[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 95 (Wednesday, June 23, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5289-S5290]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             GULF OILSPILL

  Mr. LeMIEUX. Mr. President, America is facing a lot of challenges. We 
have the issue of unemployment compensation that my colleague just 
mentioned and how to pay for that so we do not put this country into 
further debt. We have the two wars we are fighting in Afghanistan and 
Iraq and a myriad of other challenges that are facing this country. But 
a clear and present danger exists right now in the Gulf of Mexico, a 
clear and present danger to my home State of Florida.
  I have come to the floor almost every day over the past week while we 
have been in session to talk about the need for the Federal Government 
to have a more robust response in preventing this oil from coming 
ashore.
  Unfortunately, the situation has gotten worse. In a report this 
morning on television that I saw by Mark Potter, the oil now is coming 
ashore in Pensacola in a way that is profoundly worse than it has been. 
As he described it: It is oil as far as the eye can see. Watching those 
pristine white beaches covered in brown splotches of oil this morning--
it breaks my heart. It breaks my heart for what it is going to mean for 
the people of northwest Florida, what it will mean for the environment; 
but it breaks my heart even more because I think a lot of this could 
have been prevented. Many Members of this body, as well as the one down 
the hall, have been asking for weeks, where is the Federal response? 
Where are the skimmers off our coast to suck up this oil before it gets 
on our beaches, into our waterways and into our estuaries?

  Frankly, I have been extremely frustrated with the response from this 
government. I believe--and there are many who believe this as well--
that the Federal Government should not be involved in all aspects of 
our lives. But what the government does, the government should do well. 
And one thing the Federal Government should do, and should be uniquely 
qualified to do, is to help in a time of disaster. In this 
circumstance, however, the government has fallen far short.
  One thing that has been very frustrating to me is trying to determine 
how many skimmers are in fact off the coast of Florida. Skimmers are 
these vessels which are equipped to suck the oil off the water, bring 
it on to a place where it can be contained and disposed of and get that 
oil out of the ocean. As of yesterday, we found out that there were 20 
skimmers off the coast of Florida, plus an additional 5 skimmers that 
the State of Florida went out on its own and rented.
  When I met with the President a week ago yesterday in Pensacola, I 
raised the issue with him: Why are there not more resources stopping 
this oil from coming ashore? Admiral Allen, who was at that meeting, 
and who is the head of the response--the former Commandant of the Coast 
Guard--told us there are 2,000 skimmers in the United States. So why 
are there only 20 off of Florida? I have asked the Coast Guard and even 
the Navy, why are there not more skimmers? I have come to find out that 
we cannot even determine how many skimmers there are.
  The State of Florida, as of yesterday, in their Deepwater Horizon 
incident report, shows 20. We know an additional five were rented. The 
Federal Government's report, the National Incident Command Report, says 
there are 108 skimmers. We asked the Federal Government--the Coast 
Guard--why this number is different than the number in the State 
Incident Command Report. We can't get a good answer. And when we 
drilled down on this 108 last week, we were told: Well, that number 
isn't correct.
  In followup, and having met with the Navy yesterday, and the Coast 
Guard--and I thank Secretary Mabus for making the Navy and the Coast 
Guard available to us to talk to them about this issue--we got a more 
detailed response about skimmers that the Coast Guard reports are off 
the coast of Florida, and now the number appears to be 86. So we have 
the State telling us 25, we have the incident report from the Federal 
Government saying 108, and

[[Page S5290]]

