Conflict of Interest Worries Raised in Spill Tests--All pollution tests must be done by BP lab

[Robbien]

Local environmental officials throughout the Gulf Coast are feverishly collecting water, sediment and marine animal tissue samples that will be used in the coming months to help track pollution levels resulting from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake, since those readings will be used by the federal government and courts to establish liability claims against BP. But the laboratory that officials have chosen to process virtually all of the samples is part of an oil and gas services company in Texas that counts oil firms, including BP, among its biggest clients.

Some people are questioning the independence of the Texas lab. Taylor Kirschenfeld, an environmental official for Escambia County, Fla., rebuffed instructions from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to send water samples to the lab, which is based at TDI-Brooks International in College Station, Tex. He opted instead to get a waiver so he could send his county’s samples to a local laboratory that is licensed to do the same tests.

Mr. Kirschenfeld said he was also troubled by another rule. Local animal rescue workers have volunteered to help treat birds affected by the slick and to collect data that would also be used to help calculate penalties for the spill. But federal officials have told the volunteers that the work must be done by a company hired by BP.

“Everywhere you look, if you look, you start seeing these conflicts of interest in how this disaster is getting handled,” Mr. Kirschenfeld said. “I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but there is just too much overlap between these people.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/science/earth/21conflict.html?hp


Per article: Douglas Zimmer, a spokesman for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, said . . .“I also just don’t believe that BP or their contractor would have any incentive to skew the data,” he said. “Even if they did, there are too many federal, state and local eyes keeping watch on them.”

. . .

and the article says : Collaboration between industry and regulators extends to how information about the spill is disseminated by a public affairs operation called the Joint Information Center. A center run by Shell and BP.

. . .

So those tar balls showing up on Florida's shores which BP vehemently states is not theirs, its not their's because their BP controlled lab says its not.

[Hawkowl]

1. Goddamn it

When is Obama and Holder man up and simply send some federal marshals down to arrest some BP executives?

[amborin]

2. NOAA directs test to oil industry lab, whose clients include BP