[Matchett-PI]

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen in hot seat over Gulf oil spill
Published: Friday, June 11, 2010, 11:47 AM Updated: Friday, June 11, 2010, 11:49 AM
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/06/coast_guard_adm_allen_in_hot_s.html
[Picture and hot links at above link]

The Gulf oil spill spoiling the teeming marshes and white-sand beaches of the Gulf Coast is also threatening the pristine image of the burly, take-charge leader who has become the federal government’s go-to guy in a disaster.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, one of the few federal officials whose reputation survived Hurricane Katrina intact, is facing growing criticism that he and his agency are overwhelmed by the catastrophe. It’s unfamiliar territory for a former Coast Guard Academy football captain who has managed responses to crises that include the earthquake in Haiti, Katrina and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“It’s very discombobulated and disorganized,” Orange Beach, Ala., Mayor Tony Kennon said of the federal response after tar balls stained the beach and entered Perdido Bay this week, without protection from booms. “They had five weeks to get ready for this, and it still happened.”

Back in 2005, most leaders in the Gulf had kinder words for Allen’s operations after then-President George W. Bush tapped him to take over the widely panned Hurricane Katrina response initially led by former FEMA Director Michael Brown.

Allen was credited with turning the effort around. And when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20, the White House was so confident it had the right man to lead the response that it persuaded Allen to delay his planned May retirement.

Allen, 61, who relinquished his role as head of the Coast Guard but is staying on as the spill’s national incident commander, has since become the public face of the government’s efforts. The Obama administration is increasingly relying on him in White House press briefings and elsewhere to try to assure the public that the government is in charge. Briefing reporters this week, Allen came off cool, calm and confident.

But just as Katrina brought unforeseen challenges, the oil spill has proved unprecedented and unwieldy. Allen is taking his lumps.

Early on, the Coast Guard was widely viewed as giving BP too much control on the scene, effectively looking the other way when the company offered misleadingly rosy assessments. Allen, for example, went along for weeks with BP’s insistence that measuring the amount of oil spewing from the well was unimportant, only later pressing for accurate figures after scientists complained that it could help officials plan for containing the mess and account for liability.

There’s also the Katrina-like gap between what federal officials say is happening and what local leaders say they are seeing. Since the beginning, Allen has insisted the government and BP deployed more resources than needed. That is consistently disputed by local and state officials who complain of poor coordination, shortages of boom and skimmers, agonizing delays in getting responses to requests and a general reluctance to try new or experimental cleanup strategies.

While BP has taken the brunt of it, much of the criticism also is falling on Allen, the son of a Coast Guard man who rose through the ranks to become the 23rd commandant of the agency in 2006.

“I have spent more time fighting the officials of BP and the Coast Guard than fighting the oil,” Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said. “We’ve got to find someone to put in charge who has the guts and the will to make some decisions.”

Nungesser’s parish includes the Louisiana marshes first hit by oil a month ago, where recently pelicans were found coated with thick oil.

David Camardelle, mayor of Grand Isle, La., said he meets daily with state and federal officials but that when he brings up a problem or offers a solution he’s told “BP or EPA, or the Coast Guard is going to have to approve this before we can do anything.”

“How can we accept that when our lives depend on their action?” Camardelle asked, testifying Thursday before a Senate Homeland Security subcommittee.

During briefings with reporters, Allen has noted the frustration of dealing with a spill across the Gulf. He frequently points to the number of fishermen and shrimpers who have been enlisted into the response — the “vessels of opportunity” as he has dubbed the private armada.

But this strategy too has come under fire.

Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., said many of the fishermen in her state “don’t think it’s working.”

And Camardelle complained that shrimpers in his community who sign up for the program “are being sent off on ships where they find no oil (and) ... they want to return and help protect their communities.” At other times they were “ready to go but just waited at the docks for the call,” he told lawmakers.

Unfailingly polite in public, Allen takes criticism in stride. He said Friday that local officials have a direct line to the government’s command center.

