Gulf of Mexico oil spill cleanup draws fresh criticism

With oil from the 2010 BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico continuing to show up on beaches and in wetlands along Louisiana’s coast, the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority on Wednesday passed a resolution criticizing the Coast Guard for prematurely allowing BP to pull cleanup teams from coastal areas it has declared clean, The Times-Picayune reports. The authority passed a second resolution requesting the governor’s office and the state attorney general’s office to brief its members on whether any of the state’s criminal statutes can be applied to BP. “We’ve pretty much reached an impasse with the Coast Guard,” says Drue Banta, a governor’s office attorney handling legal issues involving the spill for the authority. “They continue to tell us ‘no’ in different ways.” Calls to Coast Guard Capt. Samuel Walker, the incident commander for the spill, were not returned. Authority Chairman Garret Graves says state and parish officials have been meeting monthly with Coast Guard officials but have gotten little satisfaction for their concerns. “They are refusing to do any type of monitoring efforts, despite the fact that you have very live, ongoing oiling. … When you compare that to what’s going on in the other states, to have the area that was worst hit, more oil, more reoiling, and you’re not doing monitoring, and in other states you are [monitoring], that’s not OK,” he says. Read the full story here.