The following is from an interview for Human Events, by Connie Hair, July 12, 2010.
Rep. Mike Burgess (R-Texas), top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce oversight subcommittee, also warned in our interview Friday that the “A Whale” super skimmer ship — that skims 300,000 to 400,000 barrels a day — was still being blocked from work by the Obama administration.
“The Whale skimmer boat is not being allowed to work because the EPA wants to make sure that the quality of water that’s coming out of the other end meets their specifications. Well, wait a minute, it’s taking in oil out of the water and putting water back out the other end. If the EPA wants to monitor while it’s working where it could be improved and where techniques could be modified to get a better result that would be great, but to just hold it up and say they’re doing testing to make sure the water that’s coming out on the clean end does indeed meet our specifications when it’s 99% better than the water that went in on the front end — that’s just nuts,” Burgess said.
Somehow it makes sense to the Obama administration.
Fleming warned that at the end of the day the most enduring damage to the region in the wake of the spill could be inflicted by the federal government.
“When history is written on this episode, what I suspect… it will be all of the economic damage that’s been created mostly by the federal government itself in terms of the moratoria and potentially very onerous regulations — that the real damage will actually occur as a result of the administration and Washington itself,” Fleming said.
(From Rep. Dwayne Alons Capitol Comments Newsletter)
