How about this: The Obama administration is interfering with the state government of Louisiana effort to protect our wetlands from the oil by building sand bars. They are slow grant permits and then they order a work stoppage. It is as if they want the oil to reach the marches or they want Bobby Jendal defy them so they can prosecute him. Some think it is a mistake to build these islands, but that does not matter this is our state and if we are making a mistake we will live with it. The federal government has no right to interfere in our business.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill ... n_ask.html
A day after the federal government ordered the state to halt construction of an oil protection berm at the northern reaches of the Chandeleur Islands to fight the encroaching Gulf oil spill, Gov. Bobby Jindal and other coastal leaders ramped up the rhetoric Wednesday and urged the Obama administration to let work continue as contractors shift their dredging to an alternative site during the next week.
John McCusker, The Times-PicayuneGov. Bobby Jindal, flanked by St. Bernard Parish President Craig Taffaro, left, and Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser, stands Wednesday at the end of a dredge pipe called a spreader. It is out of this pipe that dredged sand flows to create new land where there was once open water near the Chandeleur Islands.
"Get out of the way; move this bureaucracy out of the way," Jindal said after a helicopter tour of nearly a mile of the newly created sand berm near the Chandeleur chain, which has been withering away after a succession of hurricanes in the past decade.
77
1
35
Share
The state's contractors were told by the Army Corps of Engineers to shut down dredging operations Tuesday evening, after the federal Interior Department expressed concerns that if the state continued to dredge in the current location it could pose long-term risks for the current barrier island system. Federal officials said they had already given the state more than a week to get sand from a more distant borrow site, but that contractors have continued to ask for more time.
The sand berm plan has been a central goal of Jindal and other coastal leaders since the first three weeks that oil began gushing out of the well after the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion. But federal resource agencies and other coastal scientists have raised ecological concerns and question whether the berms can be built in time to protect the state's fragile marshes from the oil.
Tom Strickland, assistant interior secretary for fish, wildlife and parks, said that if the department had allowed the state to continue digging where it was digging, officials feared they would approach a "tipping point" with an "impact on that island chain that may never be restored."
The concern with the current borrow site is that sand circulating in the island system could become trapped in the current borrow pit, thus accelerating land loss throughout the Chandeleur chain. The federal government believes a site a mile farther offshore poses less of a risk.
"We're acting in good faith. We have a good working relationship with the state on so many elements of this," Strickland said. "We are going to continue to work with the state."
Col. Al Lee, the corps' New Orleans District commander, said in a statement that the area where state contractors were digging "supports currents that carry sediment and organic material critical to the integrity of the natural barrier islands."
"Among the concerns is that the removal of material in this area will create additional erosion issues and possible deterioration of the Chandeleur Islands," Lee said.
Jindal said the state has agreed to move the dredges a mile farther offshore, as requested, but doesn't understand why dredging can't continue while the pipe is being laid to the new borrow site. Pointing to a succession of photographs of the withering Chandeleur Island chain, he questioned why the federal government is delaying work in a time of need.
"We've been losing 300 feet every year off these islands. Where has the federal government been?" Jindal asked. "They haven't spent a dollar to protect these islands. We haven't heard from them before today about any concern about these islands or this area. All of a sudden now that we're building new land to protect our coast, they're worried about a hypothetical consequence?"
Contractors are now working to extend the pipe a mile farther out to the alternative sand borrow site. Once that is done, likely within seven days, the state will be able to proceed with the dredging.
Garret Graves, Jindal's coastal advisor, said the current borrow site is permitted by the corps and that moving to the more distant borrow sites was a "verbal condition" that the federal government gave after the permit was approved and work was about to begin. He said contractors had trouble initially getting enough pipe to extend to the new borrow site because of the size and complexity of the project, which he called the nation's largest dredging project.
Jindal pointed out that the state is willing to backfill the hole it is digging now "within weeks, not months."
Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser, one of the first architects of the berm plan, made a personal appeal to President Barack Obama and Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the national incident commander overseeing the spill response.
Noting that forecasts are showing more oil reaching St. Bernard Parish and areas east of the river, Nungesser said, "We know we're getting ready to fight a war over there. Give us the tools to do that.
"I beg the president, Admiral Allen to step in, kick some butts, do whatever you gotta do, but get the bureaucrats out of the way and turn the dredge back on."
Soon, I’ll post my farewell message. The end is starting to get close. There are many misconceptions about me, and before I go, to live with my ancestors on the steppes, I want to set the record straight.
