Local Officials Simmer Over BP Recovery Efforts

Local Officials Simmer Over BP Recovery Efforts
By JOHN LELAND
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/us/06pensacola.html?th&emc=th


PENSACOLA BEACH, Fla. — Five hours after the first tar balls were reported on this front stretch of the Florida coast, William A. Lee looked up and down a crowded beach and did not like what he saw.

There were swimmers and sunbathers enjoying an exquisite morning; there were news crews and satellite trucks; there were beachcombers gathering and photographing blobs of sticky brown oil. What there were not were cleanup crews.

Mr. Lee, the executive director of the Santa Rosa Island Authority, which administers this 1,474-acre sliver of white sand, knew immediately whom to blame.

“We called BP at 4:30 this morning and told them to send cleanup crews,” he said Friday. “It’s 9:30 and they’re not here. There’s supposed to be 30 or 40 skimmers out there to protect Pensacola Beach. Do you see any? BP dropped the ball.”

Under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, all cleanup efforts after an oil spill are administered through a central unified command, in which the oil company takes a prominent role among federal, state and local agencies.

To Mr. Lee and other local officials here, the delay is just a small example of what they see as a bureaucracy that is unresponsive to their needs. Last week the five commissioners of Escambia County, which includes Pensacola Beach, unanimously passed a resolution asking that BP be removed from field cleanup operations, except financially. The resolution is largely symbolic, but it is a measure of the frustration simmering here.

“When it comes to taking care of beaches, that’s something we know how to do,” said Grover Robinson, chairman of the County Commission, whose authority includes Pensacola Beach. “With BP I feel I’m always two days behind in information, and when I ask a question I don’t get an answer.”

Their frustration echoed that of Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and other state officials, who complained that BP was too slow in providing containment boom, skimmers and other supplies.

BP did not return calls for comment.

State officials in Florida are also frustrated. Alex Sink, the state’s chief financial officer, said she wanted BP “out of the claims-handling process” for businesses hurt by the spill. “Some businesses are on the verge of bankruptcy because of the way BP is handling things,” she said. “This is just not working.”

Bill McCollum, the state attorney general, has likewise called for a greater federal role in recovery plans.

On Pensacola Beach, the cleanup crews arrived late Friday morning. The decision to call them came from a joint command center in Mobile, Ala.

Mr. Lee complained that local officials were unable to handle the spill the way they considered best. “The way unified command works,” Mr. Lee said, “if you want to do something you have to fill out a form and get their O.K., or you won’t get reimbursed.”

But Pete Capelotti, a master chief petty officer for the Coast Guard, who was at the beach, defended the unified command’s response time. “People say, ‘Why wasn’t this cleaned up in five minutes?’ ” he said. “But it’s an evaluative process. A report comes in. It has to be verified. Teams have to assess what it is. Then we call in the cleanup crews.”

For Mr. Lee this was unsatisfying. “I’d rather have FEMA come in,” he said, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which coordinates hurricane relief and received much criticism for its handling of Hurricane Katrina. “With FEMA,” Mr. Lee said, “we’d do what we have to do and send invoices to FEMA and let them go after BP” for reimbursement.

He added, “We’d have hired our own contractors and had this cleaned up before daylight.”