U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800

Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001

58–033 PDF 2011

S. Hrg. 111–909 

DEEP IMPACT: ASSESSING THE EFFECTS OF THE 

DEEPWATER HORIZON OIL SPILL ON STATES, 

LOCALITIES, AND THE PRIVATE SECTOR 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

AD HOC SUBCOMMITTEE ON STATE, LOCAL, 

AND PRIVATE SECTOR PREPAREDNESS 

AND INTEGRATION 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

HOMELAND SECURITY AND 

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

JUNE 10, 2010 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security 

and Governmental Affairs 

( 

(II) 

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware 

MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

CLAIRE MCCASKILL, Missouri 

JON TESTER, Montana 

ROLAND W. BURRIS, Illinois 

EDWARD E. KAUFMAN, Delaware 

SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine 

TOM COBURN, Oklahoma 

SCOTT P. BROWN, Massachusetts 

JOHN MCCAIN, Arizona 

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio 

JOHN ENSIGN, Nevada 

LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina 

MICHAEL L. ALEXANDER, Staff Director 

BRANDON L. MILHORN, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

TRINA DRIESSNACK TYRER, Chief Clerk 

PATRICIA R. HOGAN, Publications Clerk and GPO Detailee 

AD HOC SUBCOMMITTEE ON STATE, LOCAL, AND PRIVATE SECTOR 

PREPAREDNESS AND INTEGRATION 

MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas 

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

JON TESTER, Montana 

JOHN ENSIGN, Nevada 

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio 

LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina 

DONNY WILLIAM, Staff Director 

RYAN TULLY, Minority Staff Director 

KELSEY STROUD, Chief Clerk 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Opening statement: Page 

Senator Pryor .................................................................................................... 1 

Senator Ensign ................................................................................................. 4 

Senator Lieberman ........................................................................................... 5 

Senator Landrieu .............................................................................................. 7 

Senator Brown .................................................................................................. 7 

Senator Burris .................................................................................................. 7 

Prepared statements: 

Senator Pryor .................................................................................................... 53 

Senator Burris .................................................................................................. 56 

Senator Lieberman ........................................................................................... 57 

WITNESSES 

THURSDAY, JUNE 10, 2010 

Hon. Bill Nelson, a U.S. Senator from the State of Florida ................................. 8 

Hon. David Camarelle, Mayor, Grand Isle, Louisiana ......................................... 9 

Billy Nungesser, Presdient, Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana ............................... 12 

Mark A. Cooper, Director, Louisiana Governor’s Office of Homeland Security 

and Emergency Preparedness ............................................................................. 15 

Hon. Juliette Kayyem, Assistant Secretary of Intergovernmental Affairs, U.S. 

Department of Homeland Security ..................................................................... 30 

Rear Admiral Roy Nash, Deputy Director, Federal On-Scene Commander, 

Deputy Unified Area Commander, U.S. Coast Guard ...................................... 33 

Ray Dempsey, Vice President of Strategy, BP America, Inc., accompanied 

by Darryl Willis, Vice President for Resources, BP America, Inc. ................... 41 

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Camarelle, Hon. David: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 9 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 60 

Cooper, Mark A.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 15 

Prepared statement with attachments ........................................................... 67 

Dempsey, Ray: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 41 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 139 

Kayyem, Hon. Juliette: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 30 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 129 

Nash, Rear Admiral Roy: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 33 

23Nelson, Hon. Bill: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 8 

Nungesser, Billy: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 12 

Prepared statement with attachments ........................................................... 63 

APPENDIX 

Eddie C. Williams, City Attorney, City of Pascagoula, Mississippi, prepared 

statement .............................................................................................................. 146 

(1) 

DEEP IMPACT: ASSESSING THE EFFECTS OF 

OF THE DEEPWATER HORIZON OIL SPILL 

ON STATES, LOCALITIES, AND THE 

PRIVATE SECTOR 

THURSDAY, JUNE 10, 2010 

U.S. SENATE,

AD HOC SUBCOMMITTEE ON STATE, LOCAL, AND

PRIVATE SECTOR PREPAREDNESS AND INTEGRATION,

OF THE COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY

AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, 

Washington, DC. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:02 a.m., in 

Room SD–342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Mark L. 

Pryor, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Pryor, Landrieu, and Ensign. 

Also Present: Senators Lieberman, Burris, Nelson, and Brown. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR PRYOR 

Senator PRYOR. I will go ahead and call this hearing of our Subcommittee to order. I want to thank everyone for coming to the Ad 

Hoc Subcommittee on State, Local, and Private Sector Preparedness and Integration. The topic of this hearing is called ‘‘Deep Impact: Assessing the Effects of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill on 

States, Localities, and the Private Sector.’’ 

We have several Senators that are en route or who are scheduled 

to be here, and I want to thank Senator Landrieu for coming. We 

are actually expecting several Senators to be here and participate 

in this hearing, but I thought what I would do, in the interest of 

time—thank you for being here, Senator Lieberman. I thought 

what I would do in the interest of time is go ahead and do my 

opening statement, and then I will recognize Senator Lieberman 

for his statement and Senator Ensign for his, and I would also then 

recognize other Senators. 

But, first, let me thank Senators Lieberman, Landrieu, 

McCaskill, Burris, Brown, and Ranking Member Ensign, as well as 

Senator Bill Nelson, for being here today. And I want to thank all 

of our witnesses for being here today. We really appreciate your 

time and helping us on this Subcommittee understand and help the 

American public understand more of what is going on down in the 

Gulf Coast. 

I want to note that while our State and local panel is compromised solely of witnesses from Louisiana, we actually had invited other witnesses from Florida and Mississippi. But just due to 

2 

scheduling conflicts, some of those at the last couple of days had 

to change their schedules and could not attend. But we really are 

looking forward to hearing from all of our witnesses. 

We are here to discuss the impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil 

spill on the affected States and localities and to determine the effectiveness of the joint Federal, State, and local response effort. We 

are over a month into this tragedy, and the size and the scope of 

that tragedy we are only now beginning to comprehend. We must 

begin learning the lessons of this event now and work to improve 

the process as we move forward. 

This hearing will focus on five main questions: 

One, what is the true impact of the oil spill on States and localities? And what are their outstanding needs? 

Two, what Federal plans have been activated to assist the impacted States and localities in responding to the spill, and are they 

working? 

Three, is additional Federal assistance needed to ensure that 

people impacted by this spill are able to survive the clean-up process? 

Four, what are the next steps in stopping the leak, and how does 

BP plan to clean up the heavily inundated areas along the coast? 

And, five, has BP set up a claim process that is fair and usable 

for those who have been adversely impacted by the oil spill? 

Fifty-one days ago, an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig 

began a series of events that have impacted our country in ways 

that will not be fully clear to us for some time. Eleven people died 

on the rig that night, a tragic loss of life for the families and 

friends of the workers lost at sea. While America grieved, very few 

imagined the depth of the impact that this event would have on 

our Nation. 

From the beginning, there was an apparent effort to downplay 

the severity of this spill. A BP executive predicted that the impact 

of the spill would be ‘‘very, very modest.’’ What we now know is 

that we are facing a truly unprecedented situation. Millions of gallons of oil have spewed into one of the richest and most unique ecosystems in all the United States. 

As you will hear from the testimony of the State and local officials who have joined us today, hundreds of miles of coastal wetlands have been affected, some unalterably. We may never know 

the extent of the loss of animal life or the degree of damage to the 

wetlands or the level of the damage done to the fishing stock. 

What we do know is that 51 days out from the beginning of this 

ordeal, the impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is anything 

but modest. To date, there have been 413 oiled live birds, 592 dead 

birds collected by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 250 dead turtles collected, two mammals including dolphins that we know conclusively died as a result of the spill—and, by the way, there is a 

photo of dolphins; it is kind of hard to see in that photo, but dolphins swimming through the oil there—with 31 other mammals 

currently being tested. 

Over 78,000 square miles, which is about 35 percent of the Gulf 

of Mexico Federal waters, is closed to fishing. Fishermen, seafood 

processing plants, shippers, and other businesses have been forced 

to rely on payments from BP to supplement the income they would 

3 

have otherwise earned fishing the waters of the Gulf Coast. Responding to a spill of this size, which is the largest in American 

history, has required enormous intergovernmental coordination. 

On Thursday, April 29, the Coast Guard declared the Deepwater 

Horizon a spill of national significance (SONS), as they say. The 

SONS declaration set into motion several Federal operational 

plans, including the National Contingency Plan, National Response 

System, Homeland Security Presidential Directive 5, and the National Response Framework. As a result, a massive effort to organize many different Federal resources, including the Department of 

Homeland Security (DHS), the U.S. Coast Guard, Mines Mineral 

Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Evironmental Protection Agency 

(EPA), Department of Defense (DOD), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Department of Energy, and 

other agencies. In addition to coordination between Federal agencies, these plans govern the interaction between Federal, State, 

local, and private sector entities. 

It is critical that there is clarity of responsibility and a clear understanding of roles at each level of government. I intend to ask 

the Federal, State, local, and private sector witnesses to assess the 

effectiveness of these plans and the resulting response effort. 

BP’s efforts to stop the flow of oil through the top kill and junk 

shots failed. BP has recently placed a cap atop the blowout protector and is now collecting several thousand barrels of oil a day. 

These are positive developments, but little comfort to Gulf Coast 

residents who are forced to watch the shoreline turn black and 

brown from oil inundation. 

Perhaps one of the most important questions we ask today to BP 

is: How do you intend to clean up these heavily inundated areas? 

And how much progress has been made in the clean-up to date? 

BP has committed itself to paying claims for individuals harmed 

by the spill. As I mentioned earlier, over 78,000 miles of fishing 

waters is off limits. In Louisiana alone, the seafood industry produces over $2 billion yearly. This means that thousands of Americans will have to rely on an approved claim by BP in order to put 

food on the table or pay the mortgage. I intend to gain a better understanding of the claims process and ultimately ask BP the hardest question of all to answer: At what point will BP no longer be 

able to pay? 

I am glad my colleagues from this Subcommittee have joined us. 

There are an infinite number of questions that need to be asked 

and answered. We are taking a small but immensely important 

piece today. The people of the Gulf Coast are facing a terrible degree of uncertainty in so many ways. Their employment, their communities, and their livelihoods are drifting at sea. We must ensure 

that the coordinated response is fully effective. We will not allow 

BP to short-change the public when their actions have led to such 

an unimaginable situation. 

So, again, I want to thank my colleagues for being here today, 

and let me call on Senator Ensign, the Ranking Member of the 

Subcommittee, for his opening statement. 

4 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR ENSIGN 

Senator ENSIGN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for 

holding this very important hearing. Before I start, I see our colleague from Louisiana here, and all the folks in the Gulf Coast just 

know that our thoughts and our prayers are with you. I know this 

is an unbelievably difficult time, and most of us in the country are 

just seeing it on television, but you all are living it out in your dayto-day lives. Our thoughts and our prayers with you. 

Other committees in both the House and the Senate have conducted numerous hearings on a wide array of issues relating to the 

oil spill. These have ranged from determining what caused the explosion, what the environmental impacts will be, and if anything 

could have been done to prevent this disaster from happening in 

the first place. Also, Admiral Allen has provided numerous, very 

detailed briefings regarding the status of the leak: how many barrels are being captured, and the extent of the spill’s impact. I hope 

to get something different and unique out of this hearing. 

This Subcommittee was designed for a very specific purpose, and 

that is to examine if the States and localities are getting what they 

need from both the Federal Government as well as from the private 

sector. Additionally, I want to prove and see if there are various 

levels of government working together cohesively and ‘‘jointly’’ or, 

in military terms, as a ‘‘total force.’’ We need to find out if there 

are other assets which the States and localities need and have not 

been provided by either BP or the Federal Government. We need 

to identify here today what those gaps are, figure out what is the 

best way to fill them, and then begin to figure out how to proceed 

down that path. I also hope to hear what BP and others in the oil 

industry and the private sector are doing to aid the clean-up efforts. 

My good friend from Arkansas and I have worked together on 

numerous issues and pieces of legislation in a bipartisan fashion 

during our time here in the Senate, and if we identify today any 

additional congressional action that is required—and this Subcommittee has worked very well in a bipartisan fashion—I know 

we will do what is required, and our staffs will work together to 

get that accomplished. 

This hearing was designed in a very specific way. The States and 

localities were intentionally put on the first panel so that we could 

hear from you and force the Federal and private sector entities to 

listen to what is needed. Some specific questions and issues I 

would like to see raised and addressed are as follows: 

Are there adequate resources for the clean-up? Do we have 

enough skimmers in the water? Is there enough ocean boom? My 

understanding is that Alabama has only two skimmers and not 

enough boom. Will the Federal Government need to procure more 

of either? If we have other skimmers in our inventory, why are 

they not currently in the Gulf working? 

As a matter of fact, I was just watching television this morning 

about a private sector company that says that they can produce up 

to 90,000 feet of boom a day, and they have not gotten BP to approve that yet, and that is one of the issues that we want to explore this morning. 

5 

I would like to get to the bottom of the sand berm-barrier islands 

that were requested by Louisiana. What was the delay in getting 

these approved? Was determining who would pay for the barrier islands berms a major stumbling block? Also, do we have the necessary manpower on the beaches and in the waters helping to clean 

up the ecosystem? News stories over the past few days indicate 

that the manpower down there is still inadequate. And I for one 

would be open to sending, if we need to, the National Guard resources down there to assist. Is this something that would help? 

Perhaps this is something the Congress can help with. 

I would like to also hear what the rules are for cleaning crews. 

I have heard reports the locals are upset because cleaning crews 

are only allowed to work 20 minutes out of every hour. Is this accurate? And if so, why are these rules in place? 

Finally, I want to find out more on the new effort to collect and 

review oil spill response solutions from scientists and vendors. 

What can we hope to see come from the interagency alternative 

technology assessment program, and what hurdles may complicate 

and hamper effective response technologies? 

These are all important issues that need to be addressed, and I 

hope we can get to at least some of these today and, if not, more 

of them in the coming weeks. And, again, Mr. Chairman, I thank 

you very much for holding this hearing. 

Senator PRYOR. Thank you. Senator Lieberman. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LIEBERMAN 

Senator LIEBERMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you first 

for inviting me in my capacity as Chairman of the full Committee 

to come by this morning, and I hope I can return your graciousness 

by speaking briefly and then leaving it to you and the Subcommittee to go forward. And I look forward to hearing the results 

of this hearing. 

But I think it is a very important hearing because it is obvious 

to all of us that it has taken painfully long for the oil spill in the 

Gulf, Deepwater Horizon, to be stopped. But long after it is 

stopped, the people, the communities, the State and local governments of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida will still be 

dealing with its consequences. And I think it is very important that 

you have focused your attention, as a Subcommittee, on this part 

of the problem. 

While I am saying that, I want to thank Senator Landrieu for 

the work, really pioneering, very effective work, that she has done 

in disaster response in the Subcommittee that she heads, and then 

her tireless and persistent advocacy in this case for the people of 

her State and the Gulf overall. And I welcome the elected officials 

from Louisiana as well. 

I was thinking, Mr. Nungesser, that we learn things when we 

come from our various States to the Senate. When I arrived here 

22 years ago, I thought that the top person in a parish was called 

a priest. 

[Laughter.] 

Then I found out that in Louisiana the top person is called the 

president, but if I may extend this a little bit to you directly, you 

have played a role here in this crisis that really has been very conVerDate Nov 24 2008 08:29 Mar 15, 2011 Jkt 058033 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\58033.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
6 

structive, and in some ways like some of the parish priests I have 

been honored to deal with back home in Connecticut, you have 

been a principled, passionate, and effective advocate for the people 

of your parish, and it is an honor to have you and the others here. 

Mr. NUNGESSER. Thank you. 

Senator LIEBERMAN. I will say just a few things. 

First is that this is not the first time we have faced such an environmental catastrophe involving oil in our country, though this is 

now the worst catastrophe of its kind that we have ever faced. Obviously, the Exxon Valdez in 1989, was at the time the worst oil 

spill of its kind, and we debated then some of the very same issues 

that we are debating today. 

The fact is that we adopted some legislation in response, and it 

has had a positive effect, particularly with regard to preventing oil 

spills in vessels on the surface of the water and in responding to 

accidents when an oil spill actually does occur. 

But, unfortunately, we did not take all the steps that we might 

have then. It seems to me as we look back that we failed to build 

a system that could plan for and respond to other risks in this particular area of activity, including the one that we are facing here, 

which is an uncontrolled blowout in a deepwater well. 

I think, as Senator Landrieu and I agree, and others agree, we 

have to, when we start talking about this, acknowledge that there 

have been thousands of wells dug, and the safety record overall is 

an impressive one. And we depend on the oil that comes from those 

wells to move our country and power our country. But the obvious 

fact here is that the Minerals Management Service did not require 

adequate safety and response measures from the oil companies at 

deepwater level, and this is what we are facing now and what we 

have to fix as quickly as we can. 

There are a lot of lessons to be learned, but I think one that is 

clear to me and I think is why it is so important that the Chairman 

is conducting this hearing today is that the State and local governments need to be actively involved in the response planning for disaster generally and specifically for oil spills. And as I said at the 

beginning, long after this terrible breach is closed and the oil stops 

flowing out of those pipes and that well, the people of the Gulf are 

going to be living with the consequences of it. And I think what you 

can help us today in doing is to tell us exactly what we can do, 

which is what we want to do, which is to stand by you as we help 

you back to normalcy. 