Though born in the desert — in Tucson, Ariz. — he’s been around the water all his life, moving from post to post as a Coast Guard brat and, later, for his own career. He worked on his first oil spill 20 years ago as a lieutenant when a barge ran aground near Atlantic City, N.J. He says responding is like fighting a battle: The trick is moving resources quickly to where they’re needed.

Within the Coast Guard — which itself captures the public’s imagination with its rescue swimmers, drug busts on the high seas and missions to save stranded fishermen — Allen is widely admired. On the Gulf, there’s little doubt who’s in charge when Allen’s around.

He has broad authority from the White House to make decisions and can pick up the phone and call BP CEO Tony Hayward when he needs answers. Like the president, Allen in recent days has shown more impatience with BP, writing Hayward a terse letter this week demanding more information about how the company is settling claims.

Last week, preparing for a potentially contentious meeting with Alabama Gov. Bob Riley, Allen sat at a conference table with Coast Guard officers and picked apart a planned presentation addressing Riley’s complaints about protective boom being moved from Alabama to other states.

“Guys, we have to be exact with this,” Allen said, gesturing with one hand as he drank coffee with the other. “One misstatement and the meeting goes south. We have to be transparent. Transparency! Clarity!”

When inventory numbers on the amount of boom available in Alabama didn’t add up, Allen had had enough. He got up, grabbed an easel and a marker and began writing. The numbers got straightened out to his satisfaction just before Riley walked into the room.

The problem appears to have been resolved, but Riley made clear his lingering frustration with Allen in a statement this week in which he credited the president for fixing it.

“I want to thank the president for his personal intervention with the Coast Guard,” the governor said. “Boom that was deployed here in Alabama should never have been taken from us in the first place.”

Briefing reporters before meeting with President Barack Obama on Monday, Allen acknowledged that the Coast Guard never anticipated something like the BP gusher.

Even though the agency ran a Gulf Coast response drill in 2002 simulating a blown wellhead — with Allen playing the role of incident commander — Allen said the expectation is for a single oil slick contained in a specific area. The Deepwater Horizon spill, he said, is taxing resources because the oil is breaking up and being pushed by winds and currents in all different directions. He acknowledged that the disaster will likely change the way the country plans for spills.

“We’re trying to adapt and learn from a spill that’s never happened before in this country,” he said.

While early reviews have been mixed at best, the final verdict on Allen’s performance is still out.

“We’ve lost some battles (but) we can win this war,” Nungesser said. “But it’s got to happen quickly.”

Allen doesn’t have much time to turn the tide. He still plans to retire July 1, although he acknowledges he might not be able to take off the uniform that quickly.

“I didn’t anticipate this would happen to end my career, but I’m honored to have been asked to do this,” he told reporters. “It’s not a very easy job ... It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to deal with.”

<>bttt

Also posted here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2532684/posts

[Matchett-PI]

BREAKING: Coast Guard Head Was Informed of Maine Oil Boom on 5/21. Yesterday, He Claimed He Didn’t Know

A letter signed by both Maine senators ­ with the four Gulf State governors copied ­ informed Admiral Allen of Packgen's boom weeks ago. Allen told ABC yesterday that he hadn't heard this information. (Read article to see the letter, along with a photo of miles of Packgen boom sitting in storage.)

June 12, 2010 - by Gregory Sullivan

[]

Auburn, Maine, company Packgen has miles of oil spill containment boom on hand and has the capacity to produce upwards of 100,000 additional feet of boom a day. That inventory and that capacity has been available to help the Gulf Coast states for nearly a month. The news of this company was reported here at PJM four days ago, on June 8. The curious case of the lack of interest in Packgen’s boom gets curiouser and curiouser. Yesterday, ABC News had an interview with Admiral Thad Allen, the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, who is the national incident commander in charge of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. After a handful of questions about the flow of oil into the Gulf from the wellhead, the topic turned to mitigation of the spill. Here’s the exchange:

"Jake Tapper, ABC: "I talked to a guy who runs a company in Maine that offers boom, and he has ­ he says ­ the ability to make 90,000 feet of boom a day. High quality. BP came there 2 weeks ago, looked at it, they are doing another audit today. He is very frustrated, he says he has a lot of high quality boom to go and it is taking a long time for BP to get its act together. Don’t you need this boom right now?

