traulers picking up the oil that settled on the bottom. the big thing is, who s going to want to eat that? how are they going to sell their catch? seems like just driving down here, coming down route 23 and seeing the industry and seeing the businesses and seeing the you know, what s painted on people s trucks in terms of where they work, it sort of feels like the oil industry giveeth and the oil industry takeeth away. it s the fishing and oil industry. even literally, the oil rigs providing a habitat for the fish that you catch as a charter boat captain. but then there s this risk. what do you feel like is the balance in terms of the good and bad of the oil industry down here? i mean, what s the future for louisiana down here with oil? this was human error that caused this. it could have been avoided. the risk shouldn t have been as high as it is, due to the fact that they made the mistake. had they not made the crucial
even what bp said was their worst case scenario for this. should they have not been given approval to do this in the first place? i think that is but one of many questions that we re all going to look for time to answer with facts. facts we re getting now, facts we ll continue to get. i think one thing is clear. that is there was supposed to be a fail safe here, this blowout prevention valve. it s not safe at all. it hasn t worked. and sadly, there isn t much redundancy in that system. so what we re finding out is that bp now has to turn to innovative techniques to try to stem this ongoing release of oil. at an event earlier today, governor rick perry of texas said that this disaster, talking about this zadisaster, he said from time to time there will be acts of god that cannot be prevented. my sense to that is that this wasn t an act of god it was an act of bp in the sense that they re responsible for this not
pollution act of 1990, federal law limits the amount of daniels bp will be responsible for to, get this, $75 million. that s it. $75 million. a drop in the expected bucket. that limit on liability is the target of the big oil bailout prevention act, which was introduced today. the bill seeks to raise the cap on liabilities from $75 million to $10 billion. joining us now is democratic senator bob menendez of new jersey who was a co-spoenser of the big oil bayout prevention act. thank you for joining us. good to be with you, rachel, and thanks for being in louisiana. your legislation would raise the liability cap from $75 million way up to $10 billion. if it passed, would it take effect immediately? would it be retroactive to include this disaster here behind me? yes. you know, we have precedent for that, super fund ultimately is the cleanup of toxic waste site that s were, you know, made
i can add something i learned from the head of wildlife and fisheries here in plaquemines parish, where we are. they have decided and they ve shared their plans with president obama, to make a beach head, string together a daisychain of barges, fishing boats and booms. however, unready those booms, as you properly note may be, to try to put up a wall. this official said to me, we re not going to let this oil in our estuaries. they are excited by the slow, east ward movement. we had kind of a happy coincidence today. it s being held offshore by currents and winds, but as someone put it, it s not like they re dodging a bullet, it s like the bullet is getting bigger offshore. this slick is the size of delaware. there s no other way to put it. we keep hearing that this deep water drilling itself is almost the cutting edge of man s technological capability. they talk about it as being
over again with revelations that this spill, this flow of crude is more enormous than originally seemed. how did we get here? here s the tick-tock of what s happened. that deep water oil drilling rig exploded about 10:00 central time on the night of april 20th. what followed was an all hands on deck search and rescue mission led by the u.s. coast guard. on april 22nd, the devastated oil rig sank into the gulf of mexico. it was at that point that president obama received an oval office briefing from the top coast guard official. the next day on april 23rd the coast guard called off the search and rescue mission and announced no oil was leaking from the underwater oil well. that was ten days ago. the following day, bp officials acknowledged that in fact oil was leaking from that well at a rate they said of 1,000 barrels per day. in the ensuing days, 1,000 federal, state and private personnel will mobilized in an