So, Mr. Chairman, I thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to say that, and I look forward to hearing from you about 

the results of this hearing. 

Senator PRYOR. Thank you, and thank you for being with us 

today, Mr. Chairman. It is great to have you. 

Our next order, just so you all will know, is Senators Landrieu, 

Brown, Burris, and Nelson. And what I would like to do, if possible, 

is limit this to 3 minutes, but I understand some people may need 

a minute or two extra, so I will not be too quick with the gavel. 

Senator Landrieu. 

7 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LANDRIEU 

Senator LANDRIEU. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to try 

to do mine in 2 minutes, if I could. 

First of all, I think the scope outlined by you and the Ranking 

Member are right on point about what our Subcommittee should be 

focused on in this hearing and moving forward. 

I also want to acknowledge the leadership of Senator Lieberman. 

This Subcommittee did not even exist in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, but when Homeland Security was reorganized, both 

the Chairman and I appealed to the Chairman of the full Committee that a Subcommittee that would give voice to local governments was so important in handling these disasters. And, Senator 

Pryor, you stepped up to lead this Subcommittee at Senator 

Lieberman’s request, and I am very grateful because I think we 

will find, Senator Lieberman, the work of this Subcommittee, just 

like our Subcommittee did for FEMA, will be extremely helpful to 

the outcome of this issue. 

Second, I hope that these parish presidents and this director, 

Mark Cooper, whom I know very well—these men were on the 

front line of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, watching their parishes 

flood and their people suffer. They are now on the front line again. 

They have been heroic in their efforts to try to give a voice and explain the many dimensions of this issue. I hope today they will be 

given an opportunity to talk, Senator Lieberman, about the balance 

necessary between what you said: The need for oil and the jobs 

that they represent from their parishes, but also the need to have 

a clean and pristine environment so our fishermen can operate. 

And I hope they will speak to that. I hope they will talk a little 

bit about the 6-month proposed moratorium, what that might do in 

terms of devastating the jobs that are left, 52 days after this incident, and I look forward to their testimony and will leave it at that 

for right now until we get to the questions. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator PRYOR. Thank you. Senator Brown. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR BROWN 

Senator BROWN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am here because 

I care and I want to hear what everyone is going to be testifying 

to. I am going to be bouncing back and forth because I have other 

hearings today, but I want to thank you for your leadership, and 

I will defer because I think everyone is anxious to get cracking. 

Thank you. 

Senator PRYOR. Thank you very much. Senator Burris. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR BURRIS 

Senator BURRIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am also grateful to 

you and the Ranking Member. I am not a Member of this Subcommittee. I just want everyone to know that not only are the 

coastal States going to be suffering, but also the State of Illinois, 

and we are certainly sending what little help we can down to the 

coastal States. I know that national guardsmen are coming in with 

helicopters, and assistance that we are giving. But there is another 

effect on this which deals with our urban areas, and that is the 

8 

food that comes out of the Gulf. It is going to impact us tremendously in our restaurant business and those various businesses. 

So I am deeply concerned about what is going to happen down 

there in the future, and certainly I want to give deference to the 

distinguished governmental leaders who are here and on the front 

line of this problem. We must make sure that we treat this as a 

national crisis. The Gulf States are getting the brunt of it, but all 

of us are going to suffer from it. 

And so based on that, Mr. Chairman, I feel it is important for 

me to be here for the few moments that my schedule will allow in 

order to bring a message not only from the Gulf States but from 

mid-America that we will be impacted, and we want to support our 

colleagues on the front line the best we can with everything we 

have to overcome this problem. Thank you. 

Senator PRYOR. Thank you very much. Senator Nelson. 

TESTIMONY OF HON. BILL NELSON, A U.S. SENATOR FROM 

THE STATE OF FLORIDA 

Senator NELSON. As usual, Mr. Chairman, you are insightful to 

burrow in on something that needs disclosure. I bring to the Subcommittee today, the effect on State and local government. Oil is 

now entering Florida waters. The orange mousse has come into 

Perdido Bay. The Perdido River, Mr. Chairman, is the dividing line 

between Alabama and Florida, and it flows into Perdido Bay, and 

then that flows out into the Gulf of Mexico in Perdido Pass. 

Florida was not notified. The Emergency Operations Center in 

Escambia County in Pensacola was not notified. This all occurred 

yesterday. The Coast Guard is doing a great job, but they are 

stretched to the limit. Those guys are working 24 hours. They barely have time enough to sleep. And it all the more calls for the command-and-control structure so that mistakes like this do not keep 

happening. 

Our local and State officials, as well as their Senator, are not 

only bewildered but we are livid that the command and control is 

not there so that communication is not coming to the State and 

local government. It reminds me of some of the things I heard Mr. 

Nungesser saying in his experiences over the past several weeks as 

he was talking about the oil and that orange mousse coming in on 

the wetlands in Louisiana. And they were not blessed because the 

winds took the oil, the fresh oil, to Louisiana wetlands. The winds 

blessed us at least for a while because it kept it to the west, but 

now it is moving to the east and to the northeast. And when the 

winds shift again, Mr. Chairman, and take it to the south, and it 

gets into the loop current, it is going to take it around the Florida 

Keys and up the east coast of Florida in the Gulf Stream. 

So I thank you. You again are clairvoyant in what needs to be 

examined, and just know that you have some folks in Florida that 

are mad as wheat hens right now. We have to get this command 

and control straightened out where communication is going to everybody at the local level. 

Senator PRYOR. Thank you, Senator Nelson, and thanks for your 

comments, and I want to thank all the Members for being here. 

What we have now is three panels, and our first panel is the 

local government witnesses, the second panel is the Federal GovVerDate Nov 24 2008 08:29 Mar 15, 2011 Jkt 058033 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\58033.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
9 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Camardelle appears in the Appendix on page 60. 

ernment witnesses, and the third panel is British Petroleum. So 

what I would like to do is just very quickly introduce each one of 

you, and I will allow you to make your opening statements. I would 

love for you to keep your opening statements to 3 minutes, if possible, and we are going to have lots of questions. So we really appreciate you all being here. 

First let me introduce Mayor David Camardelle. He is the mayor 

of the town of Grand Isle, Louisiana. He has been the mayor there 

since 1997, as I understand it. 

Mr. CAMARDELLE. Since 1995. 

Senator PRYOR. Since 1995. And he will discuss the impact the 

oil spill has had on his community and the inability of the community to engage in clean-up efforts due to the approval process required to begin any activity, which is important, and we heard 

that. We want to know more about that. 

Next will be Billy Nungesser. He is the President of Plaquemines 

Parish, Louisiana. He has served the people of Plaquemines Parish 

for over 20 years, and if I am not mistaken, we met when I was 

down there after Hurricane Katrina. 

Mr. NUNGESSER. I have actually only been in office 31⁄2 years. 

Senator PRYOR. Oh, 31⁄2 years. 

Mr. NUNGESSER. I was still there. I rode out Hurricane Katrina 

in Plaquemines, but I was not elected. I was a volunteer. 

Senator PRYOR. I think that we met some of the folks from 

Plaquemines Parish when we were down there and saw the impact 

that Hurricane Katrina had on your community. And you will discuss the financial impact of the oil spill on your community and 

your local businesses, etc. 

And last, but certainly not least, we have Mark Cooper, who is 

the Director of the Louisiana Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. 

So thank you all for being here. Mayor Camardelle, if you could 

go first. 

TESTIMONY OF HON. DAVID CAMARDELLE,1 MAYOR, GRAND 

ISLE, LOUISIANA 

Mr. CAMARDELLE. Good morning, Senator. My name is David 

Camardelle. I am the mayor of Grand Isle. I am in my seventh 

term—three terms as councilman, four terms as mayor. Grand Isle 

is about 60 miles southeast of New Orleans. It is the only inhabited 

barrier island in Louisiana, and it is home to about 1,200 residents. 

In the summertime, we get about 250,000 vacationers, which is 

combined of sports fishermen, bird watchers, and visitors coming to 

enjoy our seafood. 

Most of the residents of Grand Isle and the coastal region are either small independent fishermen or they are employed in an oil 

and gas-related industry. In many cases they do both, working a 

7-day shift for an oil company and then being off for 7 days when 

they fish. We understand what it takes to get a job done because 

our livelihood depends on it. If the boats break down or the nets, 

we know how to fix them. We know how to go back, and we know 

how to work in the town of Grand Isle. 

10 

The marinas, the grocery stores, the hotels, the souvenir shops, 

the charter boats, and the large shrimp producers, in Grand Isle, 

the largest shrimp producer in the United States, the shrimp, it 

buys 7 million pounds of brown shrimp, should have bought 4 million pounds in the last week, it is down, completely down. 

I am looking at a picture, and it brings tears to my eyes because 

Mr. Nungesser can tell you we have been watching this all coming 

through our five passes, which affects five parishes. We have been 

working hard to come in and block the passes. We have come in 

with ideas. Mr. Nungesser and Greg, the two parish presidents, we 

came up with the idea of sand berms. In the meantime, born and 

raised on that island, trying to protect our people, trying to stop 

oil from coming on Bourbon Street if we have just a low pressure 

that comes into the Gulf of Mexico. We came up with an idea to 

come in with the deeper passes. I told the President of the United 

States, if he gives us $1 million a day, we can come in and block 

these five passes with barges. We only have 45 days before a major 

hurricane gets into the Gulf of Mexico. 

I keep on looking at that oil because I watch it every day, every 

morning coming through these passes. Our Cajun heritage has 

taught us to work hard, persistent, and we are very resilient. Born 

and raised and watching my mother and father lose everything in 

1965, watching my father being elected on the side of me, telling 

the people everything is okay, it is material things. Anyone in Louisiana can protect anybody from hurricanes. I told the President 

that. You send me anywhere in the world. You give me 10 days. 

I can make a difference with hurricanes. But right now my hands 

are tied. I am dealing with an oil company. We have no say-so. We 

try our best. We have the best equipment that can come into our 

town, different salesmen, 2,500 salesmen come in every day, I 

mean, through the weeks, and Mr. Nungesser can tell you, asking 

us. But I can tell you one thing. We are not going to give up. As 

of yesterday, we are bringing barges to my town. I am going to be 

back tomorrow morning at a meeting in Grand Isle to show the 

Coast Guard exactly where to put them and make sure that we 

protect our people. 

And I am going to tell you, every day I have a mom that comes 

in front of me and asks me, ‘‘Mr. David, how am I going to get food 

to my kids?’’ I have 37 applications right now that are standing by 

at the community center as we speak this morning that are still 

waiting on a $5,000 check. You have a deckhand on a boat that 

gets $2,500 maybe, and the owner of the boat that has a boat note 

of $5,200 is still waiting for a $5,000 check. 

You have a marina that is waiting on a check, the electricity bill, 

right now the water bill and the gas bill is $5,800 at my city hall, 

and I am not going to cut the gas off. 

That is the things that we are going through. The shrimp dock 

is a ghost town. The booms do not work. In a major pass, the 

booms do not work. 

Mr. Senator from Florida, this is a wake-up call. What you said 

earlier, what we went through 7 weeks ago, you are just opening 

your eyes this morning. And I am being honest with you all. We 

need some help. We need you all to push. We need some money 

down there. 

11 

And the last thing, our people do not want is a free check from 

the government. Our people do not want food stamps. They do not 

want a SBA loan. They want to go out on the waters. We still have 

fishermen right now that are waiting, and they want to put booms 

to scoop up that type of oil. Right now as we speak, it is coming 

through our passes, and when I get back tomorrow morning, I will 

have one of them passes blocked up, and I have four left. And I 

guarantee you, if I could push—and I am going to make it happen. 

I am going to block the five passes, get out of there in 45 days, and 

I will stop with a low pressure, I will stop and protect five parishes. 

And we are not waiting. 

Two Saturdays ago, I commandeered the fishermen at the dock, 

told everybody to get out of the way, and we put fishermen to work. 

We just do not want to be on food stamps. We are not used to that. 

We want to go to work and save our community. 

And the Senator from Illinois, my deckhands, when I had a 

shrimp boat—and I still have a shrimp boat. Two of them come 

from Chicago, Illinois, made a good living, fed their families. I 

think one of them is still there working with our family. And you 

are right, the seafood—what I see here is destroying the best seafood in the world. And I gave my credit card before. I fed some families. I make $513 a week as mayor. I got my own family to raise. 

And I just talked to my secretary, and I can promise you I will not 

let no one starve on my island. Maybe that is why I have been reelected seven terms. Senator Landrieu can vouch for that. She has 

always been there for us. And my good friend to the left, Billy, he 

feels the same way. We continue to fight. I am going to meet with 

the President today at the White House at 3:30 p.m. It looks like 

every time the President came, BP got closer to me. They push the 

button, and then it fades away. 

So I am hearing there are maybe navy ships somewhere to come 

and scoop up this oil. Please, please send us some help. We are 

true Americans. If my grandfather would be alive and my father 

would be alive, I could remember them having an American flag, 

and I asked my grandmother why was the American flag behind 

the sofa on the wall. She said, ‘‘Your grandfather this year was the 

best fishermen.’’ 

Tomorrow, I will stop at my grandfather’s tomb and my father’s 

tomb and tell them that I want to continue holding the American 

flag, that I stood up for my people, and I am going to continue to 

feed my people. 

On behalf of the elected officials of Grand Isle and the residents 

of Grand Isle, we are strong. Let me remind you it is 45 days before a major hurricane gets close. I just need your help. It is like 

a war and I am on the front line. 

I want to thank you all so much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator PRYOR. Thank you. Thank you for being here today, and 

thank you for that very touching testimony. 

Mr. Nungesser. 

12 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Nungesser with attachments appears in the Appendix on 

page 63. 

TESTIMONY OF BILLY NUNGESSER,1 PRESIDENT, 

PLAQUEMINES PARISH, LOUISIANA 

Mr. NUNGESSER. Thank you. We appreciate the opportunity to be 

here today. 

I wrote a nice speech, and I threw it in the garbage this morning. 

I represent 25,000 people, 100 miles long, and I am going to talk 

quick because I have a lot to say—more coastline than any other 

parish. To date, over 3,000 acres of my parish is destroyed, not 30 

miles like the Coast Guard has said. Three thousand acres are destroyed, and everyone in it. 

I started out to go into a lot of detail on some things, and last 

night on the plane, a gentleman walked to the back of the plane 

and handed me this piece of paper. And he said, ‘‘I work with the 

Coast Guard. I am a Coast Guard official.’’ He said, ‘‘I am back 

home in Washington, and I wrote this down for you to say and tell 

somebody until they listen, because it is not getting done.’’ 

He said, ‘‘I have been down in the command center in Houma for 

over 35 days,’’ and I am going to read it to you. ‘‘The problems at 

the Incident Command Center in Houma that result in the slowing 

down for this response. Agency requests from the Federal funding 

must go through two levels of approval. First a request must go to 

the ICO command approval, which typically takes less than a couple hours. The final level of approval comes from the UAC Roberts 

to Admiral. Sometimes it gets approved the next day or the day 

after, but most requests take over 5 days. This timing is unacceptable for an effective response. 

‘‘When the DM932 spill spoiled 80 miles of the Mississippi River 

in 2008, the CO of the command post had full authority to obligate 

and engage the OSLTF funds. Why is this not happening now? 

‘‘The current Federal project ceiling is $150 million, causing the 

emergency partner of the OSLTF to almost be completely depleted. 

There is more than $1 billion in the OSLTF fund, principal fund. 

Why hasn’t Congress allowed the Coast Guard to borrow from this 

fund, as it did for the OPA 90 when that barge broke in Louisiana? 

The lack of action by Congress has forced the U.S. Coast Guard to 

ration the little money they have left, therefore slowing down the 

response.’’ 

Now, I do not know if that is true, but if it is, shame on us. I 

am not here to place blame on anybody as I have done in the past. 

I am here to move forward, and it has got to change, or we are 

going to lose coastal Louisiana. 

I still do not know who is in charge. Is it BP? Is it the Coast 

Guard? When I get mad enough in a meeting, the Coast Guard in 

our office stands up and says, ‘‘I can make that happen.’’ When I 

throw a BP official out of my office, he comes back the next day 

and approves something. I have spent more time fighting the officials of BP and the Coast Guard than fighting the oil. 

We have come up, the parish presidents, with every logical answer. The boom is not working. Please do not rely on the boom in 

Florida unless they get ocean boom, which we said from day one 

was the only thing that was going to keep it out. It is a joke. It 

13 

washes up on the shore with the oil, and then we have oil in the 

marsh and we have an oily boom. So we have two problems. 

We have to find somebody to put in charge that has the guts and 

the will to make decisions. We are going to make some bad ones, 

but we are going to fix them and go forward. 

Right now, it took the President of the United States to come 

down to approve a Jack Up Boat to put in the mouth of the river. 

It is a 2-hour boat ride back to Venice. When you work 20 minutes 

and you rest 10, not much work is getting done. 

