Washington, June 30th – Officials are saying that the laws in place in the U.S. Have made it nigh impossible to get skimmers to the Gulf of Mexico in order to aid in sweeping up the oil which is gushing away madly from the Deepwater Horizon spill. This catastrophe is beyond scope, and something really needs to be done about it, however, it has been mentioned that the current legislation simply does not allow for it..
BP has stated that only 433 boats are actually sweeping up the oil, and that only about one tird of those are specially designed skimmers, making the job at hand a lot more difficult.
While the spill in the Gulf of Mexico is the largest spill in all of U.S. History, however it does not invalidate the Jones Act of 1992. The Jones Act of 1992 protects U.S. Shipping, and it also forced a French company to sell nine skimmers to a U.S. Company before they could be allowed to aid in the cleanup process. Many people are in an uproar over this fact, as the Jones Act only covers business interests, and does not allow any contingencies for matters of national emergency, which the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico certainly falls under. There has been no mention if there may be an acceptance added, or any change at all made, in order to allow international skimmers to come in and aid in the cleanup process.
If that weren’t enough, the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, which states that skimmers need to be on standby in ports all around the country in case of emergency, are making the job of actually getting the skimmers to where need to be, quite a troublesome endeavor. There has been no motion in getting these skimmers moved, which has led a lot of people to wonder if the U.S. Really wants to get the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico cleaned up at all. The reasoning is that if there is another catastrophe in another port, those skimmers need to be on standby, in order to respond quickly and efficiently to deal with the issue. This unfortunately, leaves the workers and cleanup crew currently working feverishly to clean up this horrendous mess completely and utterly on their own for the time being.
What makes this situation so frustrating, is that when one looks at a Coast Guard map, as U.S. Senator George LeMieux pointed out, there are 850 skimmers in the southeast and 1,600 nationwide, sitting in their docks not doing anything. “We are literally talking about more than a thousand skimmers that are available, but we only have 400 — if this number is correct — at work,” LeMieux said. “It is hard to believe that the response is this anemic; it is hard to believe that there is this lack of urgency or sense of purpose in getting this done.”