randi kaye goes up close. reporter: when louisiana s health secretary sent this letter to bx p last week requesting $10 until in funding for mental health, he expected a speedy answer. days at most. this is what he received last week. if you noticed, in the last sentence, we need an answer by next week. reporter: that deadline has come and gone. no answer from bp. bp responded to the first request saying, it, quote, looked forward to continuing the dialogue. but the oil giant provided nothing. the money, if it ever comes, would be used to treat those experiencing emotional trauma since the spill. fishermen like lewis lund jr. who can no longer fish to support his family because of the oil. his wife says he s full of rage. he wants to go on a rampage, screaming, punching, hitting whatever he can do. he can t. he just can t get it out. it s stuck in there, bubbling.
been from the people doing the cleanup? you can t tell here. you have to dig a long time to find hints about it. if you want to know how many birds have been killed. you can find a nice feature about pelicans that they caught and cleaned up and set free, but you cannot get a direct answer to that question. what if you re worried about the odors along the coast down there, what if they make you sick? again, it s hard to find a definitive information out here that will help you make judgments about that. over and over again, what you see plenty of is the white house talking point, that you keep saying that the white house has responded competently and early to all of this. they re doing a great job all along. that s the message they re enforcing. in that way, it seems like the bp commercials we ve been watching. replacing the lost income of fishermen and others until spill is cleaned up. our claims line is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
we appealed to the state and others about. we understand that. we re going to do our utmost to make sure they are familiar with what s going on here. reporter: holden said there s a liner underneath my entire site, he said it s under my feet. he said the liner is supposed to contain everything that s dumped here in the landfill and protected from any leaks. he says the ground water and the air is monitored. and if anything goes wrong, they would know it. the epa told us bp, along with the epa, are also sampling the landfills regularly to make sure they are safe. the agency also said it directed bp to keep its waste disposal operations, quote, fully transparent. bp must post information about the disposal of all collected waste on their website along with any community complaints. connie rocco is first in line. if it s not hazardous, why would someone be out with tyvex suits and suits and that sort of thing taking it to the landfill. coming up, gauging the spill. scientists say
it s crooked. there s a worry about how stable this is. this could fall over. you could have an uncontained spill altogether. what if you can t get this to fit the hard time the first time. then where are you. just as importantly in all of that, look at this while you re trying to do this, you have a big storm system brewing in from the sides. if that happens, all collection has to cut loose, all of the ships have to go away. you wind one the well just emptying out here for days, maybe for weeks, as long as it takes to get back to the well. sanjay? good weather here, tom. i don t know if you can see behind us, but the first break in the weather for sometime. i think that s why the admiral was optimistic. keeping tabs on that. new picture of the oil disaster. this time from beneath the waves, suiting up in special hazmat suits. lion and rich brooks braved the contaminated water at a spot once popular with divers.
judgemy buffett is one of the most successful singer-song writers in the country raised along the gulf coast. like a lot of people, he has plenty to say about this massive spill. anderson caught up with buffett for the big 360 interview. take a look. one of the things we try to get across every night is that, you know, most of the beaches of florida are open. the gulf is open for business. it is true. there s an overreaction. and people that i knew i was on tour at the time i was up in the mid west. people were going, well, the impressions were, there was a dark sledgy beach in the entire gulf of mexico. it w a dark oil pit. and that was the perception. and then business started dropping off tremendously. even in new orleans, people can t have hotel reservations which is crazy. we re kind of afraidy cat society these days. it s sad because people are it s spontaneous.