Sometimes it feels like the contractor has more influence that BP 

has hired than BP and the Coast Guard. I have sat in the command center in Venice when—I call him the guy with the red hat, 

stands up and says, ‘‘We are not going to do that.’’ Well, obviously 

not because his guy’s on the payroll. Any equipment that would 

come into the parish through the parish or the State or the Federal 

Government, he is not getting a percentage of. 

Right now, they are building a camp in Plaquemines Parish for 

1,500 people. I tell you, there is nothing in Plaquemines Parish for 

1,500 people to do. We appreciate it. The people they sent out to 

clean up one of the islands trampled the nesting grounds of the 

pelicans. They were out there throwing eggs around like it was a 

joke until our fishermen stopped them. 

We have people in charge that do not know what they are doing. 

We have laid out a plan for the Jack Up Boat so we could be closer 

to the front line out there to catch the oil. And we did in Pass A 

Loutre 3 weeks ago on a Monday morning at 6:15 a.m. That oil still 

sits in the marsh, and every day more and more pelicans dive into 

that stuff, not knowing what it is, and get coated with it and die. 

And I have a packet up there for each of you. Thousands and thousands more birds will die, hundreds and hundreds of turtles and 

sea life every day we leave that gook out in the marsh. 

We came up the next day with a vacuum plan and have been 

begging to get it approved. Kevin Costner’s machine, I do not care 

whose machine we use, we have to suck it up. 

There are overseas ships—and I am sure there are some in this 

country—that we have had people come from all over the world to 

see me because BP will not see them, with a pipe that will go down 

500 feet and get those large areas of oil beneath the surface 10 to 

50 feet. Why aren’t those ships deployed? We could get most of it 

out there. 

The President had to approve the Jack Up Boat plan. He had to 

come down. We begged for the berm plan. Although we do not want 

to see it on the Florida beaches, it is easier to clean it off of a beach 

than out of the marshes. We told them from day one, ‘‘You will not 

clean it up out of the marsh.’’ They said it will never get there. 

Well, it is there. 

And I ask you, please do not take flyovers of Plaquemines Parish. 

It is an insult to the local people. You cannot see it from the air. 

You got to go down there and touch it. You got to pull into that 

marsh and see there is absolutely no life. Everything is dead. And 

we will lose—I will make you a prediction. We will lose more coastline from this disaster in Louisiana than we lost with Hurricanes 

Katrina, Rita, Gustav, and Ike combined. We have already lost 20 

14 

miles of Pass A Loutre. It is dead, and as soon as the grass and 

the cane falls into the water, the land will wash away. 

How can we sit here 3 weeks later and say we are doing everything possible? It is beside me. And I do not know who to blame 

anymore. It took the President coming down to get the berm project 

approved. I do not know if it is going to take him coming down to 

get the suction equipment. We put a vacuum truck that vacuums 

out Porta Potties on a barge and took it out there and showed that 

it sucks up the oil. And there is other equipment out there. You 

have the parish presidents running the whole show. BP could fire 

all their contractors because they are doing absolutely nothing but 

destroying our marsh. You could put every fisherman to work. This 

is an emergency. To work 20 minutes and take 10 minutes off, 

would we do that in war? Because we are at war here. Would we 

say, ‘‘Lay down your guns because the sun is over 90 degrees. They 

are not going to come at us for another 20 minutes. Let us take 

a break’’? That is absurd. We are letting the rules, the regulations, 

the contractors, and BP stand in the way of us saving our coastline. 

Yesterday, the governor went out and showed that the vacuum 

equipment is working. Hopefully by the time I get back this afternoon, we will have an approval for that process. But if what this 

gentleman told me on this piece of paper is true, then shame on 

the Coast Guard. They are rationing their money and saying, well, 

we might not do that because we need this. And I do not want to 

point fingers, but there is a lot of money being spent—a lot of 

money—more than that berm will cost. That is not going to benefit 

Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, or Alabama one bit and keep the 

oil out. It is being spent on hotel rooms, Jack Up Boats, flyovers, 

all the things that look pretty but do not do anything absolutely— 

does nothing to help us clean up our marsh. 

I do not know if you saw the TV reports of the crews wiping the 

blades of grass. That was an absolute insult. Does anybody really 

believe we are going to wipe every blade of grass to clean it off? 

There are over 100 natural products that could be sprayed to energize the marsh, eat the oil. BP is not looking at any of them. We 

have tested several and made recommendations. 

You think as big a company as they are they could multi-task. 

For the first 2 weeks, I heard, well, we have to stop the leak, then 

we will worry about the fishermen. Well, I hope the guy that writes 

the check to the fishermen is not the guy trying to—maybe it is. 

Maybe that is why they cannot stop the leak. But that is absolutely 

ridiculous, and that is what we keep hearing, that is the most important thing. 

Everything should get attention. Everything should be worked on 

at the same time. God knows we have enough people on the payroll 

to do that. What did they say, 24,000 people? 

I know I am out of time, and I am just going to leave you with 

this: Thomas Paine said a century ago: ‘‘Lead, follow, or get out of 

the way.’’ So tell them to get out of our way if they are not going 

to help us because right now they are the main problem. 

Thank you. 

Senator PRYOR. Thank you. Thank you for your passionate testimony. Mr. Cooper. 

15 

1The prepared statement with attachments of Mr. Cooper appears in the Appendix on page 

67. 

TESTIMONY OF MARK A. COOPER,1 DIRECTOR, LOUISIANA 

GOVERNOR’S OFFICE OF HOMELAND SECURITY AND EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS 

Mr. COOPER. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. Governor Jindal 

early on stood up the State’s unified command group, was forwardleaning, and directed the oil spill coordinator and other key State 

agencies to be involved in the response and clean-up efforts. The 

governor met with parish leaders and other leadership of the affected parishes to assist them in developing responses to oil impacting their parishes and to address the economic issues facing 

the parishes and their citizens. He has designated the Secretaries 

of the Office of Coastal Protection and Restoration, the Department 

of Wildlife and Fisheries, the Department of Natural Resources, 

and the Department of Environmental Quality as trustees under 

the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA 90), to represent the State in 

the response and clean-up. State agencies and local governments 

have used their expertise, as just stated, to develop innovative 

modular processes to protect their coastlines which are nimble and 

quick to deploy. 

However, unlike other disaster responses, under the provisions of 

OPA 90, the State does not have the authority to independently 

conduct any response activities, and this has led to a great deal of 

frustration, as just stated, with BP as we have attempted to interface with their processes for response. 

As of June 7, over 13 coastal parishes are affected, and while we 

are trying to get the exact number because it changes, over 100 linear miles of Louisiana’s coast and coastal marshes are confirmed 

to have been impacted by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. This is 

measured, as I indicated, in linear miles only and does not reflect 

the depth of the intrusion into our coastal marshes. The impact of 

oil on a beach is vastly different than the effects of oil in the 

marshes, especially in terms of environmental impact. 

Large areas of State and Federal fishing grounds are closed to 

commercial and recreational fishermen. Less than 20 percent of our 

shrimpers are able to actually harvest, and large regions of oyster 

harvest areas are closed. In addition to the fisheries, in the indirect 

business in support of that industry, other areas of the Louisiana 

economy have been and will continue to be affected, to include 

tourism and recreation, transportation and logistics, chemical manufacturing, oil and gas exploration, and State brand issues, which 

is a major concern. 

Much of the coastline already affected or currently threatened is 

part of a very fragile coastal marsh and wildlife habitat system. 

Damage to these commercial and environmental systems may require generations of effort to repair and to recover and could greatly disadvantage Louisiana’s economy for years to come and could 

jeopardized Louisiana’s reputation as a sportsman’s paradise. 

Most importantly, it has the potential to severely damage, if not 

destroy, a culture. The South Louisiana culture is strong and rooted in the fishing and other water-related industries, and entire 

communities have been established around these activities for genVerDate Nov 24 2008 08:29 Mar 15, 2011 Jkt 058033 PO 00000 Frm 00019 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\58033.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
16 

erations. Damage to these commercial activities could displace people, never to return, and their cultural contribution could be lost. 

A moratorium on deepwater drilling will exacerbate the impact 

on Louisiana in that we estimate that upwards of 10,000 jobs could 

be lost if deepwater drilling is curtailed. 

OPA 90 identifies BP as the party responsible for response and 

clean-up, and this law has been originally executed through the 

dated Area Contingency Plan. State and local governments develop 

plans to influence those actions of BP and Coast Guard, as just 

stated, to implement a more current analysis of those critical areas 

that need protection and implement from a bottom-up approach, 

but have experienced frustration having those plans implemented. 

These response plans require timely implementation, for example, as just stated, the dredging of the barrier islands. However, 

implementation has been frustrated by an unresponsive regulatory 

process. It cannot be overemphasized that the coastal wetlands and 

the marshes of Louisiana are not only an environmental concern, 

but a significant economic driver for the State of Louisiana and the 

Nation. 

Governor Jindal has made several requests to the Federal Government for assistance, and while the responses from the Federal 

agencies have expressed support, the overriding message has been 

that the Oil Pollution Act simply does not authorize the Federal 

Government to respond to a large-scale catastrophic oil spill with 

disaster programs and assistance similar to what comes with the 

Stafford Act. We are primarily concerned with the assistance to individuals that can be provided by Federal agencies that are in the 

Stafford Act emergency. 

With the official beginning of hurricane season this month, it has 

become increasingly clear that, should a storm threaten to collide 

with the huge oil spill, there will be unexpected and exacerbated 

consequences to the waterways and coastal marshes and coastline 

and inland areas of our State. We are requesting that FEMA be 

proactive in identifying potential response issues like pre-approval 

of 100 percent costs for debris removal for those areas that may be 

impacted by contaminated oil. 

Finally, few jurisdictions in our Nation have experienced the levels of disaster brought upon our State in the last 5 years. Louisiana continues to recover from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the 

largest in U.S. history, and Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, while responding to this current threat of this oil spill, which is the largest 

environmental impact that we have ever seen. 

Governor Jindal knows our parishes will not entirely entrust the 

care of Louisiana, its coastlines, coastal marshes, and citizens to a 

third party. The State and local governments will continue to be 

forward-leaning and aggressive to protect the interest of our State 

and its citizens. 

The bottom line is this: Because of the resiliency, the fortitude, 

and the battle experiences of our people, including these gentlemen 

sitting to my right, Louisiana will recover from yet another catastrophic disaster. This is vital not only for our State and the entire 

Gulf but for our Nation. The challenge is assuring that our parishes, Louisiana, and the other Gulf Coast States are full partners 

in identifying what works best, that plans that have been identified 

17 

are flexible, scalable, and responsive based on the needs, and that 

BP is receptive and forward-leaning in doing everything that is 

possible to protect and restore our coast and the livelihoods of our 

people. Thank you. 

Senator PRYOR. Thank you. Mr. Cooper, what I might do is I 

might open my questions with you, and we are going to probably 

do two rounds here because my sense is Senators are going to want 

to ask a lot of questions, and so why don’t we do two 5-minute 

rounds and try to move through the questions as quickly as possible. But we all have a lot of questions. 

Mr. Cooper, let me start with you, and you mentioned the Stafford Act. Is Louisiana in the process of requesting assistance under 

the Stafford Act? 

Mr. COOPER. No, we are not. 

Senator PRYOR. Can you tell me why or how that works? 

Mr. COOPER. Well, as you know, OPA 90 is what drives this, and 

at this point we are sticking with that OPA 90. That is not to say 

somewhere down the road we might change our minds on that. But 

the reason I brought that up is that—first of all, I do want to say 

up front that we have a great partnership with the DHS, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and the Coast 

Guard in planning for hurricanes. We all saw what happened during Hurricane Katrina. During Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, at the 

local, State, and Federal level the response was much better. And 

we are used to—and I think that is part of the issue, is that we 

are used to responding to a Stafford-type disaster where the response is from the bottom up, all emergencies are local, as opposed 

to the top down. And that has been the frustration in that. 

Also, when you put plans together—and I am an emergency manager. We put plans together, and we know that everything is not 

always going to go to plan, and we have to be flexible enough to 

change those plans at a minute’s notice, and that is not what we 

are seeing with this disaster. And I think that is what you have 

heard conveyed this morning, and that is why I brought that up 

about the Stafford Act. 

There are certain programs that are in there that we would like 

to see. For example, disaster unemployment insurance, that is one 

that we were not able to activate in this disaster, as well as crisis 

counseling, and believe me, there is going to need to be a lot of 

that, as well as other assistance. But, again, what our concern is 

is that if the system could be more flexible, then I think we would 

see a better result. 

I think what you have seen since September 11, 2001, since Hurricane Katrina, we have seen emergency management evolve. This 

Act goes back to 1990. There has never been a catastrophic oil spill 

like this. And I think the evolution that occurred in emergency 

management obviously has not occurred as it relates to catastrophic oil spills. 

Senator PRYOR. Let me ask about that, because one of the, I 

guess, challenges here is you have a private company, BP, who 

really ultimately has responsibility for most of this; but then you 

also have the Federal Government who is very involved in the response. And so just tell the Subcommittee, if you can, about how 

your State has been able to coordinate with the Federal GovernVerDate Nov 24 2008 08:29 Mar 15, 2011 Jkt 058033 PO 00000 Frm 00021 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\58033.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
18 

ment, and with BP, and some of the challenges there and some of 

the gaps there that are not working very well. 

Mr. COOPER. Well, that has been one of the challenges, as you 

have indicated earlier, that, again, with the Stafford Act we are 

used to a chain of command and unified command, starting at the 

local level. When it goes beyond their capabilities, they ask the 

State for assistance, and in partnership the State provides services. 

And then when it goes beyond the State, we ask for FEMA’s assistance. That is not what is occurring, and I think what the challenge 

has been for us—and this was conveyed earlier—is that there is no 

real unified command. You have a command in Robert, Louisiana. 

You have incident command in Houma. You have BP folks in Houston, Texas. You have these staging areas where there is command. 

So that has been part of the issue, just identifying what that command is. And as was indicated, sometimes decisions take a long 

time to be answered. It took more than 3 weeks, for example, for 

that dredging plan to be approved. 

Senator PRYOR. When you were getting approval for that, is that 

from the Federal Government, or from BP, or what? 

Mr. COOPER. That was from the Federal Government, and they 

are holding BP accountable in paying for that. And so that is moving forward, and we are extremely happy about that and appreciate 

the President for approving that. 

Senator PRYOR. And as I understand it, in Louisiana you have 

something we do not have in Arkansas. You have an oil spill coordinator’s office. Is that right? 

Mr. COOPER. Yes, sir. 

Senator PRYOR. And as I understand it, that used to be a cabinet-level position, but it is no longer a cabinet-level position? 

Mr. COOPER. What the governor did is move that under the State 

Police, which is a cabinet-level position, and the reason for doing 

that was because of the number of resources the State Police had 

versus the small office. We have a number of hazardous material 

specialists in the State Police and to support the oil spill coordinator. 

Senator PRYOR. So in your State government, are you the one 

who is responsible for coordinating, or is it the State Police through 

the oil spill coordinator? Or tell us how that chain of command 

works. 

Mr. COOPER. Well, it is the oil spill coordinator, but also, as required by OPA 90, the State is required to establish trustees, and 

I named those earlier. And those trustees include the oil spill coordinator, Department of Environmental Quality, Department of Natural Resources, Wildlife and Fisheries. But for an oil spill, it is the 

oil spill coordinator. 

Senator PRYOR. So the oil spill coordinator is the Federal Government’s and BP’s primary point of contact? 

Mr. COOPER. Yes, sir. That is correct. 

Senator PRYOR. OK. I tell you what, I am going to go ahead and 

turn it over to Senator Ensign and let him ask some questions. 

Senator ENSIGN. Well, thank you. 

First of all, I want to thank all of you for your testimony, and 

as emotional as you got, I actually thought you were pretty restrained, and I did not hear any expletives. And I can understand, 

19 

I am sure you have uttered a few of them out there, and it is quite 

understandable. 

Can somebody walk me through—who has to approve the berms? 

I guess it was the Federal Government had to approve the berms, 

and it took the President. Who has to approve more of the boom? 

Who has to approve these suction units that you guys have shown 

on shore, maybe to put them on the barges to get them going? 

Walk me through some of these approval processes because it 

sounds like you are having trouble knowing who approves. 

Mr. NUNGESSER. Well, our Coast Guard man on the ground says 

he can approve it, but then he looks to BP, and it goes through the 

BP chain of command. 

I think when we scream loud enough and it gets up to Admiral 

Allen and it gets the President’s ear, the Coast Guard pulls the 

trigger. And if funding is a problem, early on in a conference call 

with Admiral Allen’s assistance and Mary Landry from the Coast 

Guard, they told me the reason they would not approve the berm, 

they did not think it would do enough good to keep the oil out, one; 

and two, because of the cost, and they had limited funds for this 

recovery. And that scared me, and it should not be limited funds. 

We should be making BP put the money up. 

And so, we should be throwing everything and the kitchen sink 

at this, and the same thing with the skimmers. There are 100 

skimmers in a warehouse, but they are not through BP’s contractor, and we are playing hell trying to get those things out there 

to pick up this oil before it gets to Florida and other States. It is 

sitting out there, and nobody is picking it up. 

Senator ENSIGN. You are probably asking the same question I 

am right now. Why doesn’t Thad Allen just make it happen and 

then worry about billing BP later? BP has said publicly many times 

that they are willing to pay for the clean-up, they are willing to pay 

and do everything and do it right. If we are going to hold them to 

their word, why isn’t Admiral Allen doing that? 

