Rachel Maddow brought up a serious issue on Wednesday evening's show (transcript): How is it that we are forced to use the same tools and techniques for fighting oil spills that have already proved fruitless in the deep-water Gulf?
Same busted blowout preventer, same ineffective berm, same underwater plumes, same toxic dispersants, same failed containment domes, same junk shot, same top kill—it‘s all the same technology.
...
The oil companies keep talking about how technologically advanced they are—but what they‘ve gotten technologically advanced at is drilling deeper. They haven‘t gotten any more advanced on how to deal with the risks attached to that. They haven‘t made technological advances in the last 30 year when‘s it comes to stopping a leak like this when it happens. All they‘ve gotten better at is making the risks worse, by putting these leaks further out of our reach.
Government and industry have a long history of fighting the last war when it comes to oil spills. In 1986, Congress established the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund (OSLTF) to fund cleanup and claims of oil spills where the responsible parties' resources are inadequate. Great idea, except that no funding mechanisms for the fund were included.
The implications of that oversight became clear in March of 1989 in Prince William Sound. After the Exxon Valdez spill, Congress passed the 1990 Oil Pollution Act (OPA), which defined responsibilities and authorities during and after spills. It also authorized and defined actual revenues to and disbursement from the fund. A 5 cents a barrel tax on petroleum and money transferred from other government pollution trust funds got the OSLTF up to $1 billion. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 bumped the maximum size of the Fund to $2.7 billion.
The OPA specified the uses to which the OSLTF could be put:
Removal costs incurred by the Coast Guard and EPA
State access for removal activities;
Payments to federal, state, and Indian tribe trustees to conduct natural resource damage assessments and restorations;
Payment of claims for uncompensated removal costs and damages;
Research and development; and
Other specific appropriations.
$50 million (increased in 2002 to $100 million potential) of the fund was set aside for emergency use in case of a spill. The rest is tossed into the "Principal Fund" for the uses above, which have, at times, been interpreted liberally over the years.
One of the uses cited for the fund, "research and development," covers many different agencies and fields. In any given year, not that much federal money is being used to answer the very reasonable question "How do we contain an oil spill?"
USAToday reports
Federal funding for oil spill research was cut in half between 1993 and 2008, falling to just $7.7 million in fiscal year 2008, data from the Congressional Research Service show. Federal legislation introduced last year to bolster oil spill research has yet to pass. And oil companies have invested "little to no" money on spill response technologies, concentrating instead on oil exploration and spill prevention, says Robert Peterson, a consultant to the oil and gas industry at Charles River Associates.
(emphases mine)
The government's premiere oil spill research facility is Ohmsett, the Oil and Hazardous Materials Simulated Test Tank in Leonardo, New Jersey. Built by the EPA in 1973, the facility was used to test oil spill models and technology until the late 1980s, when funding diminished. In 1988, the facility was closed. The following year, the Exxon Valdez spill occurred.
The facility was refurbished and reopened in 1992. Since then, response methods have expanded from simple containment to now-familiar techniques like in-situ burning contained by fireproof booms and chemical dispersants. Research has emphasized the problems associated with spills in northern and arctic environments.
Ohmsett's tank is 667 feet long, 65 feet wide and 11 feet deep, though the 2.6 million gallons of water in it only rise 8 feet. That's so the tank's wave generators can simulate different waveforms up to a 3 foot chop. The facility has been described as an "intermediate step between small scale bench testing and open water testing of equipment."
While minus eight feet is indeed an "intermediate step" between a bench top and a mile under the ocean, very little research has been done by government--and next to none by industry--into how exactly one responds to a "spill" on the sea floor at the Outer Continental Shelf. The difficulties of deep water work have led oil companies and regulators to rely on prevention technology like blowout preventers, the assumption being that if a well accident can be prevented, the need for other responses is eliminated.
Just about the time the current nightmare stared, I was reading Lt. Gen. Russel Honore's Survival: How a Culture of Preparedness Can Save You and Your Family from Disasters .
Honore was the commander of Joint Task Force Katrina. The first fed in New Orleans with both universal authority and a lick of sense. Three weeks later he pushed west to deal with the effects of Rita.
What the book lacks in literary polish, it more than makes up in first-hand accounts of those disasters and his lessons on preparedness. Honore has, in fact, made disaster planning and response education his post-military mission.
One essential principle of response planning and training he emphasizes is the need to address worst-case scenarios. He dismisses "disaster" exercises in which participants simulate crises for which they have prepared solutions. As blunt as his reputation paints him, he says, "If nobody dies, it's not a disaster," a concept he internalized at the National Training Center for armored and mechanized infantry units at Fort Irwin in the Mojave desert.
The key to training at Fort Irwin is not just the opportunity for units to learn the importance of synchronization among widely dispersed armor and mechanized infantry units on the modern battlefield. When units go up to the NTC for a two-month rotation they are expected to lose virtually every fight. The odds are stacked against them.... The NTC was never intended to be a friendly place. Battalions and brigades and their commanders are there to learn and the best way to learn is to be beaten soundly and frequently...
Government agencies, from federal to local, would do well to look at the training model of the National Training Center when it comes to preparing for disasters. Too often disaster preparedness exercises are well-scripted simulations. Those involved sit in comfortable chairs in air-conditioned rooms and play out the exercise. All their communications systems work. The lights and computers are all on. They don't have to fight through downed trees and flooded streets to get to the command center. All the gas stations are open and operating so they don't have to worry about fuel. It's a nice, neat package in which they say they are planning how to manage the worst-case scenario.
That's not the worst-case scenario. That's not even a disaster. A true disaster is where nothing works; not telephones or electricity or computers.
Or blow out preventers. Or accoustic backup switches. Or booms or berms or dispersants.
The assumption that somehow every backup would back and every failsafe would save led both industry and its regulators to ignore--and never plan for--the worst-case scenarios of deepwater drilling. And so no new techniques were developed to respond to them. Ohmsett went on testing booms. Skimmers were refined. Dispersants studied. Wells were dug ever farther beneath the sea.
And, in the dark waters far below air-conditioned exercises, out of the hearing of safety awards ceremonies, disaster, true disaster, waited.
There's a great lot I've omitted and simplified here. The core question of why we are using the tools of a generation ago to fight a crisis in an environment for which they were never intended is one we will be asking for a long time to come.
Hoping all are well today. Drive less if you can.