National guard troops are being used to drop large sand bags using helecopters to prevent oil from washing ashore, working on the oil skimming barges (that were stopped by the coast guard last week), overseeing boom distribution, placing inflatable bladders along beaches, etc. Just b/c you don't see them on a video doesn't mean there not working out there.

About the same amount now as towards the end of April. This is a good article explaining what the NG troops were first doing.

http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-sp..._build_fl.html

One would have thought Florida would have had a pretty big deployment weeks ago. But the NG troops have been on deployments all over the world, so like everything else, logistics and common sense come into play.

I'll guess you see Florida NG troops on the beaches very soon with the tanned one right behind them.

Sounds great till you see the Pensacola beaches saturated with oil. There just aren't enough "boots on the ground" to deal with this massive problem. Even if all 6500 NGs from La, Ms, Al and Fla were called out it still wouldn't be enough. More people from those states need to hit the beaches.

There are over 6100 ships out there and they're not even a drop in the bucket. If the relief wells don't work every gallon of oil in that reservoir will flow out. Then BP will file for bankruptcy. Hell they may file anyway.

I'll guess you see Florida NG troops on the beaches very soon with the tanned one right behind them.


"Tanned one"??

BP is liable for up to $50,000 per animal death of an endangered species such as the Kemp's Ridley turtle;


The Gulf oil spill has killed local wildlife not only with oil but also in cleanup efforts. It may have changed the behavior of some animals, too. But its hard for scientists to draw a direct link.

Pensacola Beach, Florida - A sunbathing family spots a beached baby dolphin covered in oil from the Gulf oil spill. The family tries to scrape off the oil until a wildlife officer, jaw hard-set, carries it to shore. On its way to a sea mammal rescue center in Panama City, the dolphin dies.

To many Americans, this might be one of the more enduring images of the Gulf oil spill – dolphins washed ashore, sea turtles dead, pelicans coated in oil. Yet for scientists attempting to count the cost of the Gulf oil spill to local wildlife, the task is not nearly so obvious.

Many dead animals could be sinking before being discovered in the vast Gulf. Autopsies of those found are usually inconclusive, because toxins are quickly metabolized by animal tissue. And the Gulf has long had its own set of environmental problems.

Recent reports of massive fish kills in Florida and Louisiana, for example, could simply be part of normal events that come with the heat, algae growth, and cyclical events in the deep strata of the Gulf and that starve some Gulf waters of oxygen.

"There is a lot of evidence that over years with no oil spills there have been massive die-offs in the Gulf," says Thomas Shirley, a marine biologist at Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi. "But that's not saying the well isn't having any effect on what we're seeing now."

Sea Creatures' Strange Behavior

Along the Gulf, observers have reported fish acting peculiarly as the oil spill moves closer to shore, with sharks and rays bunching against beaches. Usually plentiful, porpoises have been missing from the Intracoastal Waterway in the past few days as the oil spill has moved ashore along miles of beaches in Florida's Escambia County near Perdido Key.

But the oil can also attract sea life, creating different problems, says Mr. Shirley.

In the deep sea, sail fish, turtles, and crabs congregate around mats of sargassum, a floating seaweed. Predators often search the trailers, or strand line, of the sargassum for food. From beneath the surface, patches of slick could look to pelagic fish and turtles like strand lines, drawing the creatures closer.

When oil-soaked, however, those sargassum are pulled within booming structures and set on fire.

Deepwater Horizon Unified Command reported on Thursday that 240,000 barrels of oil (10 million gallons) have been burned at sea in hundreds of "burn boxes" spread out over the spill's surface.

Boat captain Mike Ellis described what he had seen at sea in a YouTube report. "They drag a boom between two shrimp boats and whatever gets caught between the two boats, they circle it up and catch it on fire. Once the turtles are in there, they can’t get out," Mr. Ellis said.

