bonano said.
"The next time the oil attacks from offshore, I'll let you know how they
respond to it."