Found this at dvorak.org/blog great site from one of my favorite people John C. Dvorak. 21 years after the exxon Valdez spill there is still problems from it, now this...

*brief *wheels

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I like that we can see a little of what is going on for people from there, and I think people should help. And I think we have a lot of people in this country who would gladly go there if they knew they were going to have a place to stay, food to eat, and transportation to get to where the work needed to be done....and some assurances they won't develop cancer or some other illness and drop dead in 5-10 years because they went there to help.

But as with all things, unless you know someone there who has their finger on the pulse of the situation and has contacts in the government...you will go there and be told "The best thing you can do right now is go home." unless you're famous......then they'll put you in front of some cameras and try to keep you happy so you don't go on talk shows and tell people how horribly bad it is there.

We have a lot of people who were just recently cut off from unemployment benefits (up to 2+ months ago) who would love to have a chance to go down there to help and draw a pay check to keep their house and such that they are in the process of losing. Small sidenote: What's funny is that the unemployment benefits got cut off....and now our unemployment percentages went from ~17% to ~10%...amazing they all found jobs...or stopped bothering to report their unemployment state since they aren't getting benefits from it....news hasn't investigated it.

These documentaries show there are things that need to be done, there's a real problem that having solid, useful information could help in applying an overwhelming workforce to the problem to overcome it. They just have to make sure that this overwhelming workforce isn't setting themselves up for death in 10 years because they weren't told that handling this stuff or being near it would result in cancer/internal organ failure/etc. And letting that kind of information out would make BP look bad, because it's not just dirty oil that kills all the wildlife..but it's dirty oil that kills all the wildlife and will continue to kill anything in the area for years to come.

I know at least 3 people and probably another half dozen who'd love to take their machinery down there to help out, as long as any damage caused to the machinery is going to be reimbursed (oily/sandy grit is not a good combination for moving parts) and they draw a paycheck to cover expenses of being there and their homes.

I wondered why they didn't dig a ditches in the beach lines, line them with plastic and slope them toward a pit or some kind of area where a pump can suck up the stuff making it to land to be processed there. Separate out the oil to a tanker, have 2-3 tankers making rounds to keep up with the oil and pump the water back out into the ocean. Sure some of the oil and stuff would be absorbed, but at least you're mitigating the absorption to an area near where your ditches are. You'd need some people on-site to make sure the ditches aren't getting plugged with debris and aren't eroding to the point of being useless. And then you'd probably have to dig new ditches with the tide. I can't tell what that raking and putting stuff in trashbags is doing to help the clean up in any significant way.


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[ ] = pump pit Pump Pit
And the editor basically butchered my little sketch, so there'd be some spacing between the | ditch lines and the [ ] pit would be larger to allow for more pumps to work on the same pit.

Something like that, you'd have to redig the | lines when the tide washes in and fills them...maybe use metal channels that are plastic lined that can be lifted out and move off so the tide doesn't fill them making them hard to lift or wash them away. And redig them once it recedes and put the metal channels back in place. And probably need something strong enough to hold the weight of a mini-excavator or back-hoe to clear the mouth of the | channels as stuff builds up in the mouth of them...so you can drive across the | channels to get to the problem areas.

Not sure how they could approach the swamp/marshland type areas, maybe focus their boats and booms more heavily in them to catch anything that the beach pumps don't draw in.....then setup fleets in the heart of the oil masses to suck up as much as they can before it gets close to shorelines. If the beach ditches worked out well, and the pumps were more than able to keep up with the natural water flow...they could be spread out some because they would pull the majority of the water toward the ditches.

Edward James Olmos @ 4:40

I'm up in New England. It really brings saddness to see my fellow Americans down there, coming to the reality of events and circumstances. They will be losing their businesses, livelyhoods, and way of existance. Many will have to find different jobs, and move else where. I can really feel that dispair, when I watch stuff like this. And the powerlessness they feel, and I myself, to aid them in a time of need.

I hope those folks down there, learn from this. Learn what caused all this, and blame the correct criminals. The President really would love to do more. That much is apparent. But, the regulations and regulators have been removed over the last few decades by the GOP (whom even know is trying to make you believe its not their fault). The nation is strapped for cash, and people are out of work in other parts as well. Still, there is aid going there from all over.

You want other industries in the USA screwing up? Vote Republican. They really do look out for the executives of the major companies operating in the USA. As we observed from one major Republican last week, who apologized to BP. If the folks down there want to see some real help coming their way, vote Democrat. That really is the truth of the matter.

What saddens me almost as much as this video are the comments made my Nithern. This is well and beyond any partisanship. Will voting for anyone help them now or reverse the damage that has already been done?

Please, wake up and realize that the problem is the disconnect between those in Washington and the rest of us. It doesn't matter what party they're with, their world is not the one we live in.

This really isn't an issue beyond partisanship. For better and for worse, conservatives are pro-market, anti-regulation. Liberals, as compared to conservatives, are much more pro-regulation. They won't say so in so many words, but liberals would like to see *more* red tape, and more bureaucracy, just so events like these are less likely to happen, even at the cost of some inefficiency.

You can debate the merits of each position until the end of time, but you need to be honest with yourself: this is the cost of letting business do what it wants, relatively free of oversight. Multinational corporations have no concern for the welfare of a town, city, state, or even country, save for what will cost them actual business. As the Exxon Valdez incident proved, you can cause a horrendous environmental catastrophe and still remain in profitable business, so there clearly isn't enough of a bad PR disincentive to actually put in place the expensive safeguards to better prevent these occurrences.

Given that you can't count on BP, or any corporation, to look out for your best interests, you have to have another body step in and fill that role. That's the role of big government, which liberals support, and conservatives do not (with exceptions, like the military).

Obviously voting won't help *right now,* but a shift in the political map today would very likely reduce the chances of this happening 10 years from now, and so on.

Voting laws and regulations regarding environmental security does not mean you want "Big Government". Enforcing these laws and regulations does not mean you want "Big Government". You have laws against murder, and cops to enforce them, and that doesn't make the government especially big.
Also, you can be pro-business, yet be adamant that corporations take responsibility for their externalities (it's common sense, unless you think it's OK for, say, a nuke plant to dump their used uranium in a river).

"Big Government" refers mainly to higher taxation and social redistribution, but it has become some sort of shallow talking point to describe anything that's not libertarian laissez-faire. It's like the government shouldn't do anything, and when it does (like when those roads and airports can't magically build themselves), it should be for free.

It's not Big or Small Government that caused this, it's incompetence, blindness, and good old-fashioned (Lobbies-induced) political corruption.