So is Obama doing his job cleaning up the gulf oil spill or are the workers just running around like chickens with their heads off?

Taylor views oil, calls response ‘an effort in futility’
By KAREN NELSON - klnelson@sunherald.com

E-Mail
Print
Reprint or license
Text Size: tool nameclose
tool goes here GULFPORT — A morning flight out of Gulfport into the Mississippi Sound showed long, wide ribbons of orange-colored oil and acres of heavy and light sheen moving further into the Sound between the barrier islands, but no measurable skimming occurring from Horn Island to Pass Christian. U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor was on the flight and got out of the military helicopter angry.

“It was an effort in futility,” Taylor said, within minutes of returning from the flight. “It’s criminal what’s going on out there. This doesn’t have to happen.”

A scientist onboard, Mike Carron with the Northern Gulf Institute, said that with this scenario, there will be oil on the beaches of the mainland.


OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Link: Read more coverage of the Gulf oil spill from the Biloxi Sun Herald

“There’s oil in the Sound and there was no skimming,” Carron said. “No coordinated effort.”

Taylor said it was a good thing he didn’t have a mic in the helicopter, because he might have said some things he didn’t want his children to hear.

“They’re paying all these boats to run around like headless chickens,” Taylor said, as reporters gathered to hear his assessment of the Sound, between the barrier islands and the mainland.

There has been hope among state officials that the islands would help stop the oil if skimmers took care of the breaks between the islands.

Horn Island was doing its part, observers pointed out. The wiggly lines of sheen were coming straight at it from the south, headed for the islands southern beaches. And the island had boom in place to protect the inlets to sensitive wetlands along its norther shore.

Event the Pascagoula River was doing her part.

Carron pointed out just north of Horn the line where the river’s freshwater meets saltwater. All along the line was the orange oil caught between the two types of water and trapped.

But where the failure came was in the human effort.

There were dozens of boats of all sizes running around, some leaving trails through the sheen. Two boats among a group near Ship Island were pulling boom in a line, but not using it to round up oil. That was at 10 a.m.

Taylor slipped a note to a fellow passenger.

It said: “I’m having a Katrina flashback. I haven’t seen this much stupidity, wasted effort, money and wasted resources, since then.”

Back on land in Gulfport, Taylor let loose.

“A lot of people are getting paid to say, ‘look there’s oil’ and not doing anything about it,” Taylor said. “There shouldn’t be a drop of oil in the Sound. There are enough boats running around.

“If the president can’t find anyone who can do this job,” he said, “let me do it.”



Read more: http://www.sunherald.com/2010/06/25/2290037/taylor-views-oil-...