Shirley confirmed those reports. "We know it's happening, and it's a bad thing, but I don't know any other solution" to getting rid of the oil, he says.

The Importance of an Accurate Total

Indeed, simply leaving oil on the surface – even far out at sea – can harm other animals, like porpoises, who breathe in "this stuff ... where they break for air," says Shirley, adding that it is directly toxic.

The oil can have an indirect knock-on effect, too. Scientists reported this week that nearly 50 turtles had died after getting caught in shrimp nets and dragged on the bottom – most likely in the days before about one-third of federal Gulf waters were closed to fishing and fishermen were racing to make money.

Animal rescue teams have notched some significant successes. This week, agents released 62 cleaned-up pelicans and a northern gannet at the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge on the Texas coast – the largest such release to date.

The wildlife toll so far pales in comparison with that of the Exxon Valdez, where at least 35,000 sea birds died. In the Gulf oil spill, that number is only about 1,000 – primarily because the spill is 50 miles from shore and a mile deep.

But determining the number of animals killed and the cause of death is important. Federal laws makes BP liable for up to $50,000 per dead animal on the endangered species list, such as a Kemp's Ridley turtle.

http://www.truth-out.org/gulf-oil-sp...cinerated60780

Gov. Christ, always looks like he has a spay on tan

Ah yes, right; he uses the same stuff as John Boner.

Update on my previous post. And there is a guy named Fountain in this article...just not Reggie.


Costner cleanup device gets high marks from BP

Fri Jun 25, 5:57 pm ET

It was treated as an oddball twist in the otherwise wrenching saga of the BP oil spill when Kevin Costner stepped forward to promote a device he said could work wonders in containing the spill's damage. But as Henry Fountain explains in the New York Times, the gadget in question — an oil-separating centrifuge — marks a major breakthrough in spill cleanup technology. And BP, after trial runs with the device, is ordering 32 more of the Costner-endorsed centrifuges to aid the Gulf cleanup.

The "Waterworld" actor has invested some $20 million and spent the past 15 years in developing the centrifuges. He helped found a manufacturing company, Ocean Therapy Solutions, to advance his brother's research in spill cleanup technology. In testimony before Congress this month, Costner walked through the device's operation—explaining how it spins oil-contaminated water at a rapid speed, so as to separate out the oil and capture it in a containment tank:

The device can purportedly take in thousands of gallons of oil-tainted water and remove up to 99% of the oil from it. On Thursday, BP posted to its YouTube page a video of the news conference featuring Costner and BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles announcing the news. You can watch the video here:

"Doug Suttles was the first guy to step up in the oil industry," Costner said at the presser, "and I'm really happy to say when he ordered 32 machines, it's a signal to the world, to the industry, where we need to be."

Suttles said the additional machines will be used to build four new deep-water systems: on two barges and two 280-foot supply boats.

"We tested it in some of the toughest environments we could find, and actually what it's done — it's quite robust," Suttles said. "This is real technology with real science behind it, and it's passed all of those tests." He added that Costner's device has proved effective at processing 128,000 barrels of water a day, which "can make a real difference to our spill response efforts."

In his congressional testimony, Costner recounted his struggle to effectively market the centrifuge. He explained that although the machines are quite effective, they can still leave trace amounts of oil in the treated water that exceeds current environmental regulations. Because of that regulatory hurdle, he said, he had great difficulty getting oil industry giants interested without first having the approval of the federal government.

It's true, as Fountain notes in the Times, that innovation on spill technology has been hobbled in part by the reach of federal regulation — though Fountain also notes that oil companies have elected to devote comparatively little money for researching cleanup devices in the intensely competitive industry.

Costner said that after the device was patented in 1993, he sought to overcome oil-company jitters by offering to allow U.S. oil concerns to use it on a trial basis. He'd extended the same offer to the Japanese government in 1997, he said, but got no takers there either.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_ts2851

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKLS_2KM0YY

Just a boat looking for a payday Steve