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Both NBC's Kerry Sanders and ABC's David Muir brought us images of workers clad in hazmat suits, sucking up glops of crude with industrial sized vacuum hoses. The exercise amounted to a futile photo-op. "If the oil were to stop gushing right now it would take more than 60 years with this equipment here right now to get it all," Sanders calculated. "Can it really make a difference?" Muir inquired incredulously, noting that 48 hours of sucking had cleaned up 1,100 gallons of oil--that is just 26 barrels. Then Muir went onto a skimming boat, whose day's work results in 1,200 gallons of oil being collected. "They are overwhelmed," he shrugged.
Both NBC's Anne Thompson and CBS' Mark Strassmann took us on a tour of the desolate Barataria Bay. Thompson called the millions of feet of containment boom "impressive" before conceding that they are "a meager defense against the relentless oil." Strassmann commented that the fishery--which used to account for fully 30% of Louisiana's catch--is now completely closed. Worse, the oil is now suffocating the sediment of its marshlands. More bad news from the tourist beaches of Gulf Shores Ala: "Red flags and health warnings have been posted, urging swimmers to stay out of the water," noted NBC's Mark Potter.
Matt Gutman looked at the lack of innovation in oil clean-up technology, pointing out that most techniques are decades old. He went on an ABC News Gets @nswers quest to see if the ideas flooding into BP's suggestion box had spurred new thinking. Actor Kevin Costner's oil-and-water "contraption" failed its first test run. There is a new sponge, an expensive kitty litter style powder, hard-to-dispose-of hay…and that new vacuum system.
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