{"id":4107,"date":"2010-05-19T20:03:49","date_gmt":"2010-05-20T00:03:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=4107"},"modified":"2010-05-19T20:03:49","modified_gmt":"2010-05-20T00:03:49","slug":"lions-and-tigers-and-bears-oh-my","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2010\/05\/19\/lions-and-tigers-and-bears-oh-my\/","title":{"rendered":"lions, and tigers, and bears! oh, my!"},"content":{"rendered":"<br \/>\n<blockquote>\n<div align=\"center\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/emptywheel.firedoglake.com\/2010\/05\/19\/sheldon-whitehouse-lists-the-nepa-exclusions\/\" target=\"_blank\">Sheldon Whitehouse Lists the NEPA Exclusions<\/a><br \/> By: <font color=\"#009999\">emptywheel<\/font><\/strong><br \/> May 19, 2010<\/div>\n<p> <\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\">At yesterday&rsquo;s Environment and Public Works hearing on the BP  disaster, Sheldon Whitehouse asked Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and  Council on Environmental Quality Chair Helen Sutley why BP had been <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/seminal.firedoglake.com\/diary\/45517\" target=\"_blank\">exempted from doing an  Environmental Impact Study<\/a><\/strong> on the Macondo drilling site. He listed a  number of things that should categorically exclude a project from  receiving such an exemption. Two of those almost certainly applied to  this well.<\/div>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\">Areas of high seismic risk or seismicity, relatively untested deep  water, or remote areas<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\">Utilizing new or unusual technology<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div align=\"justify\">In response, Salazar spoke about how much we know about that area.<\/div>\n<ul>\n<div align=\"justify\">Senator, there has been significant  environmental review, including Environmental Impact Statements that has  been conducted with respect to this activity in the Gulf of Mexico. It  is an area where we know a lot about the environment, we know a lot  about the infrastructure that is there. The question of the categorical  exclusion in part relates to the Congressional 30-day requirement that  <strong>MMS<\/strong> has to approve or disapprove an exploration plan.<\/div>\n<\/ul>\n<div align=\"justify\">You think Salazar knows he&rsquo;s going to be held responsible for all the  exemptions approved since this disaster? In any case, <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/news\/nation\/2010-05-17-oil-plan_N.htm\" target=\"_blank\">here&rsquo;s  how much BP knows<\/a><\/strong> about the area:<\/div>\n<ul>\n<div align=\"justify\">An emergency response plan prepared by  BP shows  the British energy giant never anticipated an oil spill as  large as the  one seeping through the Gulf of Mexico.The 582-page  document, titled &ldquo;Regional Oil Spill  Response Plan &mdash; Gulf of Mexico,&rdquo;  was approved in July by the federal <strong>Minerals  Management Service<\/strong>.  It offers technical details on how to use  chemical dispersants and  provides instructions on what to say to the  news media, <strong><font color=\"#200020\">but it does not  mention how to react if a deep-water well  spews oil uncontrollably<\/font><\/strong>.<\/div>\n<div align=\"center\">[snip]<\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\">In a section titled &ldquo;Sensitive Biological &amp; Human-Use Resources,&rdquo;   <strong><font color=\"#200020\">the plan lists &ldquo;seals, sea otters and walruses&rdquo; as animals  that could be  impacted by a Gulf of Mexico spill<\/font><\/strong> &mdash; even though  no such animals live  in the Gulf.<\/div>\n<\/ul>\n<div align=\"justify\">Sure, we know a lot about the environment. We just have some crazy  belief that the walruses have decided to vacation on the Gulf of Mexico.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div align=\"justify\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"130\" hspace=\"6\" height=\"98\" border=\"1\" align=\"right\" src=\"http:\/\/t1.gstatic.com\/images?q=tbn:r-Gx62z4PPBPAM:http:\/\/images.livescience.com\/images\/071008-walrus-04.jpg\" \/>This oil&nbsp;<strike> spill&nbsp;<\/strike> gush in the Gulf speaks for itself. There&#8217;s going to be no excuse from MMS, BP, Horizon, Halliburton, from anyone involved, that&#8217;s going to hold water. The more that&#8217;s known, the worse it gets. The more time that passes, the bigger the tar balls on the beaches, the more animal carcasses, the less sea food, the more out of work people. It&#8217;s just going to be the mega-screw-up that keeps on giving. While the mention of <strong><font color=\"#200020\">&ldquo;seals, sea otters and walruses&rdquo;<\/font><\/strong> [<em>Lions, and tigers<\/em>, <em>and bears<\/em>! <em>Oh, my<\/em>!] is funny, it seems like something they cut and pasted from some other well report. Worse, it wasn&#8217;t apparently read seriously by anyone, so it didn&#8217;t set off alarms that they weren&#8217;t taking safety considerations seriously. BP is to be faulted for <strong><font color=\"#200020\">not  mention<\/font><\/strong><font color=\"#200020\">[ing]<\/font><strong><font color=\"#200020\"> how to react if a deep-water well   spews oil uncontrollably<\/font><\/strong>, but the government is perhaps even more amiss for not demanding that the possibility be addressed prior to drilling. There are no heros here&#8230;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sheldon Whitehouse Lists the NEPA Exclusions By: emptywheel May 19, 2010 At yesterday&rsquo;s Environment and Public Works hearing on the BP disaster, Sheldon Whitehouse asked Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Council on Environmental Quality Chair Helen Sutley why BP had been exempted from doing an Environmental Impact Study on the Macondo drilling site. He listed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4107\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}