Typical Arrogance
This is such a normal part of corporate behavior that you rarely read about it anymore. This is from McClatchy – Supervisors reject BP’s plan to use landfill for oil spill waste
GULFPORT — Harrison County supervisors voted unanimously Monday to oppose BP using the Pecan Grove landfill in Harrison County to dump waste from the oil gushing in the Gulf of Mexico.
Supervisors found out last week during a meeting with elected officials that the unified command’s preliminary plan called for putting debris into the landfill. The board said it is “stringently opposed” to that plan.
…Marti Powers, a spokeswoman for BP, said every agency involved with unified command received input about the best way and the best places to put the debris. She said Pecan Grove was on a pre-approved list of sites.
“We are open to suggestions for other places to put waste,” she said.
Ms Powers, y’all have a corporate headquarters and it is probably fairly large, so take your hazardous waste there, because you can’t dump it in a regular landfill.
I think it is about time that the public and officials got access to these “pre-approved lists” that BP keeps referring to, along with clear indications of who made the approvals. The Federal government can’t tell a county that they have to accept things, and most county landfills will not accept trash from outside of that county.
4 comments
…I was originally going offer a gently chiding and defensive response about any criticism regarding the apparent identification of “approved” waste disposal sites – especially as regards the Pelican Grove landfill – until I let Google be my muse. I am naturally defensive about criticism of the performance of the Incident Command System, mostly because I see so much of it by know-nothing blowhards when wildfire response is the subject. On the other hand, seeing via Google that the web site for the so-called “Unified Command” for the Gulf disaster is ‘dot.com’ rather than ‘dot.gov’ says a whole lot about this story and my views, given that Incident Command teams don’t usually set up web sites with “dot.com” domain names…
While the originating Biloxi Sun Herald story suggests that the Board of Supervisors are just mostly PO’ed about the oil spill and don’t want to play along, the fact is that nobody but a BP employee showed up to take the heat. That speaks volumns about who is actually running the “Unified Command” and suggests a prediction of where we think this whole thing will lead….
The only Federal government entity that has been identified with the “Unified Command” is the Coast Guard, and they don’t have the people they need to deal with the normal problems in the Gulf, much less something of this magnitude. They got sliced and diced by the Hedgemony.
Full disclosure a friend of a friend has been trying to retire from the Coast Guard for going on three years without success because he does something important and they don’t have anyone to take over the job.
It’s to the point locally that you feel bad calling them even if you’re sinking.
It is a BP operation that is supposed to be coordinating with local governments.
We don’t have many state environmental laws, but after getting nailed over groundwater pollution by the EPA for our landfills, counties have gotten really picky about what goes in them.
On the general point you are making about government oversight, that’s why I want to see these lists, and find out who is doing these approvals. BP has a tendency to skip over that part, saying simply “pre-approved list”.
I wish there were a government agency in charge, hell, even FEMA, because we know about those hoops and hurdles. Actually, FEMA would be great because the new head is Craig Fugate who was Florida’s head of emergency management for years and everyone along the coast knows him, and most have worked with him.
“‘We are open to suggestions for other places to put waste,’ she said.”
Ooh. Ooooooh. Don’t tempt me… 😈
I know, Steve. What I wrote was definitely not my first reaction to that statement. 😉 😈