Mr. NUNGESSER. These arm skimmers that can get on ships and 

go out there and pick this up, until they were embarrassed at a 

public meeting and the commander from the New Orleans Coast 

Guard took him aside—and I think they ordered one. Whether it 

was to shut this guy up or whatever. But there are all kinds of 

equipment that could pick all this oil up offshore before it gets to 

Florida, and that is the crime. We were out there, and we rode for 

3 hours the other day through thick oil like that, all along the 

outer barrier islands. And it is coming ashore somewhere, and we 

are doing nothing. 

Senator ENSIGN. Well, it is similar to—you heard today that BP 

cannot pick up as much oil, their ship that they have out there cannot handle all the oil that is being sucked up. And I am thinking 

to myself this has been going on 52 days now. Why isn’t there at 

least another ship or whatever they need in the area? It is going 

to cost them a lot more if the stuff comes ashore and gets into 

those marshes for the environmental clean-up. I do not know what 

the thinking is for BP, but they do not seem to be thinking. 

Mr. NUNGESSER. Well, the mayor made a start, when the new 

guy in charge, came down and we took his hand and stuck it in 

the oil and he felt it and asked him, ‘‘What do you think that feels 

20 

like on the back of a pelican?’’ He seemed to get it, and that was 

just the other day. Maybe we will see some changes. But until you 

go out there and see what it is doing, it scares the hell out of you. 

Senator ENSIGN. Maybe when you have trouble getting something approved we should just put some BP executives in the oil 

until they approve it. 

Mr. NUNGESSER. I have made that recommendation to Hayward. 

I told them, when he said there was no large sections of oil under 

the water, Jacques Cousteau’s son went for an hour and a half and 

could not find the end of a large section offshore. I suggested we 

take him out there and throw him overboard and see that black 

stuff dripping off of him. But it is serious enough—look at that picture. We were out for 3 hours the other day with the new guy in 

charge of BP, and I said, ‘‘What do you not see out here?’’ He said, 

‘‘Fishing boats.’’ I said, ‘‘What else?’’ ‘‘Skimmers.’’ Not a one. 

Barataria Bay, one of the most richest, where all those pelicans 

are nesting, our crew is out there every morning. We cannot pick 

up boom, but we can put it out. So we are putting it out every day. 

They are not picking up the oily stuff. So we just keep adding to 

it. That oil in Barataria Bay is going to destroy all of the nesting 

ground for the pelicans, and there were no skimmers out there yesterday or the day before or the day before that. 

Senator ENSIGN. Mayor Camardelle. 

Mr. CAMARDELLE. Yes, sir. The day before yesterday, around 5 

o’clock in the evening, before my council meeting, some of my 

shrimpers were off of Breton Sound, which is on the eastern side 

of the mouth of the river. Twenty-five of them—BP put some of the 

task force, about 25 fishermen in the task force. Out of the 25, I 

have eight of them from Grand Isle, and the rest is the neighboring 

parish, which is Lafourche Parish. They had no signal on their 

phones, so one of them climbed up the mast and called me, and he 

said, ‘‘I want to come home. I have been gone for 5 weeks. I am 

watching television, and I am watching the five passes where I 

make a living at.’’ He said, ‘‘The fishermen want to come home and 

work their territories. Mr. David, can you please bring us home? 

There is no oil here. Maybe between the 25 of us in the last 8 days 

we picked up maybe a quart of oil. But every night we are laying 

in the bunks of our boat. They make us anchor out at 6 o’clock in 

the evening, shut down.’’ 

Apparently BP does not believe that oil moves at night. A 

shrimper works 24 hours, 24/7. They left their families, and they 

are scared. They are scared to tell the BP representative that we 

need to go to Grand Isle, we need to go where the oil is at, we want 

to go save our community, and we will run back. 

Now, the task force five or six, maybe task force seven, behind 

the island is from Venice, Louisiana. So we are trying to work it 

out where the locals can maybe work in the areas, but the bottom 

line, looking at a picture like that with Mr. Nungesser and I, for 

3 hours, the BP representative that rode in the boat with us, just 

picture you or your son or your grandson playing ping-pong and 

there are about 500 balls coming to you with one paddle. That is 

what it looks like coming them passes, 500 streams of that type of 

oil coming, and there is only one shrimp boat that is fighting it. 

21 

Senator ENSIGN. Just one last comment. It just sounds like to 

me, based on everything that I am hearing, that the local folks, you 

know your area the best, you know the solutions the best, and obviously more of that command and control needs to happen bottom 

up, as you guys talked about. And perhaps even what we did, Senator Landrieu, during OIF/OEF, we had local CERP funds for the 

local commanders on the ground. Perhaps we need to set up something like that so that you guys do not have to go to that island, 

you do not have to go have the President come down to get some 

of these things, because it sounds like you have a lot of the solutions that could prevent a lot of this stuff from happening. 

Senator PRYOR. Thank you. Senator Landrieu. 

Senator LANDRIEU. Well, I will follow up on that point because 

that is where I wanted to jump off. I mean, obviously, I do not 

think any of us need any more direct testimony about the contracting process being absolutely broken. We saw this. We have 

seen it before. We saw it after Hurricane Katrina. We are operating under a different law but some of the same problems we are 

seeing rear their ugly head again, which is the people that are on 

the ground either up to their chin in water, or up to their knees 

in oil in this case, do not seem to have the resources or authority 

to get the job done. And, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member, I 

cannot tell you how important this particular Subcommittee is, 

which is why I argued to form it, to staff it, because I figured sometime we might need it again. Well, we need it now. 

This Subcommittee is focused on giving local government a seat 

at the table, and besides these elected officials, Tim Kerner is here 

from Lafitte, the mayor of Lafitte, a town of 10,000 people, who 

represents probably some of the largest, most valuable wetlands in 

all of the country, and I want to acknowledge also that Chris Roberts is here from Jefferson Parish, who is a council member whose 

district also includes those wetlands. He has been on the front line, 

but hundreds of our local officials, Democrats and Republicans— 

and let me say up here Washington knows the difference. At home 

we do not care. I mean, we are all in the oil together. We do not 

care. Mr. Nungesser is a Republican, Mr. Camarelle is a Democrat. 

They could not be closer brothers in this fight. So one message to 

Washington is let us not make this in any way political. This is a 

national disaster. It needs to be handled in a much different way, 

and we have to do it. I mean, our economic and environmental future, Senators, depend on it. 

I want, though, to ask a question. We have covered the ground 

beautifully, but, Billy, you have had experience both in the environmental community—you are a respected voice. People have been 

listening to you now all over the Nation. You also know something 

about the oil and gas industry. Your company serviced the industry. Could you please just comment a minute about the importance—or lack thereof, if that is your view—of a balance here as 

we move to clean the oil, contain the oil, get it off of our marsh, 

but how we have to do that, recognizing that half the families fish, 

the other half of our families are in the oil business. 

Mr. NUNGESSER. Absolutely, Senator. The moratorium on the 

drilling affects a lot of Plaquemines people. The dad might fish. 

22 

The son may work offshore. So it is just going to be a double 

whammy. 

The local oil community and business community in South Louisiana came up with a 66-man plan, and we presented it to the 

President. And what a 66-man plan is, it is 33 men on 7 days, and 

a crew change just like they do offshore, and 33 go on the next 7 

and they swap out. You get retired engineers, and you swear them 

in as Federal agents. 

I have been in the oil field. I have spent hundreds and hundreds 

of nights offshore. There were fistfights, almost, between the tool 

push and the company man. He has an agenda. He has got to work 

that rig. He has an agenda; he has to make a buck. And that is 

a dangerous situation, and we saw this catastrophe. 

It is not the first time there were disagreements about the mud, 

what is going on, is it safe, is it unsafe. I have seen the arguments 

personally myself offshore. 

You put a Federal agent out there that has the right to say, 

‘‘Stop,’’ and you make it safe for tomorrow. We all know 3 days before this rig tragedy, people asked to be removed from that rig because of unsafeness. And it is a shame it took this and the lives 

of those men to get to this. But you put a Federal agent out there 

tomorrow and a retired—there are a lot of good retired engineers 

that would love to step up to the plate and they answer to one person: To the Federal Government. And they have the right to shut 

that rig off or do anything in between that and running people off, 

and you make it safe for tomorrow. 

Also, the devices that they use overseas, the half a million dollar 

device that a lot of people say—and I am not an expert—would 

have prevented this tragedy on the wellhead, that are required in 

the North Sea. It is half a million dollars per rig. We do not require 

them. But by shutting these rigs down and when they leave, it will 

be far-reaching throughout our community that is already hard hit. 

So as we ask the President to look quickly at other solutions that 

could make it safer. 

Thank you, Senator. 

Senator LANDRIEU. Thank you. If the Chairman will allow me 

just one more question? I know I have gone over my time, but I 

have to ask Mayor Camardelle: You have been in the forefront of 

the fight for revenue sharing since we started it 20 years ago. It 

has been going on for a long time. The history that President Truman, when the offshore industry started, offered Louisiana 37.5 

percent; we wanted 100 percent. We lost it in court. We have been 

trying desperately to tell people that with the $5 million produced 

by this industry offshore that the Federal Government gets—they 

get a lot more money, but the Federal Government gets $5 million, 

we get nothing. This well, this Deepwater Horizon well, 50 miles 

basically off of your shore, Louisiana would have not got one penny 

of the hundreds of thousands or billions of dollars of taxes that 

would be generated by it. 

Can you just give a comment to the record about would it be 

helpful to you to have some of that funding? What would you be 

doing with it if you had it? 

Mr. CAMARDELLE. Oh, exactly. When President Obama came 

through and visited the island last Friday, I remember him looking 

23 

out the back side from Grand Isle to Lafitte on the north side, he 

asked me what was that tower out there, and I told him that was 

inshore drilling. At the time there was a drilling rig between— 

going toward Lafitte—which the mayor is here today. But when 

you looked at the Gulf side, you see a bunch of Jack Up rigs 3 

miles off of Grand Isle, and looking at the rigs and just tell them 

it is in our backyard. 

Just talking to the people in the Fourchon area, my colleague, 

Parish President Charlie Randolph, we are talking—Port Fourchon 

is the largest port in the United States that imports the oil into 

the United States. Just talking with the President last week, last 

Friday, it would generate about—if we stopped the moratorium, I 

just told the President, ‘‘You are looking at 37,000 jobs.’’ Like Mr. 

Nungesser said, there is no way in the world we should stop drilling. 

When I looked at the President and I said, ‘‘If we are all in class 

and you are the bad little boy, and the teacher is fussing at you, 

she should not punish all of us.’’ And he looked at me, and he said, 

‘‘We have to stop BP, and, David, we are going to bring it back.’’ 

I already have companies calling. I have seen a Jack Up barge, 

one of the major oil companies out of Houston, a friend of mine 

that graduated, he is a CEO, called me and said, ‘‘June the 1st you 

are going to see the first Jack Up barge dropping down.’’ Well, 

guess what? On my beach at daylight, I showed my chief of police 

and my councilman that the Jack Up barge, as we speak on June 

2, was being dropped down. 

So I do not know what is going on, too much about the oil as far 

as being an oil man, but I know one thing: That seeing my father 

and my fishermen, like Mr. Nungesser said, on 7 days, 7 off, when 

the fishing was bad, we went and worked for the oil field. We need 

to continue drilling. We have Exxon Mobil right here in Grand Isle. 

We have storage tanks in Grand Isle. After Hurricane Katrina, 

President Bush called me, asked me how many gallons of oil we 

had in the tanks, asked how many gallons of oil that was available 

at Port Fourchon, which is 7 miles from Grand Isle. You can see 

the ships at the facility, the ships coming in right at Port 

Fourchon. 

So it is very important that we are like brothers and sisters and 

we clean up our mess, we do it right, and we continue drilling. 

Senator PRYOR. Thank you. Senator Burris. 

Senator BURRIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Gentlemen, I am trying to get the gist of the control and command here and who is in charge. What is the recommendation— 

let me ask, do you have a recommendation, Mayor? 

Mr. NUNGESSER. Yes, sir. 

Senator BURRIS. Mr. President, I am sorry. 

Mr. NUNGESSER. I am sorry. 

Senator BURRIS. Who would you recommend for the job. I recall 

in Hurricane Katrina, I saw on TV this General Honore came in, 

and he says, ‘‘We are going to do this, and we are going to do that.’’ 

I was not down there, but that is what they were reporting. And 

I do not always quote TV. So we need a General Honore down 

there. 

24 

Mr. NUNGESSER. He was at my office yesterday. Absolutely, we 

need somebody on the ground that can kick some butts and make 

this happen. We have lost some battles, sir. We can win this war. 

We can save our marsh. We can save our heritage. But it is going 

to have to happen quickly. It is going to have somebody with the 

authority to get all the equipment necessary, wherever it may be, 

to do whatever it takes to keep the marsh out, to do whatever it 

takes to pick it up, and have the heart and the passion to do it. 

And whether that is somebody through the Coast Guard—I do not 

think there is a person at BP that has that will and that direction. 

Senator BURRIS. Now, was this question raised with the President when he was down there? 

Mr. NUNGESSER. Absolutely, and the President told Admiral 

Thad Allen he wanted people on the ground that could make decisions. 

Senator BURRIS. Why isn’t Admiral Allen making the decisions 

then? 

Mr. NUNGESSER. You are going to have to ask him. I just do not 

see—I am still sitting at the table with BP, I call them the guy 

with the red hat, the contractor, and the Coast Guard, and they are 

looking back and forth at each other while that oil continues to 

come in. 

I am with you. We need somebody, one person, they are responsible, and it is all throttle ahead and we get this thing kicked. We 

can do it, and we are willing to help in any way, shape, or form. 

I have turned over all my duties as parish president, anything 

other than this spill, to my staff. I am spending 100 percent of my 

time on this, because without this, nothing else matters in 

Plaquemines Parish. 

Senator BURRIS. So you are making the recommendations, you 

and the mayor, and evidently the recommendations have hit bureaucracy, and there has to be a decision made on it. 

Mr. NUNGESSER. Well, if the Coast Guard is not doing it because 

of funding issues, there is a problem. If they cannot make BP do 

it on a local level and it takes 5 days to get up to Admiral Allen 

and he makes BP—like the berm issue—that is a problem. Somebody on the ground has to be able to make strategical, financial decisions quickly. We cannot wait now 3 weeks for cleaning up the 

oil in Pass A Loutre. We get in a room and we say, ‘‘What is the 

best way to go after this? Let us go attack it and do it with all 

forces.’’ And we are not doing that. We do not have that person on 

the ground that if Admiral Allen says our local guys have authority, they are not using it. They are not using it to solve the problem 

and keep the oil out of the marsh. 

Senator BURRIS. Mr. Chairman, you all have more seniority in 

this body than I have. But I have also got a little experience in decisionmaking and being in government, and somewhere somebody 

has to take charge of this thing. Somebody has got to take charge. 

I do not know what authority we have to try to order somebody. 

I do not think we do, even if it is Homeland Security. If we do, let 

us get to the Chairman, let us get to the President, let us move 

today to get somebody in charge down there. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator PRYOR. Thank you. Senator Nelson. 

25 

Senator NELSON. Senator, you have hit the nail on the head. 

What is the problem? The problem is command and control. I want 

to give you an example. 

A week ago I went to the incident command in Mobile—Mobile 

has jurisdiction—Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, all the way 

over to the Big Bend area of Florida. 

Now, what I was told was that the Coast Guard was 51 percent 

in command and BP the rest. And then I was told really the Coast 

Guard is 55 percent in command. Well, that is the problem. Nobody 

is in charge. 

Now, there is a way to solve this, and I do not want to sound 

like a broken record, but the finest command-and-control capability 

in the world is the U.S. military. And you have to give somebody 

with a clear chain of command that also has the capability of bringing together disparate parties, private sector and public sector 

agencies, and directing them to do—of cleaning up a problem and 

have some authority to make it happen and has the resources and 

that everybody knows that goes straight to the commander-in-chief. 

And until you do this, you are going to continue to have the same 

problem that you are having. You are going to continue to have the 

same problem that Florida had yesterday in not even being in the 

information loop when, in fact, the orange mousse is coming into 

Florida waters. 

Now, I mean, you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot 

make him drink, Mr. Chairman. And how many more examples of 

this do we have to say until the command-and-control structure is 

changed? You cannot leave BP in control of this because they are 

not going to get it done. And you cannot have this kind of delay 

that is going over and over until somebody with authority such as 

Admiral Allen approves it or when they come to their Senator and 

something gets done because we start rattling the cage. 

This is the long and short of it, and this thing is going to go on 

for some period of time because as much oil as is out there in the 

Gulf, just think of the far-reaching effects when the wind starts 

shifting and it goes in other places. And you all have hit the brunt 

of it. 

I would hope that someone would be listening to the pleas of 

these local officials and the pleas of the local officials through their 

Senators to change this command structure. It does not mean that 

the military has to do the work. It is setting up the command 

structure and having people responsible to that command structure 

in order—you cannot split it 51–49. That just does not work in a 

situation like this. Otherwise, you have, what you all pointed out, 

people out there with cloth wiping off the blades of the marsh 

grass. And that does not do anything. 

