Proving once again that they have no clue about the need for closure along the Gulf Coast, McClatchy reports on the latest delay: ‘Bottom kill’ of BP’s Gulf well now put off till after Labor Day

WASHINGTON — A relief well that government officials say will finally finish off BP’s Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico won’t be completed until after Labor Day, weeks later than officials had been predicting.

The delay is necessary in part because officials want to preserve the blowout preventer currently sitting atop the BP well as possible evidence in federal investigations into what caused the well to explode on April 20, retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said Thursday. That means the old blowout preventer will have to be removed and a new one set in place before engineers can complete the relief well. That process and associated tests will take at least three weeks, Allen said.

“We do not want to have damage to the blowout preventer,” Allen said in explaining the delay. “We are concerned about preserving evidence.”

Look, that blowout preventer has been a vital piece of evidence since the explosion in April, and could have been swapped out any time after the success of the top kill was confirmed, but they waited until just before the relief well was finished.

The weather pattern that produced the Russian heat wave, Pakistani floods, and suppressed Atlantic tropical storm development is breaking down just as the most active portion of the hurricane season begins. It is almost as if they are trying for a new blowout, with delay after delay.

Just a note to let you know that as a result of your campaign that fills my mail box with your brochures, calls me at least daily, and annoys the hell out of my Mother with your constant ads on television [congratulations, you have replaced the Scooter Store as the most hated advertiser], I am more likely to vote for a zombie “Tricky Dick” Nixon than you.

Should the Democrats of Florida be so delusional as to select you, and there is no alternate minor party candidate, I may be forced to vote for his “orangeness” or not vote at all.

I don’t imagine anyone has ever explained the concept of “wretched excess” to you.

So I have been looking around the ‘Net to clarify some things that have been bothering me on this whole deal and what I have found shows how totally bogus the whole thing is.

First off, when I was living in Southern California I did work for people in the development community, and the political scene in San Diego was heavily weighted with development issues. They were having their bubble, so there was a lot of money involved.

One thing I know from the experience is that building in a city is a long process filled with forms, fees, and a lot of public meetings. If you don’t like a particular project, there are a lot of ways to to express your opinion, and the easiest if you have the time is to go to the public meetings.

These meetings are a direct way of sending a message to politicians. You may not get a project stopped, but you can stall it if enough people show up, and you might force mitigation.

So, I was surprised when I read this article from the first week in May in the New York Daily News that quotes two relatives of people who died at the World Trade Center talking about the project being insensitive, but notes they didn’t attend the public meetings where the project was approved.

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