Allen: Oh we need all the boom wherever we can get it. If you give me the information off camera I’ll be glad to follow up."

There was no need for the admiral to ask for the information from Jake Tapper. It’s contained in a letter that has been on the admiral’s desk since May 21st. The letter was also sent to Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and to NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco. Copies were sent to Governors Bob Riley, Charles Crist, Haley Barbour, and Bobby Jindal. The letter was signed by two U.S. senators.

It’s not hard to come by. Here’s a copy:

[] I interviewed Packgen owner John Lapoint at his facility in Auburn on Friday afternoon. BP today, once again, had representatives in the building to inspect his production line and his product, and to verify his assessment of his capacity to deliver more. BP is still not ready to commit to purchasing the oil boom, though.

Packgen’s boom not only passes every independent ASTM assessment, it’s apparently superior to the material currently being used in the Gulf. According to John Lapoint, it’s priced only slightly higher than oil boom that BP apparently normally purchases from places like China. And according to Packgen, boom manufactured in Auburn, Maine, on Monday can be onsite at the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday. Boom from China normally has a lead time in months.

Packgen still has the 13 miles of ASTM certified floating oil containment boom, packed and palletized and ready to ship at a moment’s notice to the Gulf Coast.

[] That supply has been on hand for over a month, and in the intervening twenty-two days ­ between the time of the notification that Admiral Allen, Secretary Salazar, and Jane Lubchenco received, and today ­ Packgen says they could have manufactured and delivered approximately two million feet of additional boom, all of which could be helping to protect the coastline of the United States from the devastating effects of the BP oil spill.

The federal government has enormous power and responsibility when the United States is in danger from any large oil spill. According to the National Oil and Hazardous Substance Pollution Contingency Plan, the president is tasked with the mitigation of the spill:

"If a discharge, or a substantial threat of a discharge, of oil or a hazardous substance from a vessel, offshore facility, or onshore facility is of such a size or character as to be a substantial threat to the public health or welfare of the United States (including but not limited to fish, shellfish, wildlife, other natural resources, and the public and private beaches and shorelines of the United States), the President shall direct all Federal, State, and private actions to remove the discharge or to mitigate or prevent the threat of the discharge.

"In carrying out this paragraph, the President may, without regard to any other provision of law governing contracting procedures or employment of personnel by the Federal Government –

"(i) remove or arrange for the removal of the discharge, or mitigate or prevent the substantial threat of the discharge; and

"(ii) remove and, if necessary, destroy a vessel discharging, or threatening to discharge, by whatever means are available."

The wording does not equivocate. And the second part clearly states that the president can ignore any non-emergency government procurement hurdles to direct the mitigation of the spill.

If the federal government directs entities other than BP to mitigate the spill, does the American taxpayer get stuck with the bill? No:

Mitigation of damage.- "In addition to establishing a penalty for the discharge of oil or a hazardous substance, the Administrator or the Secretary of the department in which the Coast Guard is operating may act to mitigate the damage to the public health or welfare caused by such discharge. The cost of such mitigation shall be deemed a cost incurred under subsection (c) of this section for the removal of such substance by the United States Government." Recovery of removal costs. ­ "Any costs of removal incurred in connection with a discharge excluded by subsection (a)(2)(C) of this section shall be recoverable from the owner or operator of the source of the discharge in an action brought under section 1319 (b) of this title." The public deserves to know why the federal government continues to allow BP to determine who will supply desperately needed material for the mitigation of their massive spill, determine how much and what type of material will be needed, and even determine if and when it will be purchased or used at all, all while the Gulf Coast’s wildlife and industries slowly die in a haze of oil.

And while American workers who are ready, willing, and able to do the job stand idle. The ball’s in your court, admiral. Er ­ on your desk.

Gregory Sullivan founded and writes for The Rumford Meteor bttt