Mr. NUNGESSER. Makes the contractor a lot of money. 

Mr. CAMARDELLE. Exactly. 

Senator NELSON. Amen. Thank you. 

Senator PRYOR. Thank you, Senator Nelson. 

What we are going to do here is we said we would do a second 

round with this panel, so I would love to keep it very short. I just 

really have one question, because we have two other panels we 

would love to get to, and we will leave the record open for people 

to submit their questions in writing. But let me ask you, Mr. CooVerDate Nov 24 2008 08:29 Mar 15, 2011 Jkt 058033 PO 00000 Frm 00029 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\58033.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
26 

1The chart referenced appears in the Appendix on page 109. 

per, just more of a background question on Louisiana. We are not 

a coastal State, so I do not know how this works. But the State of 

Louisiana, do you have any role in monitoring the oil rigs that are 

out there working off your coast or the companies that are working 

off your coast? Do you all monitor that at all? Or do you have any 

say-so in who is out there and who is not. 

Mr. COOPER. Well, Mr. Nungesser comes from that industry, and 

he could answer that question probably better than I can. 

Mr. NUNGESSER. There are companies that do not really monitor—Clean Gulf, all the nonprofits, the Marine Spill Response Corporation (MSRC) that was started right after the Exxon spill, but 

there is no real State monitoring of the oil rigs. It is done on the 

Federal level. There are a lot of private nonprofits that watch over 

everything out there for oil leaks, for contamination. As you saw 

the other day, one of the Taylor rigs. But for another day, the 

MSRC group was heavily funded. I did oil spill response in Texas 

that was done first class by the MSRC group, that was heavily 

funded by the oil companies after Exxon, which has absolutely no 

assets. They are down there, but in name only. They are not 

equipped for this. And at a later date, that needs to be looked into 

by this group because whoever cut their funding, they were not 

ready for this. The warehouses were empty that used to be full of 

boom and so on and so forth. 

Mr. COOPER. And it is important this deep drilling is in national 

waters, and that is why we do not have that authority. 

Senator PRYOR. I understand. I just did not know. Senator Ensign. 

Senator ENSIGN. Yes, I have two quick questions. 

One is for this Subcommittee’s sake to clear up the idea of the 

berms and the barrier islands. I know that some have been approved. Is that all the ones that you need approved? Do you need 

more approved? What is the process? 

Mr. NUNGESSER. Yes, sir. In your booklet you have a copy of the 

plan.1 In red are the ones not approved; in green are the ones that 

are approved. 

Senator ENSIGN. Why are ones not approved? 

Mr. NUNGESSER. That is a good question. The Corps of Engineers 

is still answering questions about the environmental impact of current flows, ridiculous questions, but we hope to get started on these 

six and have them approved before these six are finished so they 

can move right to them, because you would not build half a levee. 

We have to build the whole thing to keep it out. 

Senator ENSIGN. I mean, isn’t that a huge issue—— 

Mr. NUNGESSER. Absolutely. 

Senator ENSIGN [continuing]. Preventing this getting to the 

marshes. 

Mr. NUNGESSER. If we would have built it when we asked for it— 

the first berm was going in front of that island—we would have collected all that oil offshore, and those 400-plus pelicans that are 

dead, that rookery, that would have been protected. And so if that 

does not teach you something—— 

27 

Senator ENSIGN. Just to be clear, this is not something that BP 

can do. This is the Federal Government that has to approve these. 

Mr. NUNGESSER. Well, the Federal Government made BP pay for 

them. 

Senator ENSIGN. Right. 

Mr. NUNGESSER. And after the President went out there, the 

president of BP saw it, he agreed to pay for it. 

Senator ENSIGN. OK. Then the last question is to Mr. Cooper on 

the National Guard. I think your governor’s request is 6,000 additional National Guard. 

Mr. COOPER. Yes. 

Senator ENSIGN. What is the status on that? And what would 

they be doing? 

Mr. COOPER. I do not have the exact number, but it is over 1,000 

have been deployed, and they are doing a number of things. And 

I have to tell you that they are—and I think you guys will agree 

with me—the heroes in this response—— 

Mr. NUNGESSER. Absolutely. 

Mr. COOPER [continuing]. As well as these gentlemen to my 

right, and they are doing a number of things. They are assisting 

in building land bridges, and you have seen some of the pictures 

from that. They are assisting in—— 

Senator ENSIGN. But you need a lot more down there, is the bottom line? 

Mr. COOPER. Well, I think we—and one point I want to make, 

if I could, to keep in mind—and this was brought up—is that we 

are in the middle of—well, not in the middle of hurricane season. 

We are starting hurricane season. And we have talked about not 

having enough resources and personnel to respond to this. If a disaster, if a hurricane were to come and hit Louisiana or any of the 

coastal States, it is going to go further into the marshland; it will 

go further into the other States that have been mentioned. And if 

there are not enough resources and personnel at this point, how 

can we have the assurances there are going to be enough after a 

hurricane? 

Senator ENSIGN. OK. 

Mr. COOPER. But what I would say is that—and that is where 

the National Guard—I mean, they are basically the go-to guys at 

the State level and at the local level if there are any needs that 

are unmet, and they are doing a number of things, and they certainly would take on more of a role after a hurricane to get to assist—— 

Mr. NUNGESSER. They took the vacuum trucks out there to kind 

of embarrass BP into paying for them. They are out there 

vacuuming up the oil right now, the National Guard is. 

Mr. COOPER. They are dropping sandbags, they are filling sandbags, as he indicated. They are coming up with new technologies 

and talking about using barges and putting vacuums, that was a 

Guard idea. That is my understanding. 

Senator ENSIGN. How important are the berms also for the hurricane season? 

Mr. NUNGESSER. Well, absolutely, if we get a tropical storm, it 

will pick this oil up, bring it inland, and in a matter of hours it 

will drop it across the coast and destroy all the marsh all at once. 

28 

We altered the coastal plane to make these berms that would give 

us—that were small enough, yet big enough to give us at least a 

fair chance of keeping that oil out of our marshlands. 

Senator ENSIGN. I hope the Administration is listening so that 

they can get some people on this and get those approved as quickly 

as possible. 

Mr. NUNGESSER. Thank you. 

Mr. COOPER. And, sir, if I could, one other thing. It is just not 

the parishes that have been impacted to date. It is the parishes to 

the west that we are looking at protective measures that need to 

be approved so that if a hurricane does come through there, that 

they are protected as well. 

Senator ENSIGN. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator PRYOR. Senator Landrieu. 

Senator LANDRIEU. Just a couple of quick points, and I am anxious to move to the next panel. But the berms that are in place now 

are there because basically the President directed that they be 

built when he came down to meet with you all because you have 

been so—so I think we should give credit where credit is due. 

Mr. NUNGESSER. Absolutely. 

Mr. CAMARDELLE. Exactly. 

Senator LANDRIEU. Now, we may be able to afford to build a 

berm all the way from Florida to Texas, but that is something that 

the other States are going to have to discuss. 

Second, I agree, Senator Nelson, with you about the military, but 

the Coast Guard is the military, so this is an issue that we have 

to discuss to figure this out. Whether the Coast Guard should 

stand down for the Navy or the Army, I do not know. But we have 

resolved today that the command structure is broken. Exactly how 

to fix it, we need some more discussion. 

And, finally, I want to ask this question: Didn’t BP give every 

State $25 million? And if so, Mark, could you just briefly say how 

you are spending your $25 million? Did any of it go to the parishes? 

If not, what other priorities did you all use it for? And did Mississippi get $25 million and Alabama get $25 million and Florida? 

Mr. COOPER. I am not sure about those other States, but I believe they did. I know the way that it was set up is that at the parish level, they got a $1 million grant—— 

Senator LANDRIEU. And each parish got $1 million. I do not know 

if the counties, other counties got $1 million. And I will ask you 

all for the record how you spent yours. But are you all going to 

send any of that to the parishes? Or do you think you need it at 

the State level? 

Mr. COOPER. We are looking at priorities and projects that have 

been identified right at this point, and we are looking at that. Absolutely, we want to make sure that the parishes are supported. 

But what we do not want to do is rob from Peter to pay Paul. We 

want to make sure we have the funding available to assist us as 

well as the parishes. And we want to make sure that BP is responsive to the parishes. And what I have heard is that from the $1 

million grants there is still money available, and we are certainly 

going to fight to make sure they get additional funding. 

Senator LANDRIEU. Billy, have you spent all your million? 

29 

Mr. NUNGESSER. No. We are about halfway through it. We are 

using it only for overtime, for our employees that are going out 

there rescuing animals, putting out boom, and then we also funded 

locally $1 million of parish money to build a potato ridge to protect 

a bunch of the oyster beds in lieu of getting the berms built. We 

are already doing that work on our own. 

Senator LANDRIEU. And, Mr. Camarelle, did you get money from 

Jefferson Parish? 

Mr. CAMARDELLE. Yes, Jefferson Council, Chris Roberts. 

Senator LANDRIEU. And Lafitte? 

Mr. CAMARDELLE. Yes, ma’am. The parish did get $1 million. 

Senator LANDRIEU. OK. I think you all bought that boat that has 

been very helpful, which is good. But we have to get some more 

money flowing down to these locals, and I will wait for my next 

questions. 

Senator PRYOR. Senator Burris. 

Senator BURRIS. I am fine, Mr. Chairman. I just got to say, we 

have to get control and command, and get somebody in charge 

down there. That is what we need, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator PRYOR. Senator Nelson. 

Senator NELSON. I do not care who is in charge. I want somebody 

with some authority, and it cannot be BP. 

By the way, the Coast Guard was not a part of DOD. The Coast 

Guard was a part of the Department of Transportation. And when 

we reorganized the Department of Homeland Security, we put 

them in there. Now, it is fine to have the Coast Guard in charge. 

Given the fact that they have so many other responsibilities around 

the world, if that is what the decision is, that is fine. But the 

present system is not working. The information is not flowing. The 

decisions are not timely. The resources are not produced. And as 

a result, you have a big mess with no command and control, and 

that has got to change. 

Senator PRYOR. Thank you. Well, I want to thank our panel for 

being here today. You guys have been very strong witnesses, and 

we really appreciate your time. I know you have your hands full 

back home, and taking time to come up here, we really appreciate 

it. 

We are going to keep the record open for a few days, so you may 

get some written questions from the Subcommittee staff. But thank 

you for your time, and we are going to move on to the next panel. 

Mr. NUNGESSER. Thank you. 

Mr. CAMARDELLE. Thank you. 

Mr. COOPER. Thank you very much. 

Senator PRYOR. What I will do as they are switching out the 

table and the one panel is leaving and the second panel is coming 

up, I will go ahead and give my extremely brief introduction of 

each of our next two witnesses. 

The witness we are going to have is Juliette Kayyem, the Assistant Secretary for Intergovernmental Affairs, U.S. Department of 

Homeland Security. She was appointed to this position by Secretary Napolitano in March 2009. She has been involved in State 

and local homeland security issues for a number of years, has a 

good background that she brings to this. 

30 

1The prepared statement of Ms. Kayyem appears in the Appendix on page 129. 

Also, we are going to have Rear Admiral Roy Nash, Deputy Federal On-Scene Commander, Deputy Unified Area Commander, U.S. 

Coast Guard. He is a rear admiral, served in the Coast Guard for 

over 30 years. We appreciate his attendance here today, and he 

will not actually be providing testimony unless he wants to, but he 

will be here to answer any questions that any of the Subcommittee 

Members may have. 

So why don’t we go ahead and allow—this other group is leaving, 

and it looks like they are almost out the door, so, Ms. Kayyem, do 

you want to go ahead and start? Thank you. 

TESTIMONY OF HON. JULIETTE KAYYEM,1 ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF INTERGOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY 

Ms. KAYYEM. Chairman Pryor, Senators, I want to thank you for 

having us here today, and I thank the mayor and the parish president and Mark Cooper as well. We have been working with them 

not just for this incident but for years, actually, and we hear what 

they are saying. So let me tell you a little bit about our response 

from this or State, local, and Federal integration perspective to the 

British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon incident. 

I am, as you noted, a former homeland security adviser. I know 

the importance of State and local officials in terms of response and 

response capabilities and response knowledge. We sought to learn 

the lessons from the past and use the local knowledge and experience to inform our decisionmaking for this event. And so let me tell 

you a little bit about where we were and then where we are now. 

As you know, and as you have heard in the previous testimony, 

a lot of discussion about these Area Contingency Plans (ACPs), and 

these plans are formed with the States, localities, and the Coast 

Guard to determine what to do in the event of an oil spill. 

Those plans are basically—when you asked what are the plans, 

those were the plans that everyone had worked around. It gave us 

the numbers for the boom. It told us where we would want facilities and other needs addressed. These plans were written by a committee of local, State, and Federal officials from multiple disciplines, specify what types of actions would be taken to respond 

to an oil spill and what methods would be used to protect resources. The ACPs outline all aspects of the response from establishing information channels to identifying target areas for boom 

deployment. 

Following the oil rig explosion, the Federal on-scene coordinator 

worked with these State and local leaders to review these plans, 

and where they were not ideal or where they were not responsive, 

they were changed. Recognizing the importance of the State and 

local knowledge and State and local know-how in terms of what 

was going to be coming, on April 26, 2010, which was the Monday, 

I forward-deployed to the Unified Area Command in Robert, Louisiana, at the direction of Secretary Napolitano and former Coast 

Guard Commandant Admiral Thad Allen, now the National Incident Commander. 

31 

Upon arriving in Louisiana and recognizing at that stage what 

we were likely to face—and certainly I think we were all anticipating, although not ideal, that this would continue for some 

time—I visited with each of the governors in the four Gulf States. 

I participated in the flyovers to assess what was going on and then 

worked with the State and local elected officials, the ones you 

heard today, to determine what might need to be done in the future, because what we wanted was this: We wanted to hear the 

complaints first and to be able to answer them as quickly and expeditiously as possible. And so what you did not want was—and a lot 

of those complaints or concerns were coming from the mayors, the 

parish presidents, whoever else that you heard here. 

So what we started almost immediately was a daily interagency, 

intergovernmental affairs call to maintain continual coordination 

between all of the Federal agencies, so the Coast Guard is running 

the response, but you know the Department of Interior is involved, 

Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is involved 

for worker safety issues, the Department of Labor is involved. We 

wanted to make sure that all the Federal partners were listening 

and hearing about the concerns on the local and State level. 

By May 2, 2010, Secretary Napolitano and Secretary Salazar led 

a conference call with governors and their staffs and followed up 

with another conference call on May 4. That has now become a 

daily conference call with the governors. We also have daily conference calls with the mayors and the parish presidents, and the 

idea is to hear what the problems are first. 

These calls offer an opportunity for the governors and locals to 

obtain the most current information about what we know is going 

on, how many assets they have out there, what is happening with 

the loop current and the flow rate and everything else, and to engage in a dialogue with the senior administration officials who are 

overseeing the response. I will tell you we have had at least three 

phone calls with the governors of the eastern seaboard in anticipation of what could happen if the oil hits the loop current. 

By May 5, intergovernmental affairs personnel were deployed to 

all of the command posts, and subject matter experts were deployed to each of the State Emergency Operations Centers. That is 

important to note that we are in the State Emergency Operations 

Centers. The State governments in the affected areas were encouraged to send top officials to the area command and incident command posts. I think that is actually where Mark Cooper now sits. 

And this deployment has ensured seamless integration of State, 

Federal, and local response efforts. These initial channels worked 

well, but we were trying to keep finding new ways to coordinate 

with State and local partners. 

One of these ways was the parish president liaison officer program. This was a program that we have started. We have extended 

it through the Gulf. The parish presidents spoke about it, and it 

is to put Coast Guard officials with decisionmaking authority into 

the parish presidents’ and the governors’ offices specifically to handle immediate needs. 

It was important to us that we had the decisionmaking authority 

at the lowest level possible, so when we are asked who is in charge, 

well, the president is in charge, but we wanted to ensure that for 

32 

most issues the decisions could be made quickly, swiftly, and effectively to stop the oil from coming aboard. 

With the designation of this event as a Spill of National Significance on April 29 and, of course, the designation of former Coast 

Guard Commandant Admiral Thad Allen as the National Incident 

Commander on May 1, the command structure was elevated to enhance operational and policy coordination across the Federal Government. 

One of Admiral Allen’s first actions at the National Incident 

Command was to establish this Interagency Solution Group—Senator, you mentioned it—which I also direct; I am dual-hatted—as 

both related to but separate from my role as intergovernmental affairs. But it is important—those are related because really the 

issues that we are addressing under the National Incident Command—flow rate, new technologies, claims—are the ones that we 

are hearing from the State and locals. 

This working group is embedded in the National Incident Command at Coast Guard headquarters and has representation now 

from 18 agencies, because the issues that are being addressed here 

now are not simply the response. They have to do with, as the 

president has committed, making people whole again. 

The Interagency Solution Group works to help answer questions 

and concerns that arise from the field in a clear and comprehensive 

and timely manner, and we also try to serve as a conduit to the 

other Federal agencies. 

We have worked hard to leverage the knowledge garnered and 

lessons learned from the past, both successful and, to be honest, 

unsuccessful, while at the same time seeking to institutionalize the 

involvement of local and State officials. 

