Cleanup Theater? National Guard Throws Oil Booms Into Dumpster After Photo-Op?

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Cleanup Theater? National Guard Throws Oil Booms into Dumpster

By: Michael Whitney Wednesday May 26, 2010 7:32 am
 
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I wrote last night about our first day in Grand Isle; we came to the fishing pier, which was still open and looked out over the beach into the gulf. As we arrived at the pier staircase, about a dozen workers in blue shirts and bright yellow vests drove out of the park while a half dozen people in National Guard uniforms in golf carts drove down the beach.

We walked down the pier and surveyed the oil residue beneath. A seagull picks on a decaying fish in an oil sheen. To our left there’s probably 200 yards of boom in the water around the bend of the island, but the bulk of the coastline has none. About 300 yards down the beach in the other direction, there’s about two dozen National Guard troops with backhoes, four wheelers, and some oil boom.

They laid out several rows of oil booms as we watched from the pier. About an hour after they laid it out, they went back and picked it all up. At the time, we thought it was odd that they would take time to lay out boom on the beach and then just put it back away.

We drive around the park and end up in the RV park, hoping to get someone to let us stand on their RV and view the military operation over the dune. ("To answer your question, not a chance in hell will you climb my RV.") I ask National Guard troops sitting at a picnic table if "Beach Closed" means the tops of the dunes are closed for viewing the operation. ("You can ask the five cops waiting for you on the other side.")

I pull into a parking space and Ivan and I talk about what to do. I turn my head and watch two National Guard members pull up their golf cart to a green dumpster. They unload big, orange oil booms one by one from the back of the cart, and throw them into the dumpster.

It’s unclear what purpose the operation on the beach was supposed to serve, and why it required dumping boom in dumpsters at the end. It could have been a training exercise for new troops for how to lay out booms; no one would answer my questions on the scene.

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