http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/us/23boom.html?th&emc=thFierce Recycling Effort in Fighting Oil’s Spread
Pete Parker’s not-so-small frame radiates purpose. Striding around a dockside yard where his “decontamination unit” works, he keeps an eye on 11 workers who are stooped over drills, bolts and iron mallets to repair oil-containment booms damaged by waves and strong currents in the gulf.
Like a cobbler in a town where no new shoes are to be had, Mr. Parker, 60, is helping the oil-spill containment effort get by with the boom it has. Many days, no new boom is delivered. The goal of his unit, which works for an emergency response company known as O’Brien’s Response Management, is to supply boom as soon as it can be made seaworthy again.
A shortage of containment boom has plagued the spill containment effort since the Deepwater Horizon leak began two months ago. So far about 475 miles of boom — both the “hard” vinyl boom that Mr. Parker repairs and the “soft” absorbent boom — has been deployed across the coastline of four states, including more than 225 miles in Louisiana alone, according to figures provided by BP and the Coast Guard.
But the five biggest domestic manufacturers have a backlog of orders of six weeks or more, one industry expert said. So Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama are competing for whatever supply is available.
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“Just think of all your exposed coast and your islands,” said Officer Kapsimalis, a New Yorker who is a member of the Coast Guard’s Atlantic Strike Team, whose territory includes the Gulf Coast. “You can’t have enough of it.”
On at least one day last week, the only new boom laid by the Venice operation was some 500 feet provided by Mr. Parker’s unit. “We’re getting it from wherever we can find it,” said Michael R. Abendhoff, a director of government and public affairs for BP.
-snip-
Tim Byerly, president of the Tactical Sourcing Group, a company in Suwanee, Ga., that provides boom for the cleanup effort, estimated that 10 percent of all the boom laid so far, at a price ranging from $15 to $18 a foot, was ineffective. In particular, Mr. Byerly cited boom that lacks reinforcing cable stretched through a seam along the top.
-snip-
“We’re trying to figure where it’s going to go,” he said of the menacing patches of oil.
And to have workable boom waiting for it.
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wouldn't the greatest country in the world GET enough booms and WORKERS?
after all this time, wouldn't the greatest country in the world have all the booms needed?
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