We recognize that the panel here before is going to know more 

on the local and State level than we do, but we have worked with 

them for years. The Coast Guard has worked with them for years. 

And so the friendships and the knowledge that they share together 

have helped in this event. 

We have done this cooperative spirit, not without its flaws, as 

you heard, while working with the responsible party to ensure that 

information is being shared in a coordinated, effective manner. BP 

is responsible. The polluter pays in this instance, and we know 

that, and we remind and direct BP of that every day. 

I want to say one more thing. We have continued to improve and 

expand the mechanisms of communication to ensure that our partners have the information and access they need to respond to this 

incident. And we are going to be receptive and responsive to the 

concerns that you heard in the previous panel, because if we are 

not, the effects of it will be, simply not today, but in the years to 

come. 

I am happy to answer any questions, as is Admiral Nash, regarding the response and the responsiveness of the Federal Government to this incident. 

Senator PRYOR. Admiral Nash, do you have an opening statement that you would like to make? 

Admiral NASH. I have not prepared one, but I can make some 

comments if you would like. 

33 

Senator PRYOR. Go ahead, if you are comfortable doing that. We 

would like to hear from you. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF REAR ADMIRAL ROY NASH, DEPUTY 

FEDERAL ON-SCENE COMMANDER, DEPUTY UNIFIED AREA 

COMMANDER, U.S. COAST GUARD 

Admiral NASH. Yes, sir. The structure that we are following is 

a Unified Area Command. I just wanted to kind of describe how 

that is working. The Coast Guard is a Unified Area Command. The 

Federal On-Scene Commander is in Robert, Louisiana, and there 

are incident command posts in Mobile and Houma. Those folks in 

charge at those offices are Coast Guard captains that are directing 

Federal on-scene coordinator duties in the field along the waterfront and offshore. 

The strategies that they are following involve coordinating the 

unified response, directing BP, and working with partner State and 

local agencies. The goals are to secure the source of the leak, to 

contain oil released from the well, to disperse oil not contained at 

the wellhead, to reduce the impact to wildlife and marshlands, to 

use innovative methods like in situ burning to corral the oil and 

burn it offshore, and to boom oil offshore and corral it with skimmers such that it is not reaching the coastline, and also to skim 

in the near-shore area, and finally, the booming strategy, should 

the oil move to the coast, to have a booming strategy and implement the Area Contingency Plans in terms of using booming strategies to keep the oil out. 

That concludes my statement, sir. 

Senator PRYOR. Thank you very much. 

Let me go ahead, if you do not mind, Admiral Nash, and I will 

start with you. Maybe we just see and hear the bad news, but I 

think the public perception is and our perception is that there is 

a lot of oil floating around there in the Gulf of Mexico that is not 

being addressed. There are not boats out there trying to skim it or 

soak it up or vacuum it up, whatever the technology may be. 

Do you know how many vessels there are currently in the Gulf 

that are out there trying to address the oil that is actually in the 

water? 

Admiral NASH. Yes, sir, I can give you a statistic from today. We 

are using vessels of opportunity, which would include vessels from 

local fishermen, among others, and the totals are in the over-2,000 

range today to clean up the oil. 

Senator PRYOR. When you get a fishing boat out there, what are 

they doing? Do they have equipment on board that you have given 

them to help clean up? Or are they putting booms out? Or what 

are they doing? 

Admiral NASH. Yes, sir, they are helping us tend booms. When 

you put a boom out, they need to be tended because the current 

takes them sometimes away from where they were placed, so there 

is boom tending. There is also some fishing vessels using their fishing nets to collect some of the larger tar mats and take them over 

to a barge that has a clamshell that lifts that tar mat out of the 

water. So they are using some innovative methods on the water. 

Senator PRYOR. It sounds like, though, with millions of gallons 

out in the Gulf, I mean, it sounds like a lot of vessels, but it also 

34 

sounds like you are only getting a small percentage of the oil. Is 

that fair to say? 

Admiral NASH. Well, the oily water mixtures recovered as of 

today were 431,000 barrels, and so that is today’s number, sir. 

Senator PRYOR. Four hundred thirty-one thousand barrels of oil 

recovered? 

Admiral NASH. That is an oily water mixture, sir. 

Senator PRYOR. And do you know how much oil and how much 

water that is? 

Admiral NASH. I do not have that number for you, sir. 

Senator PRYOR. OK. Let me ask you, Ms. Kayyem, you heard 

today a lot of frustration from the local folks, and I am sure that 

the panel we had today was really just representative of a lot of 

folks on the Gulf Coast, not just in Louisiana but going all the way 

over to Florida. But you also said that you want the ability—part 

of your plan is the ability to have local decisionmaking. But apparently there is a lot of frustration with that, and it sounds to me 

like the system that Homeland Security has in place or the system 

that these plans put in place is not working very well. Would you 

like to comment on that? 

Ms. KAYYEM. Certainly we have heard these concerns, and so 

just to put some of it in perspective, when we started the parish 

president liaison program—and that is consistent with, I think, 

where emergency management and others have gone in terms of to 

try to—I know everyone wants a person in charge, but really at the 

pace that we are going at with this spill and how long we are looking at it, what you want is the decisions to be made on the local 

level. Because this is a Spill of National Significance and the Coast 

Guard in charge—BP is the responsible party, but the Coast Guard 

is in command, and the unified command. 

We want those decisions to be made by senior members of the 

Coast Guard so that—these are decisions like: Where do we move 

the boom? How do we clean it? Overnight the boom gets damaged. 

All sorts of decisions are being made at such a pace. We did not 

want those to have to go up to the unified command. And those decisions are being made all the time. Those are not the decisions 

that you heard about today. And so I want to make it clear to you 

every day scores of decisions are being made at that level. You do 

not want the person in charge in Robert, New Orleans, or wherever 

else. You want them. 

On big issues like the berm, not only—and you heard about the 

pace by which we got the Army Corps of Engineers to approve it, 

to assess it—and we are not just approving it for environmental 

purposes. One of the things we need to look at is its effectiveness 

to stop the oil spill. And so the Administration’s approval of the 

first seven, I believe, is to also assess whether it will be effective 

in terms of this spill. National Incident Commander Thad Allen directed BP to pay for over, I think, $300 million of that at this stage 

and will continue to do so if it is an effective procedure. As you 

know, it is going to take awhile for that to be built. 

So there are decisions, and then there are the big decisions, and 

we hear—we are moving as dynamically as we can on those. 

Senator PRYOR. Let me ask one last question, and then I will 

turn it over to Senator Ensign. That is, you mentioned a couple of 

35 

times already that BP is the responsible party. To the best of your 

knowledge, is BP balking at anything right now in terms of are 

they balking at paying for things or doing things? Are they saying 

no to anything? 

Ms. KAYYEM. I think you have to ask what specific operational 

demands are being made of them on the unified command, but 

something I can speak to, which is, of course, a big issue right now, 

is how do you make the people of these affected States whole again. 

I was at the meeting yesterday with Admiral Allen, with BP, in 

terms of the claims and making people whole again, and the integrated services teams that are being established under the National Incident Command. We made it clear to them that whatever 

they thought was being effective was not. And a lot of it is transparency, to see what the numbers are like and who is being impacted. 

Right now under the law, BP has 90 days to determine whether 

a claim is valid or not, so it is hard to tell, at least under that regime, whether any delays are a no or they are just looking for more 

paper. We will know after the 90 days of the first claim in that 

issue whether it is, in fact, a no. 

Admiral NASH. Sir, I have not heard or experienced a balking 

when we have required additional equipment, people, or resources 

to be applied to the problem, sir. 

Senator PRYOR. And I will just note for the record, 90 days is a 

long time in this circumstance. 

Ms. KAYYEM. Yes. 

Senator PRYOR. I know that is the law, but that is a long time. 

Ms. KAYYEM. Yes. 

Senator PRYOR. Senator Ensign. 

Senator ENSIGN. A couple of questions. One is when plans were 

supposed to be in place and nobody has said worst-case scenario 

could ever happen—beyond worst-case scenario has happened. 

What is the Federal Government’s assessment now of the worstcase scenario? Going around Florida? Going up the east coast? 

What is the complete worst-case scenario, and what is the Federal 

Government’s plan for that worst-case scenario? 

Ms. KAYYEM. Do you want to start? 

Admiral NASH. Sir, our approach to the worst-case scenarios 

would continue to be to get the resources out there. As you have 

indicated, when you get beyond scenarios that have been contemplated, we are reaching out globally to pull a maximum number 

of skimmers and vessels that can remove oil from the water out 

there. We will continue to bring global fire boom to do the in situ 

burning and just continue to increase the resources on the water 

and try and get this under control while it is still in the Gulf of 

Mexico and moving the way it has been moving. 

If the loop were to open up, we would consult with our NOAA 

advisers that are on our team to see where that oil would go and 

how much might go and what form it would be in. 

Senator ENSIGN. The reason I ask the question is it seems like 

the worst case keeps happening. I think we should be assuming 

worst case. And why aren’t those kinds of resources being brought 

to bear right now? In other words, why aren’t resources coming in? 

Wouldn’t it be a lot better to prevent the worst-case scenario from 

36 

happening with a lot more resources? I mean, we keep hearing 

about the lack of skimmers. We hear about the lack of resources, 

not enough boom; too slow of an approval process for the berms; 

all of those things happening. Instead of just thinking, well, maybe 

the worst case, we will have to react to it then, why aren’t we trying to bring everything in now? You just said, well, then we would 

call in global resources. Why aren’t we bringing those global resources in now? 

Admiral NASH. I may have misspoken. We are. We are working 

on bringing all global resources to bear on this, and at the same 

time continuing to work at the source. There are two wells being 

drilled to cap this well leak. There is also a dispersant applied. It 

is an innovative application down near the source that uses much 

less dispersant, breaks the oil up so less wildlife will ultimately be 

impacted. And also we are bringing skimmers from around the 

world and vessels to operate those, and that is going forward, sir. 

Ms. KAYYEM. Senator, if I could say on that point, the potential, 

for example, of the oil hitting the loop current has been something 

we have been talking about for about 31⁄2 weeks, and it is such a 

delayed response in many ways because you are waiting to see 

what happens. In anticipation of that, we have worked with all the 

States up to Maine in terms of the Coast Guard has worked operationally, we have worked intergovernmentally to say the first 

thing is look at your Area Contingency Plan. 

We were surprised the extent to which a lot of folks did not know 

they had one and did not know what it said. So look at it now and 

determine whether it is protecting the areas you want protected in 

terms of priorities and is utilizing all the resources of the Federal, 

State, and local governments. And so that is our first message to 

them. 

A lot of these things, we have a lot of boom being ordered, a lot 

of it coming aboard, working with a lot of countries for global 

orderings. One of the challenges here is, for example, you cannot 

put boom out before the oil is there or before the oil could get there 

quickly because it will get damaged. We have already seen it with 

boom that is already in the Gulf. So some of this is just anticipating capacity and anticipating—and the Federal Government informing the States and localities in terms of what we might anticipate if it hits the loop current, for example. 

Senator ENSIGN. Thank you. 

Senator PRYOR. Senator Landrieu. 

Senator LANDRIEU. Thank you. 

Let me just begin with you, Admiral Nash, and I want to say for 

the record I have the greatest respect for Admiral Thad Allen, and 

he is doing a fine job under very difficult circumstances, and I 

think we have just got to work out some of these issues in terms 

of control and payments and local control. But I want you to comment on the One-Gulf Plan that the Coast Guard established. The 

last published update was May 2008. I think the first plan was 

published in July 2005. 

Does the One-Gulf Plan that you all are operating under have a 

proposal to cap a well if there is a major blowout? If so, how have 

you activated it? If not, why not? Does the One-Gulf Plan contemplate more direct assistance from local officials that might hapVerDate Nov 24 2008 08:29 Mar 15, 2011 Jkt 058033 PO 00000 Frm 00040 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\58033.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
37 

pen to know where the oil is coming and where it is every morning 

when they wake up right there next to it? 

So take the first question. Can you comment about the One-Gulf 

Plan? In your view, is it sufficient? Because it does not seem like 

if we have a plan it is working very well, and I would like to get 

you on record about it. 

Admiral NASH. Ma’am, I would like to get back to you with the 

specific details from the plan, but the goal would be to eliminate 

the source at the wellhead. And so that has been the goal, to eliminate the source of the oil at the wellhead. 

Senator LANDRIEU. But does the plan contemplate this amount 

of oil, do you know, yes or no? Or should we get back to you on 

that? 

Admiral NASH. I would like to get back to you on that. 

Senator LANDRIEU. OK. The other point I would like to make to 

you, Admiral, is we understand or we know about the Vessel of Opportunity Program. It has been written about in a thousand articles. I visited—I was on one of the vessels last week. But you heard 

the testimony today. The fishermen that BP has hired under your 

direction to be on vessels of opportunity, did you hear what Mayor 

Camardelle said? They called him from the mast of a boat with 

tears in their eyes or at least in their voice. They want to come 

home to protect their island where the oil is, and the Vessel of Opportunity Program, which you all keep talking about, has them 150 

miles away from where the oil is. 

So I do not really want to hear that much more about the Vessel 

of Opportunity Program because my local elected officials do not 

think it is working. The only way these 2,000 boats that are being 

employed in my view will work is if you give control of them to the 

local officials and let them send them out every day. They obviously know where the oil is. I wish you would consider that, where 

the oil is. 

Let me ask you, Ms. Kayyem, in your testimony you noted that 

the 2010 Spill of National Significance exercise identified potential 

information gaps. Would you please for the record testify as to 

what some of those primary gaps were? 

Ms. KAYYEM. Primarily—it is interesting—when I played in that 

exercise, a lot of times it was clear that the Coast Guard communication with the people that they normally work with for, say, an 

Area Contingency Plan, the harbor masters, the emergency manager, whatever, a lot of times because that is such a specialized 

and professional group of people, their decisions were not known to 

the mayor or the governor or whoever else. 

So what we tried to do, and learned the lessons of that, and what 

we are trying to do here is link the operational side. And you saw 

it here. The three elected officials here or somebody who works for 

the governor are now very intimately aware of the operations. But 

as you know, in crises sometimes the operations and the electeds 

are a gap. 

So part of my role in that exercise and my role under the direction of Secretary Napolitano was to help fill that gap. And so that 

is the daily phone calls—we get asked questions in the morning. 

We need an answer by the evening. If we do not have an answer, 

we need an explanation of why the answer, where is the boom. We 

38 

get reports of damage boom, for example, claims concerns, or whatever else. So I think that was one of the big lessons of that exercise. 

Senator LANDRIEU. OK. But I also hope—and I will just end with 

this—that you understand, based on testimony after testimony 

after testimony, that the only boom that works is the ocean boom. 

The other boom is not working well. It only works in calm seas. It 

breaks up easily. So I hope we do not spend the next 60 days on 

phone calls talking about boom and move to some other things that 

might work—vacuums, bigger vacuums, oil-water separation equipment, skimmers, international operators that can come in. So I 

hope I am not on calls, which I have been the last couple of weeks, 

about boom because I have about had it up to here with that. 

And, Mr. Chairman, I unfortunately have to slip out to another 

meeting. I will not be here for the third panel. But I have met with 

these gentlemen privately in my office and have had many conversations with them and will continue to, so I do not want them 

to think I am not interested in discussing BP’s claims process, 

which is a big problem. And we do not have—even though they are 

trying hard, we do not have independent verification even of what 

claims have been filed. We do not have that information today. 

Senator PRYOR. Senator Nelson. 

Senator NELSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I, too, am way 

overdue for another meeting, so I am going to slip out as well. 

Madam Secretary, Admiral, thank you for your public service. 

Admiral you mentioned in response to Senator Pryor’s questions 

that there are 2,000 vessels that are deployed as of today. 

Admiral NASH. Yes, sir. 

Senator NELSON. How many of those are government and how 

many of those are vessels of opportunity? 

Admiral NASH. I would say a very high number of them are vessels of opportunity. The number of government vessels is in the 

dozens. I can get a hard number back to you, sir. 

Senator NELSON. Of the 2,000 vessels, how many are in the Louisiana sector and how many are in the Mobile sector? 

Admiral NASH. I would have to get back with the specifics, sir. 

Senator NELSON. How would you respond to Senator Landrieu’s 

statement that the vessel of opportunity is employed in a place 

where the oil is not? 

Admiral NASH. Sir, I would offer that the—it depends on the vessels of opportunity. Some of them are fishing vessels that can work 

further offshore. Our strategy would be to try and capture the oil 

that is more concentrated further offshore. So any chance we have 

of using skimmers or methodologies to collect oil further offshore 

is desired. But I also understand the need to collect oil near shore 

when it is near shore. So that is also probably a different size vessel, different seaworthiness category, and we have to be mindful of 

the safety of the men and women that are at work on these vessels 

of opportunity. And so it has to do with their seaworthiness and 

their demonstrated capability to actually work near shore or offshore, sir. 

Senator NELSON. If there are 2,000 boats that are deployed, how 

do you think you can explain the testimony that we just heard from 

the local officials that there are not boats there to address the oil 

39 

coming in, coming into the passes, as we heard over and over today 

in the testimony? 