now the Coast Guard says it is 86. We can't get a straight answer.
  This gets to the base of the problem, which is that we don't know 
what we are doing down there in the Gulf of Mexico. The Federal 
Government is not putting the focus and attention on this issue that it 
should be. When I met with Admiral Allen, I asked him about the 2,000 
skimmers he had reported were available in this country and why those 
skimmers weren't in the Gulf of Mexico now, some 65 days after this 
disaster first started. I got answers ranging from, well, some are 
obligated to be other places in case there is an oilspill--to me, that 
is like saying your house is burning down and we can't send a firetruck 
because we may need a firetruck for another house that might burn 
down--to this answer: They are legally constrained. This is what I 
heard from the Navy yesterday when I met with them. Some 35 skimmers 
they would like to bring down are legally constrained.
  I asked this question yesterday: Why aren't we approaching this issue 
with a sense of urgency? Why doesn't the President sign an Executive 
order waiving any legal constraints? Why aren't we doing everything 
possible to marshal those resources into the Gulf of Mexico?
  I have received a new piece of information from the U.S. Coast Guard. 
It is the National Response Resource Inventory of skimmers and 
capabilities throughout the whole country.
  This document shows the different districts in this country. I will 
get this blown up and, hopefully, come to the floor tomorrow and show 
this in greater detail. It has the country broken up by area into 
districts. Florida is in a district with Georgia and South Carolina. 
That is district 7. These are Coast Guard districts, for the most part. 
It shows how many skimmers there are. These are not skimmers offshore, 
of foreign countries, which we will talk about in a moment. These are 
skimmers here in this country.
  In district 7, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, there are 251 
skimmers--251. In the Texas district, district 8, there are 599. So 
between the gulf coast of Texas to Florida there are 850 skimmers, and 
we have somewhere between 25 to 86 to 108, depending on whose number is 
right. Perhaps they are all incorrect, but given the best accounting 
possible, there are 108. Where are the other 742 skimmers, and why 
aren't they being deployed? And that is just in the gulf coast.
  In the district that includes California, there are 227 skimmers. In 
the district that includes Washington State, there are 158. In the 
district that includes Michigan and other Great Lakes States, there are 
72. In the district that includes Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, 
there are 160. In the district that includes the mid-Atlantic, there 
are still another 157. Why are these skimmers not headed to the Gulf of 
Mexico? Why are they not there already?
  It is not a good answer that they are needed for another oilspill, 
because we have an oilspill--the worst oilspill that we have ever seen 
in this country, and one that is washing sheets of oil this morning 
onto the beaches of Pensacola in my home State of Florida.
  That is the national picture. Internationally, the State Department 
came out with a report which I talked about yesterday--it came out last 
Friday--that talks about all the offers of assistance from foreign 
countries, offers that were made by Belgium on June 15, the European 
Maritime Safety Agency on May 13, by the Republic of Korea on May 2, by 
the United Arab Emirates on May 10 to give us skimmers, and all of them 
are still under consideration. Months have gone by and the U.S. 
Government hasn't returned a phone call to these offers of help.
  It is amazing to me that we would not be accepting these offers of 
assistance to bring in these skimmers from foreign countries. When 
there is a disaster around the world, whether it is a tsunami in the 
Far East or an earthquake in Haiti, the United States of America is the 
first to answer the call. We, because of the goodness of our people, go 
in and help these countries, as we should. Now they are offering to do 
for us what we have done for the world and give us assistance, yet we 
are saying no. That is also beyond belief. The State Department, as of 
last Friday, reported 56 offers of assistance from 28 countries or 
international groups. We have accepted 5--5 out of 56--BP has accepted 
3, and 46 remain under consideration.
  I want to talk about one of these offers specifically. This ship is a 
Dutch ship from a company called Dockwise. This ship is the Swan. This 
is a huge vessel that, when equipped with skimming equipment, can suck 
up 20,000 tons of water and oil--20,000 tons. It was offered to the 
United States on May 6--May 6--and we never answered the call. Instead, 
a ship that has one-twentieth of its capability was accepted by the 
Coast Guard.

  I received some followup information yesterday, and here is the 
response as to why the Coast Guard did not accept this superskimmer for 
use in the Gulf of Mexico. The response was that it was going to be 
equipped with arms--sweeping arms, which are what skims the oil into 
the boat--and BP was able to purchase two sets of these arms from 
another company and, therefore, the ship wasn't needed. The arms sweep 
the oil into a ship; the ship holds the oil. The arms are only half of 
the equation. And if this ship holds 20,000 tons of oil and water 
mixture, it is certainly needed.
  Saying that we didn't need it because we got the arms and we put them 
on another ship makes no sense. The ship that was used instead has one-
twentieth of the capability. That is an American ship, and I am glad we 
are using it, but we should be using both of them. We should be using 
every ship possible. And why should we be using every ship possible? 
Because oil is washing up on the shore of my State and the Federal 
Government seems anemic, at best, in its response.
  What is this doing to our oceans, our waterways? The Mote Marine 
Laboratory in Sarasota--which I had the privilege to visit a couple of 
weekends ago--does wonderful work with marine life and has these 
unique, almost torpedo-like automated vehicles that go out in the water 
to check to see whether the oil has spread. It is one of the vehicles 
that helped us determine that this plume of oil, in fact, does exist 
beyond what you see on the surface. They are reporting yesterday, in an 
article that was published, that rare plankton-eating sharks are moving 
toward the coast of Florida. Ten healthy whale sharks were found Friday 
about 23 miles southwest of Sarasota. They are moving away from the 
oil--this oil that is growing not just on the surface but underneath.
  What will be the long-range implications of this disaster, not just 
on our economy but on our environment? It is hard to tell. This 
morning, Florida State's marine biologists are reporting that the fish 
population has been severely damaged in the Gulf of Mexico.
  Mr. President, I will continue to come to the floor every day we are 
here to sound the siren, to ring the bell and call for more response 
and a better effort to protect my State of Florida, as well as the 
other States in the gulf. This response is anemic, and our failure to 
act is outrageous. This government must do a better job.
  With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor to my friend and 
colleague from New Hampshire.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.

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