[Carry_Okie]

In my engineering experience, that in the search for the guilty after any debacle, there is no such thing as a single fault that is "the cause of the problem." It is almost always a coincident set of cascaded events, a group effort if you will. This is especially true with the kind of redundant control systems we seen in installations where failure is a catastrophic event.

There is usually plenty of blame to spread around, a reality for which our adversarial legal systems are inherently unsuited.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Much discussion and some good looking diagrams on the well and where and what they are trying to do with the relief well....

Alternate approachs are discussed also...

[muawiyah]

The EPA's "dumping rules" leave no room for accidents of gigantic proportions They are based on legislation intended to keep fishermen and others from dumping waste overboard near the shore.

They have not been updated to account for the extension of the national "border" out to 200 miles from shore.

It looks like at every step of the way this disaster was driven by and augmented through the application of th eEPA rules ~ to wit, we can't use skimmer technology because, low and behold, it involves returning water with miniscule amounts of oil back into the Gulf.

Eventually someone whould look at those rules and the laws behind them (which were all written for a different purpose) and see if they can be brought up to date to fit modern conditions.

Be a good idea to NOT allow any lawyers to work on this ~ just engineers and people trained in the control of oil and other volatile substances.