Admiral NASH. I cannot really point to the exact point in time 

what we are talking about and where the oil is. But one of our 

strategies has been to go where we can find the oil, and we have 

had overflights to try and identify where we can catch the oil before it comes into the passes. If it gets into the passes, there are 

pretty fast currents through those openings, and it is harder to 

deal with at that point because it is moving so fast. Some of these 

skimmers will only work in a current that is one knot, two knots. 

It is sensitive to sea state. As well, we have had bad weather and 

there are plenty of days where the sea state is too difficult for 

skimming operations. So it depends on the day, the weather, and 

the exact equipment that you use, and there is actually a lot of 

technologies and different types of skimmers as well. And so I cannot speak to the limitations of each and every one, but I would just 

say that it varies, sir. 

Senator NELSON. Is it standard procedure that the Coast Guard 

would have—in your area of operations that you would have a plan 

that you would know at any moment where a particular vessel was 

and what its capability was? 

Admiral NASH. We are working closely—this is a new growth 

kind of situation where we have this many vessels of opportunity, 

and we are working that command and control. And I absolutely 

understand your comments on that, sir. It is easy for us to know 

where our government vessels are with the command and control, 

and we are working a command-and-control arrangement so we 

know where these vessels of opportunity are as well, sir, along with 

the other folks that we are working with on this response. 

Senator NELSON. So as of right now, you do not have that capability? 

Admiral NASH. Well, I would like to get back with you to what 

percentage of that capability we actually have in place, sir. 

Senator NELSON. In any major disaster such as this and command and control, what I would suggest that you should have is 

what is standard operating procedure in any major military type 

chain of command, which is you have a map, you have a specific 

location of a specific vessel, and that changes. That way you know 

exactly what is there, where the reports of the oil are so that you 

deploy those assets to where the problem is. That is what we have 

heard from the local officials here today, that the information flow 

is not there in which a commander can make that decision. 

In addition, what we have heard today is that the Coast Guard 

has part of control of the operation, but BP has a part of the control of the operation, and therein the two do not talk. And, therefore, things that are happening are not getting done because there 

is not somebody in a chain of command that can say this is what 

we are going to do given the circumstances. 

Do you think that kind of system is being set up under this 

present arrangement? 

Admiral NASH. Yes, sir, and the example I saw was in Grand Isle 

Sunday, and I went into the station there, and they are working 

with the local folks there, and they have identified vessels of opportunity that are in a task force there, and they have AIS signals on 

40 

those vessels. So they can see where those vessels are in Grand Isle 

and which ones are working near shore, just where they are. 

And so I do know if that is functioning there, and before I stated 

I knew that was true everywhere, I wanted to check on that. But 

that is the kind of system and command and control and capabilities-based vessel of opportunity system that we are aspiring to employ, sir. 

Senator NELSON. Admiral, would it surprise you that last weekend I asked of your incident command how many vessels were deployed off of Florida, and within the span of an hour and a half 

I got three different answers? 

Admiral NASH. I can look into that, sir, but—— 

Senator NELSON. You do not need to. It happened. And that is 

part of the problem, that we are not responding because somebody 

does not know what is happening. And the communication is not 

there. That is why in talking with my Emergency Operations Center director yesterday, he said, ‘‘How can oil be coming into Florida 

waters, in through the pass, into the inland waterway, and we are 

being told after the fact by the local officials that they are closing 

off the pass?’’ I said, ‘‘How are they closing it off?’’ He says, ‘‘We 

do not know. We do not know if it is by booms or if it is by some 

other method. We do not know how many skimmers are out there.’’ 

The value that the Chairman and the Ranking Member have 

brought to the table today is to get you all to understand the lack 

of communication that is going on and how you are going to have 

to restructure this thing so that the communication flow helps you 

make decisions that are timely to the particular threat at the time. 

And I thank you for your public service. I ask you please to listen 

to the testimony that you have heard today. 

Admiral NASH. Yes, sir. 

Senator PRYOR. Well, thank you, Senator Nelson. 

We are really over our time. I do have one last question for Admiral Nash, though. There have been some news reports about 

maybe the ocean floor having other fissures or leaks in it somehow. 

Do you have any evidence of that, that there may be other leaks 

going on out there? 

Admiral NASH. I do not have an official accounting of that for 

you, sir, but I do understand there are leaks out there. But I would 

need to get back with you more formally. 

Senator PRYOR. But you think there are other fissures or other 

leaks out on the ocean floor besides just right there where the well 

is? 

Admiral NASH. I do not know for sure, sir. I am thinking that 

is a little out of my specific lane to—but I will look into it, sir. 

Senator PRYOR. Okay, great. We are going to have some questions, I am sure, written questions that we submit, and we would 

love to have your quick response. Thank you very much, both of 

you, for being here. I appreciate you coming before the Subcommittee today. 

As our second panel is gathering up and leaving, I will go ahead 

and do the very brief introduction for the third panel. Our third 

panel is from BP America. 

First we have Ray Dempsey. He is Vice President of Strategy for 

BP America. He currently is part of the St. Petersburg Unified 

41 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Dempsey appears in the Appendix on page 139. 

Command, which has been directing spill response efforts for the 

West Coast of Florida and is working with incident command centers throughout the Gulf Coast region. He will discuss BP’s response plans and claims process that was set up as a result of the 

spill. 

Next is Darryl Willis. He is the Vice President for Resources, BP 

America. He is working as the head of the claims process for BP. 

He will not be providing testimony today, but will be available to 

answer questions about the claims process, which I probably have 

a few of those. 

Mr. Dempsey, would you like to go ahead and give us your statement? 

TESTIMONY OF RAY DEMPSEY,1 VICE PRESIDENT OF STRATEGY, BP AMERICA, INC., ACCOMPANIED BY DARRYL WILLIS, 

VICE PRESIDENT FOR RESOURCES, BP AMERICA, INC. 

Mr. DEMPSEY. Thank you, Chairman Pryor, and Ranking Member Ensign. My name is Ray Dempsey, Vice President for Strategy 

and Portfolio for BP. 

On May 6, 2010, I joined the St. Petersburg Unified Command, 

which is directing spill response efforts for the West Coast of Florida under the Area Unified Command. I also oversee the St. Petersburg Joint Information Center, where BP works with the Coast 

Guard and alongside other Federal and State government representatives to share information on spill-related efforts. 

I have worked for this company for 20 years. I volunteered for 

my current assignment because I want to help the company respond to and address the needs of the people in the Gulf Coast region. 

We are devastated by this accident, and it has profoundly 

touched all of us. My heart goes out to the families and friends of 

those who have lost their lives and those who are injured. We all 

want to do, and will do, the right thing for the people affected by 

this spill. 

The causes of the accident remain under investigation, both by 

the Federal Government and by BP. I am, thus, not in a position 

to respond to questions about the incident itself or the investigation. 

I would like to underscore that the global resources of BP are 

committed to our response. Nothing is being spared. 

Even before the Deepwater Horizon sank on the morning of April 

22, 2010, an Area Unified Command was in place. Under the leadership of Admiral Thad Allen as National Incident Commander, the 

Area Unified Command is compromised of personnel from BP, 

Transocean, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the Minerals Management 

Service. We work closely with all the Federal agencies involved, the 

Marine Spill Response Corporation—which is an oil spill response 

consortium—as well as numerous State, city, parish, and county 

agencies. All subsea, surface, and onshore response efforts are coordinated through and must ultimately be approved by the Area 

Unified Command. 

42 

We are also working with the full support of our industry colleagues and are making every effort to keep the public and government officials informed of what is happening. 

Meeting the needs of State and local governments remains crit- ical. On May 5, 2010, we announced block grants of $25 million 

each to the States of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida 

to help address costs associated with this response. Following those 

initial block grants, we have just announced a second round of $25 

million payments to Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. 

Additionally, after discussing concerns about tourism with State and local officials, we made payments totaling $70 million to Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi to assist those States in 

promoting tourism. At the direction of the Area Unified Command, 

we are taking actions across the Gulf region to minimize and mitigate the environmental and economic impacts related to this spill, 

both on the open water and on the shoreline. Details regarding our 

open water response are contained in my written testimony. I will 

focus now on our actions to protect the shoreline. 

We are implementing what the U.S. Coast Guard has described 

as the most massive shoreline protection effort ever mounted. To 

date, over 2 million feet of containment boom and over 2.5 million 

feet of sorbent boom have been deployed to contain the spill. Seventeen staging areas around the Gulf Coast are in place to help protect the shoreline. 

Rapid response teams are ready to deploy to any affected area. 

Contingency plans for waste management to prevent secondary 

contamination are also being implemented. 

Wildlife clean-up stations are being mobilized, working with TriState, a leader in wildlife rescue and rehabilitation. We recognize 

that beyond the environmental impacts, there are also economic 

impacts. As the responsible party under the Oil Pollution Act of 

1990, BP will pay all necessary clean-up costs and is committed to 

paying all legitimate claims for other loss and damages caused by 

the spill. We know that we will spend more than the $75 million 

liability cap established by OPA. 

BP initiated the claims process on April 24, and by April 25, we 

had in place a 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week toll-free call center. Potential claimants can also receive an in-person appointment at one 

of our 31 walk-in claims offices. Spanish and Vietnamese translators are available in several offices. We have also established an 

online claims-filing system. 

To date, more than 40,000 have been filed and approximately 

19,000 have been paid, totaling over $57 million. We are committed 

to ensuring that our claims process is efficient and fair, and we 

look for guidance to the established laws, regulations, and other information provided by the U.S. Coast Guard, which has over 20 

years of experience in handling and resolving these types of claims. 

As part of our collaboration with State and local entities and 

residents, BP is supporting volunteer efforts in preparation for 

shoreline clean-up and is working closely with State and local entities on these efforts. 

BP is operating 25 community outreach centers across the Gulf 

Coast and in the parishes of Louisiana and the counties of Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. 

43 

BP is under no illusions about the seriousness of the situation we 

face. The world is watching us, and we know that we will be judged 

by our response to this crisis. I can assure you that my colleagues 

at BP and I are fully committed to ensuring that we do the right 

thing. We and the entire industry will learn from this terrible 

event and emerge from it stronger, smarter, and safer. 

I would like to introduce to you a technical expert that I have 

with me today. Darryl Willis is leading our claims efforts, and he 

is here to assist me in answering claims-related questions. We are 

happy to answer your questions. 

Senator PRYOR. Thank you. Let me go ahead and start here. 

You mentioned that you have put out X number of feet—I have 

forgotten what you said—of boom out there. It sounds to me like 

that has not been adequate since now the oil is getting onto the 

shorelines of the various States down on the Gulf Coast. One of the 

previous witnesses said that someone was putting out the wrong 

kind of boom. Did you hear that comment? Do you have any comment about that? 

Mr. DEMPSEY. Chairman Pryor, I did hear that comment from 

Ms. Kayyem, and I understand the concern. I think it is important 

to recall some other testimony by Ms. Kayyem where she described 

the Area Contingency Plans, which set forth our plans and our intentions for the way that we will protect the coastline. Those Area 

Contingency Plans are developed in cooperation with State, county, 

and local officials. Those plans identify the sensitive areas; they 

identify the appropriate booming strategies. The Area Unified Command ultimately is responsible for making the decisions to deploy 

boom. 

To your question, I expect that the Area Unified Command is 

watching and learning quite a lot based on what has occurred thus 

far in our response to this incident, and I am certain that we will 

make adjustments as appropriate to maximize protection of the 

shoreline. 

Senator PRYOR. Does BP have an estimate of how much oil is actually in the Gulf, how much oil is on the surface of the Gulf or 

underneath as a result of this spill? 

Mr. DEMPSEY. Mr. Chairman, our response in this effort is not 

at all a function of exactly how much oil is there. We are deploying 

the resources, the assets, the equipment to address whatever is 

there. There is an independent panel that is accountable for the estimation of the amount of oil that is coming from the well. I am 

not an expert in that area, and I certainly would not attempt to 

offer a better conclusion or better suggestion than is being made 

by that group. 

Senator PRYOR. Well, the reason I brought that up is because you 

talk about these plans and all this that everyone has. But I think 

it is hard to know if the plan is going to work unless you know how 

much oil is there, because the plans may be based on a certain 

amount of contaminated water, etc., and then, if it is double, triple, 

four times that, whatever the case is, maybe that plan does not 

work. But did you have any comments? I guess you do not know— 

that is not really your area to talk about as to how much oil is in 

the water. But you do not have any comment beyond that? 

44 

Mr. DEMPSEY. Mr. Chairman, I do understand your question, and 

I believe it is certainly within the authority and the obligation of 

the Area Unified Command to make the decisions to deploy whatever resources are necessary to combat the oil on the water. 

Senator PRYOR. Does BP have a budget for this clean-up? 

Mr. DEMPSEY. Mr. Chairman, I have not seen or heard of any indication of a budget. I can tell you that the full resources of BP are 

being deployed and brought to bear to support this response. It is 

the single most important priority in all of our company around the 

world. 

Senator PRYOR. OK. Let me ask about the specifics of your 

claims process. One of the witnesses earlier—I believe it was the 

mayor, but I do not remember exactly. But one of the witnesses 

earlier said that some of his local folks—I think he said 37—have 

filed claims, maybe have not hear back yet, and I am curious about 

your process in terms of how rapidly you try to either accept or 

deny or ask for more information on those claims. What is your 

process there? 

Mr. DEMPSEY. Mr. Chairman, I will invite my colleague Mr. 

Darryl Willis to address your question. 

Mr. WILLIS. Chairman Pryor, let me say a few words about the 

claims process to date. As you heard my colleague say, we have 

paid just around 20,000 claims or so to date. In Louisiana, we have 

paid almost half those claims; 10,000 claims have been paid in Louisiana. Of the 10,000 claims that have been paid in Louisiana, 

about 60 percent have been paid to four parishes. 

The time it takes, to answer your question, from the time a person calls our 1–800 number to the time they receive a check from 

one of our claims offices—and I have traveled around to several of 

them, and I have seen this for myself—is about 7 days on average, 

once they have provided the substantial documentation. I know 

that someone said during the testimony that we have 90 days by 

law. That is unacceptable. Our goal is to get a check into the hands 

of the folks of the Gulf Coast as quickly as possible. 

When I got involved in this process a month ago, it was going 

to take about 45 days for a person to receive a check. We have cut 

that down dramatically, and we are continuing to look for ways to 

improve it even further. The goal is to get money into the hands 

of the folks that need it the most as quickly as we possibly can. 

Senator PRYOR. And what percentage of the claims have you denied so far? 

Mr. WILLIS. We have not denied any claims so far. 

Senator PRYOR. Does that mean that you anticipate paying 100 

percent of those? Or does that mean that you are looking for more 

documentation and you are not sure about some of the ones that 

have not been paid yet? 

Mr. WILLIS. Of the ones that have not been paid, only 50 percent 

of the claims that have not been paid, there are probably a variety 

of reasons why they have not. One is that we are getting about 

1,500 claims a day, and it is taking, as I mentioned, about 7 or so 

days to get a claim paid. So you are constantly adding claims to 

the system. 

In addition to that, some people have filed multiple claims. In addition to that, we have people who are filing claims and who have 

45 

decided not to pursue it. And in addition to that, we have some 

people who file claims who, for reasons associated with maybe 

thinking that they cannot sue if they file a claim, have decided not 

to pursue their claim. 

Then the last reason I would say is around the fact that some 

people are just slow to get their documentation in. But what we are 

continuing to do is to reach out to the community, to advertise the 

claims process via the press, even handing our flyers in local libraries to make sure the word is out that there is a claims process, we 

have the 31 claim centers across the Gulf Coast which are accessible to the people who need help. 

Senator PRYOR. OK. Let me ask a few follow-ups there. Can people file their claims online, or is this—— 

Mr. WILLIS. They can. 

Senator PRYOR. OK. So how do they provide documentation online? 

Mr. WILLIS. What happens is people can go to our Web site at 

bp.com/claims and file a claim. What will happen is they will fill 

out a very simple application. Within a couple of days or less, they 

will receive a claim number. They can take that claim number with 

whatever documentation they need to bring into one of our claims 

centers, or they can mail it in, and their claim will be paid as long 

as the documentation substantiates their income. To date, we have 

had about 4,300 claims that have been paid on our Web site. Ten 

of those have been in Vietnamese, 21 of those have been filed in 

Spanish. 

Senator PRYOR. So it is not completely paperless or completely 

online. There is still a step where they have to go and show some 

documentation to somebody. 

Mr. WILLIS. Right. You can either drop it at a claims office, mail 

it in, or e-mail it in. 

Senator PRYOR. Right. And you mentioned something that there 

may be some people who are not pursuing claims because they are 

afraid they will not be able to sue. 

Mr. WILLIS. Right. 

Senator PRYOR. As part of the claims process, do the local people 

agree to not sue? 

Mr. WILLIS. Absolutely not. They retain all of their rights as they 

go through the claims process, and that is one thing we are trying 

to make sure is communicated effectively. 

Senator PRYOR. All right. Are there any legal reasons that you 

are aware of why people would, by virtue of getting a claim, under 

any law, State law or whatever the case may be, that they might 

be forgoing their right to sue if they decide to later? Are you aware 

of anything? 

Mr. WILLIS. Not to my knowledge. 

