INDReporter

National Guard not fully utilized for oil spill

by Nathan Stubbs

Gulf Coast governors haven't fully utilized a force of 17,500 National Guard troops authorized to assist in combatting the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Gulf Coast governors haven't fully utilized a force of 17,500 National Guard troops authorized to assist in combatting the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. CBS News reports that Louisiana is using only 1,053 of the 6,000 National Guard troops available to the state.

Gov. Bobby Jindal's office has responded to the report with the following statement, sent to the blog site ProPublica:

"We will call up more National Guard troops as the Adjutant General tells us he needs them. Right now our biggest challenge is the broken federal system that takes weeks to approve requests for resources – from vacuum barges, to sand boom projects, to the rocks and barges project in Grand Isle – and then ends up shutting things down even after we finally get them started (vacuum barges last week, dredging operations this week which are still sitting idle after federal shutdown). We spend more time fighting red tape and bureaucracy than we ever should have to if the federal government understood this oil spill as the war that it is. Especially as we get further into hurricane season, we need them to either fix their slow and broken process or just get out of the way so we can continue doing what we need to do to protect our coast and our Louisiana way of life."