Congress Investigates Gulf Oil Spill

  • One area the investigation will focus on is whether the blowout prevention and emergency shutoff devices had been tested and properly maintained for use at the drilling facility.(Photo courtesy of the US Mineral Management Service)

Next week Congress will hold what’s likely to be the first of many hearings on the drilling rig explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Lester Graham reports this is just the latest Congressional investigation into BP’s operations.

Transcript

Next week Congress will hold what’s likely to be the first of many hearings on the drilling rig explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Lester Graham reports this is just the latest Congressional investigation into BP’s operations.

Congressman Bart Stupak chairs the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. He says you can add this oil spill in the Gulf to several oil spills on Alaska’s North Slope and the refinery explosion that killed 15 people in Texas City in 2005. He says earlier this year he fired off a letter about billions of dollars in budget cuts BP just recently made.

“We wanted to make sure these cuts don’t negatively affect the safety of the workers or the environment. I mean, we put that in writing to them in January. And when I heard about the blow-out and the fire down there and the accident, they didn’t have to tell me the company that was bitten by this. I just figured it was BP.”

Stupak’s subcommittee will be questioning BP officials, the drilling rig operators, TransOcean, and Halliburton which did maintenance work on the rig.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Climate Bill Debate Starts in the Senate

  • Democratic leaders are expected to bring a draft bill to the Senate before the August recess. (Photo courtesy of the Architect of the Capitol)

The giant climate change bill
squeaked through the House of
Representatives. Now the battle’s
beginning in the Senate. Rebecca
Williams has more on the debate:

Transcript

The giant climate change bill
squeaked through the House of
Representatives. Now the battle’s
beginning in the Senate. Rebecca
Williams has more on the debate:

Republican Senator Kit Bond said the climate change bill will be destructive to Americans.

“Impose new energy taxes on them, kill their jobs, punish the Midwest and South, help China and India and construct a new bureaucratic nightmare.”

The Obama Administration says doing nothing will cost us more.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu pointed out a recent MIT study predicting, with global warming, temperatures could rise as much as 11 degrees Fahrenheit.

“During the last Ice Age, when Canada and United States, down to Ohio and Pennsylvania, were covered year round in a glacier the world was only 11 degrees colder. A world 11 degrees warmer will be a very different place.”

Democratic leaders are expected to bring a draft bill to the Senate before the August recess.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Chemical Companies Could Be Safer

Environmental groups want Congress to push for use of less toxic chemicals at many industrial
sites. Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

Environmental groups want Congress to push for use of less toxic chemicals at many industrial
sites. Chuck Quirmbach reports:


A House committee last year passed a plan to require industries to replace dangerous chemicals
with less toxic alternatives whenever feasible. The US Public Interest Research Group is among
the environmental organizations urging this year’s Congress to revive the measure.


Spokesman Bruce Speight argues the companies, and consumers, would not face sticker shock
when adopting greener chemicals and processes:


“No, in fact, over the long term they could actually save the facilities money and, you know, of course in the event of something happening, the cost to these facilities is great.”


When Speight says something happening he means an accident or terrorist attack at a site that
uses dangerous chemicals. Thousands of people could be hurt in such an incident. But the
chemical industry says many firms are already switching to less toxic substances, and don’t need
the federal government to push them.


For the Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

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