Senator PRYOR. OK. And I am sure that as you set this up you 

have some criteria on who can file, etc., and all that, who can make 

a claim. Who is not eligible to make a claim? How do you set your 

criteria up? 

Mr. WILLIS. As I have traveled across the Gulf Coast—and most 

recently I have made trips from Venice to Pensacola, stopping in 

Biloxi and Pascagoula, Mississippi, and Bayou La Batre, Alabama, 

I have come across a variety of people. I have come across fisherVerDate Nov 24 2008 08:29 Mar 15, 2011 Jkt 058033 PO 00000 Frm 00049 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\58033.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PAT
46 

men. I have come across deckhands. I have come across net makers, actually a blind net maker in Biloxi, and I actually came 

across a lawn man in Alabama. And they were all filing claims, 

and in many cases I witnessed them leaving with checks. Anybody 

who has been hurt, harmed, or damaged by this spill and believes 

that they have a legitimate claim and can substantiate their loss 

is eligible to file a claim through our process. 

Senator PRYOR. OK. Senator Ensign. 

Senator ENSIGN. Can you just walk us through, when you say 

documentation, what kind of documentation they need? 

Mr. WILLIS. So let me take you through the documentation for 

a deckhand, and this has been an issue in Louisiana, particularly 

in the office that I was directly involved in opening in Venice, 

where in some cases deckhands do not have a tax return. So we 

have tried to make our process as pragmatic as possible with a bias 

to getting money into folks’ hands. So if you do not have a tax return, we will take a payroll stub. If you do not have a payroll stub 

for the month or for every 2 weeks, we will take a deposit slip that 

shows how much you have made. If you do not have a deposit slip, 

we will take fish tickets or trip tickets. 

In the case of a deckhand, we would also make a quick call to 

the captain of the boat that you work on to confirm that you actually work on that boat and get a very simple letter from the captain saying that you work on the boat. 

All of that happens. The person walks out of the claims office 

with a check. 

Senator ENSIGN. And these are $5,000 checks or are these 

$2,500? 

Mr. WILLIS. These are the $2,500 checks that have been given 

out. 

Senator ENSIGN. OK. And how long is that supposed to last 

them? 

Mr. WILLIS. This will last as long as people are damaged by the 

spill—— 

Senator ENSIGN. No. I mean, in other words, can they just do 

that one time? 

Mr. WILLIS. Absolutely. You do it one time, and as a matter of 

fact, last week we started rolling out the second wave of checks for 

the month of June to the same people who received compensation 

in May. 

Senator ENSIGN. Okay, so that is $2,500 for the month is what 

they are getting. 

Mr. WILLIS. Yes. 

Senator ENSIGN. What about if you are a small business owner? 

Mr. WILLIS. If you are a small business owner, if your claim is 

less than $5,000, it is a very simple process, and it is done relatively quickly. If it is larger than $5,000, it goes into our large loss 

claims process. That process is actually just spooling up because in 

order to declare a loss as a business for the month, we needed for 

the books to close for the month of May. So we started paying large 

loss claims last week. Last week we paid about 40 of those claims. 

The smallest one was just over $5,000. The largest one was 

$426,000. 

47 

Senator ENSIGN. Are you comparing year to year? How are you 

comparing that? 

Mr. WILLIS. In the case of small businesses, we ask for tax returns for 1, 2, or 3 years, depending on the complexity of the claim, 

in addition to a P&L. 

Senator ENSIGN. P&L for the previous year so you—— 

Mr. WILLIS. For the previous year and by month if necessary, because in many cases these businesses are seasonal, so whatever is 

the appropriate lens to look through. 

Senator ENSIGN. And what happens if these businesses, a lot of 

small businesses were already hurting in this country, and they go 

out of business in the meantime. 

Mr. WILLIS. Ten percent of all of the claims—let me back up. 

Five percent of all of the claims that we have received to date have 

been from businesses that have claims in excess of $5,000. Around 

600 of them were sent checks immediately for $5,000, and their 

claims were put into the process. We are going to ramp that process up quickly to make sure we get hands into those businesses as 

fast as we can. 

Senator ENSIGN. And I know some of these questions you may 

not be able to answer, Mr. Dempsey, but take your best shot, if you 

can. If not, we would like written responses. 

For instance, we have understood that President Obama and 

your CEO have not met during this time. Is that correct? 

Mr. DEMPSEY. Senator Ensign, I have read that, and I understand that is the case. 

Senator ENSIGN. Do you know whether your CEO—and if not, if 

you can get that question to us—if the President has not reached 

out to your CEO, if your CEO has reached out to the President? 

If you can get that for us, I would appreciate that. 

Mr. DEMPSEY. I will. 

Senator ENSIGN. Second is that May 27 there was an ABC News 

report that said that BP refineries, ‘‘have a systemic safety problem,’’ and the bottom line is BP has 760 OSHA violations at various refineries; Exxon had only one. Do you have explanations why 

you would have so many and other companies would have so little? 

Mr. DEMPSEY. Senator, I cannot represent the safety records of 

other parts of our organization. 

Senator ENSIGN. If you could maybe get your company to get that 

answer for us, that would be very much appreciated. 

Mr. DEMPSEY. OK. We will. 

Senator ENSIGN. And, last, we have a situation where you heard 

from the local folks up here saying that they get the answers from 

the Coast Guard—they get approval from the Coast Guard. The 

Coast Guard then says BP will not pay. And yet BP has consistently—you said it again today: ‘‘We will pay all’’—the clean-up 

process and all that, and that is what they are largely talking 

about today. 

How do you respond when you heard—because you guys were sitting here—when you heard some of these local folks talking 

about—I mean, they are pretty heavily pointing the finger at you 

guys and charging you guys that you are not doing the job that you 

have promised to the American people and to the people of the Gulf 

Coast that you were going to do. 

48 

Mr. DEMPSEY. Senator, I understand the frustration of the gentlemen from the first panel. This is a tragic and unprecedented 

event. I believe that the command structure is actually quite clear. 

Admiral Thad Allen is the National Incident Commander. All decisions about the tactics, the resources, and the efforts to address 

this spill are ultimately under his decisionmaking authority. 

I believe that the unified command is an important cooperative 

effort between the U.S. Coast Guard, BP, and associated State and 

local agencies. 

Senator ENSIGN. So if Thad Allen says, ‘‘BP, pay that,’’ you are 

going to pay it? 

Mr. DEMPSEY. I was encouraged to hear in the testimony from 

Rear Admiral Nash that, to his knowledge and from his experience, 

there have been no incidents where BP has not been prepared to 

cover the requirements and the resources for this response. BP is 

fully committed to deploying the full resources of our company towards this response. 

Senator ENSIGN. Do you think it is being done in a timely fashion? Does BP think that they are doing these things in a timely 

fashion? There is one thing to say yes. There is another thing to 

say yes in a timely fashion when the actual money for whatever 

is being done can happen and be effective. 

Mr. DEMPSEY. Senator, I will assure you that BP is not delaying 

the delivery of resources to support this response. It is important 

to note that in the unified command structure, there is indeed a 

decisionmaking process. As a part of that unified command, we 

have to operate within that process, and we are supportive of providing all the resources necessary to address this spill. 

Senator ENSIGN. Are the work rules that we heard about today— 

we have heard press reports, if it gets 90 degrees, people have to 

take breaks all the time. You heard these folks talking about it 

today. They are in a war down there. And is BP setting up those 

work rules or is the unified command, is Thad Allen setting up 

those work rules? 

Mr. DEMPSEY. Senator, I will reinforce that all the decisions 

about the operations, the tactics that are—— 

Senator ENSIGN. When you hire a contractor, is BP or is the unified command setting up, when it gets over 90 degrees, you have 

to take a certain amount of time, you can only work 10 minutes 

at a time, things like that that we read about in the press? Who 

is setting those kind of rules up? 

Mr. DEMPSEY. Senator, I would like to reinforce that there is a 

really critical priority we hold, which is to ensure the safety and 

the health—— 

Senator ENSIGN. That is not the answer to my question. My 

question is: Who is setting the rules? Is it BP or is it the unified 

command? 

Mr. DEMPSEY. It is indeed unified command, Senator. It is their 

accountability to direct the resources that are being deployed in 

this response. 

Senator ENSIGN. I know that. I am saying the actual work rules 

themselves. Who is setting that up, like if somebody can only work 

10 minutes at a time or 20 minutes at a time? Whatever those 

rules are, who is setting those rules? 

49 

Mr. DEMPSEY. Senator, Unified Command makes those decisions. 

They are subject to and very focused on guidance from OSHA, departments of health, and other associated State and Federal authorities. 

Senator ENSIGN. That is what I needed. Thank you. 

Senator PRYOR. Well, I just have a few more questions, just really follow-ups actually. When someone files a claim through your 

process, do you look for ways to mitigate the damages of their 

claim? In other words, if they say you owe them $5,000, do you look 

at it and say, ‘‘Well, we think we do not owe you $5,000, but we 

owe you $3,000’’? Do you do that? Do you make that kind of evaluation? 

Mr. WILLIS. Chairman Pryor, the bias is to get money into the 

hands of the people quickly, and the answer to your question is no. 

Senator PRYOR. So as long as they can justify their out-of-pocket 

losses, you pay 100 cents on the dollar? 

Mr. WILLIS. That is what we have paid so far. 

Senator PRYOR. I want to ask about your large loss claims process. You mentioned that—I have forgotten the number that have 

come through, but it sounds like it is just really getting underway. 

Do you look at the mitigation of the damages or the limiting of 

damages in that circumstance? Because that is a little more complicated evaluation. At least in my mind it would be. 

Mr. WILLIS. It is a more complicated evaluation, and because it 

is just spooling up—and my experience so far has been every case 

is unique and different, and we are taking every claim on a caseby-case basis. 

For example, we just paid a large loss claim to a seafood processor, and we have had to modify the rules so that we could do the 

right thing. The bias here is to do the right thing. In the case of 

seafood processing, for example, you cannot wait until you declare 

a loss to get your claim paid because by the time you declare a loss, 

you are out of business. So we have augmented our rules to make 

sure we got money into the hands of a particular company in Louisiana so that they could pay their fixed costs and survive through 

this period of challenging times in Louisiana. So it varies case by 

case. 

Senator PRYOR. And do you know if BP has any insurance to 

cover these type of payments? 

Mr. WILLIS. We are covering these payments ourselves. 

Senator PRYOR. OK. So, in effect, you are self-insured? 

Mr. WILLIS. Yes. 

Senator PRYOR. And you may not know this, it may be too detailed or out of your lane, but do you know if BP would be eligible 

for a tax deduction for these payments? 

Mr. WILLIS. Definitely out of my area of expertise. 

Senator PRYOR. OK. And is BP alone in this, or are there other 

companies that you are working with on this particular well in the 

Gulf of Mexico that are stepping up to help? 

Mr. WILLIS. As the responsible party, BP was obligated to initiate the claims process, and that is what we are doing. Honestly, 

what I have been focused on is making sure that process gets up 

and running over the last 45 days, and that is what we are doing, 

and I have not worried too much about the other details. 

50 

Senator PRYOR. Has BP notified other companies they may be 

looking to them to help offset these losses? 

Mr. WILLIS. Our focus up to this point has been making sure that 

every individual fisherman, crabber, every small business that 

needs help from BP is getting it. That is where the focus has been 

so far, sir. 

Senator PRYOR. Does BP have any plans to either compensate or 

at least consider compensating cities, counties and parishes, school 

districts, etc., for loss of tax revenue? 

Mr. WILLIS. There are three aspects to our claims process: There 

is the individual piece, there is the business piece, and there is also 

a government and municipalities piece. And any organization or 

business or person that feels that they have been damaged by the 

spill has every right to file a claim under our process, and we are 

getting claims in all three of those categories. 

Senator PRYOR. OK. For Mr. Dempsey, let me ask you: Does the 

fact that BP is part of this Unified Command, does that limit BP’s 

flexibility? 

Mr. DEMPSEY. Mr. Chairman, I think there are several examples 

where BP has observed needs expressed at the State, county, parish, and local level, where we have stepped in in a way that is 

above and beyond the efforts of unified command. I think an important example of that is in the case of the concerns about tourism 

marketing, and as I described in my opening remarks, we made 

payments totaling $70 million to the four States in the region— 

Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida—to support campaigns that those States would run to support their tourism industry within their respective States. We think it is really important 

that when we see opportunities to provide support in advance of 

dealing with losses later as claims, that it is in the best interests 

of all of us involved. 

Senator PRYOR. Now, you are the Vice President of Strategy, and 

Senator Ensign a few moments ago asked about BP’s safety record. 

I do not know exactly what your role is in terms of the Vice President of Strategy, but it would seem to me that one of the things 

you could be or should be working on is a strategy of not having 

as many safety claims as you have. Does that fall under your purview? Or does that go under somebody else in the company? 

Mr. DEMPSEY. Mr. Chairman, that is not my direct accountability, but I share your concern, and, frankly, I can assure you 

that all of us in BP share a concern about our commitment to safety. We are in the process of implementing a global operating management system, which is a framework within which we can assure 

the safe operations, both process safety and personal safety, 

throughout our operations globally. 

Senator PRYOR. I have been watching BP’s stock, and I notice it 

is not going in a positive direction right now. And I am curious if 

you have heard any discussions within your company about the implications of your stock price? 

Mr. DEMPSEY. Mr. Chairman, I will reinforce that 100 percent 

focus in BP is on responding to this spill, and all the resources of 

the company are being deployed in pursuit of that. There have 

been reassurances to the employees and to the external community 

51 

that we will not rest nor will we turn our attention or resources 

away from this response. 

I have not heard any specific concerns that relate to the share 

price and its implications for our continued commitment to this response. 

Senator PRYOR. Have you heard or been party to any conversations at BP about the possibility that BP might have to declare 

bankruptcy as a result of this spill? 

Mr. DEMPSEY. Mr. Chairman, I have read of that in the media. 

I have heard no such suggestion, indication, or concern raised internally within our organization. I will reinforce that our focus now 

is on this response. We will not rest until we have stopped the 

leak, we have cleaned it up, and we have made it right. 

Senator PRYOR. And how much money has BP spent so far in response to this? 

Mr. DEMPSEY. Mr. Chairman, my understanding is we have 

spent on the order now of $1.4 billion in this response. 

Senator PRYOR. Is that a comprehensive number that includes 

the efforts to clean up the Gulf and also to compensate people? 

Mr. DEMPSEY. Mr. Chairman, it certainly is an intent to be a 

comprehensive estimate of the resources that have been deployed 

to this point. 

Senator PRYOR. OK. Well, listen, I want to thank both of you all. 

I know that we will have some further questions for the record that 

we will submit in writing, and I really appreciate your being here 

today and appreciate your coming here and listening through a 

long hearing, as well as all the other participants and members of 

the media as well for sitting here and helping us work through 

this. 

Thank you very much, and what we will do is we will leave the 

record open for 15 days. What we will do is we will ask our various 

Senators and Senate offices to get us the questions to submit to all 

of our witnesses today, and try to get those back as quickly as you 

can. And I do not think there is any further business that we have 

to do today, so what we will do is we will adjourn the hearing, but 

I want to thank you all very much for your participation. 

[Whereupon, at 12:48 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 

(53) 

A P P E N D I X 


58033.001
54 


58033.002
55 


58033.003
56 


58033.004
57 


58033.005
58 


58033.006
59 


58033.007
60 


58033.008
61 


58033.009
62 


58033.010
63 


58033.011
64 


58033.012
65 


58033.013
66 


58033.014
67 


58033.015
68 


58033.016
69 


58033.017
70 


58033.018
71 


58033.019
72 


58033.020
73 


58033.021
74 


58033.022
75 


58033.023
76 


58033.024
77 


58033.025
78 


58033.026
79 


58033.027
80 


58033.028
81 


58033.029
82 


58033.030
83 


58033.031
84 


58033.032
85 


58033.033
86 


58033.034
87 


58033.035
88 


58033.036
89 


58033.037
90 


58033.038
91 


58033.039
92 


58033.040
93 


58033.041
94 


58033.042
95 


58033.043
96 


58033.044
97 


58033.045
98 


58033.046
99 


58033.047
100 


58033.048
101 


58033.049
102 


58033.050
103 


58033.051
104 


58033.052
105 


58033.053
106 


58033.054
107 


58033.055
108 


58033.056
109 


58033.057
110 


58033.058
111 


58033.059
112 


58033.060
113 


58033.061
114 


58033.062
115 


58033.063
116 


58033.064
117 


58033.065
118 


58033.066
119 


58033.067
120 


58033.068
121 


58033.069
122 


58033.070
123 


58033.071
124 


58033.072
125 


58033.073
126 


58033.074
127 


58033.075
128 


58033.076
129 


58033.077
130 


58033.078
131 


58033.079
132 


58033.080
133 


58033.081
134 


58033.082
135 


58033.083
136 


58033.084
137 


58033.085
138 


58033.086
139 


58033.087
140 


58033.088
141 


58033.089
142 


58033.090
143 


58033.091
144 


58033.092
145 


58033.093
146 


58033.094
147 


58033.095
148 


58033.096
149 


58033.097
150 


58033.098
151 


58033.099
152 


58033.100
153 


58033.101
154 


58033.102
155 


58033.103
156 


58033.104
157 


58033.105
158 


58033.106
159 

Æ 


58033.107