Have an idea for the Gulf oil spill? Click here for white paper submissions to the Coast Guard for ideas for the oil spill. Click here for rules for submission.

Phone numbers for people needing to report information on the oil spill.

• Emergency Volunteers - 1-866-448-5816
• If you have a boat that can be used - 1-425-745-8017
• To report oiled birds - 1-866-557-1401
• Spill related damages - 1-800-440-0858
• For St. Bernard residents looking to have questions answered: 504-277-4911

JP leaders have started their own training program for those who want to help protect the coast from the oil. The courses start Monday. You need to pre-register with the following numbers:

Grand Isle - 985-787-3196

Jean Lafitte - 504-689-2208

Westwego - 504-341-3424

The Louisiana Workforce Commission (LWC) has begun taking applications for Advanced Industrial Services/GCPG Services International, which is hiring 500 people for clean up related to the Gulf oil spill.

Applications will be taken on Saturday, May 1, from 9:30 a.m. - 3 p.m. at JOB1 Business and Career Solutions Center, 2330 Canal Street in New Orleans.

For more information on Saturday, applicants can call the Canal Street center directly at 504-658-4500

Credit: AP

Gwen Ward joins other demonstrators outside a BP station in Pensacola, Fla., Sunday, June 6, 2010. Oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster has started washing ashore on the Alabama and Florida coast beaches. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)

WASHINGTON -- The leaking oil that has tainted the Gulf of Mexico is also threatening the political shores on both sides of the Atlantic, with a British company the villain.

President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron planned to discuss the environmental catastrophe over the telephone on Saturday, hoping to ease what has become a growing rift over the criticism of the well's owner, BP PLC.

Obama has sharpened his criticism of BP as the company struggles to halt the gushing oil at the bottom of the Gulf. Cameron is under pressure at home to get Obama to tone it down amid complaints that the heated rhetoric will have severe implications the company and its investors.

The State Department has said American anger over BP's handling of the disaster wouldn't affect the relationship between the U.S. and Britain.

Obama has he would have fired BP's top executive if he were in charge. He embraced the idea that the oil company suspend its quarterly dividend. He reproached BP for spending money on a public relations campaign. This past week, he said in a television interview, "I don't sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar; we talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers -- so I know whose ass to kick."

He occasionally refers to "British Petroleum," although the company years ago began using only its initials and is a far-reaching international corporation with extensive holdings in the United States, including a Texas refinery and a share of the Alaska oil pipeline.

The angry words from Washington have produced a backlash in Britain, where BP is viewed as a corporate pillars. Millions of British retirees depend on BP dividends since pension funds are heavily invested in the oil company, the world's third-largest.

Cameron has tried to find a middle ground. He has said he shares with Americans the "frustration" about not being able to halt the spill and concern about the environmental damage caused by the thousands of barrels of oil gushing from the BP well. But Cameron also views BP "as an economically important company" not only in
the United Kingdom but also the United States and other countries, according to his office.

"It is in everyone's interests that BP continues to be a financially strong and stable company," Cameron has said.

British Treasury chief George Osborne, after meeting with BP executives, said Friday that his government understands U.S. concerns, but that Cameron "is also clear that we need constructive solutions and that we remember the economic value BP brings to people in Britain and America."

BP's stock has dropped by 40 percent since the oil rig fire on April 20 that unleashed the country's worst oil spill. But stocks have rebounded somewhat in recent days. BP shares rose $1.19, or 3.6 percent, to close at $33.97 in New York on Friday.

The company's board is expected to meet Monday to discuss deferring its second-quarter dividend and putting the money into escrow until the company's liabilities from the spill are known.

BP's chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, who has faced criticism for not being more visible in BP's response to the Gulf spill, is to meet with Obama at the White House on Wednesday. Probably joining him will be accompanied by CEO Tony Hayward and other BP executives. It will be the first time Obama has met with BP officials since the crisis began.

Hayward will testify at a House hearing on Thursday.

------
Associated Press writer Bob Barr in London contributed to this report.

(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

Gulf Coast residents outraged by BP's CEO vacation

VENICE, La. (AP) - Just when it seemed Gulf residents couldn't get any more outraged about the massive oil spill fouling their coastline, word came Saturday that BP's CEO was taking time off to attend a glitzy yacht race in England.

Tony Hayward's latest public relations gaffe didn't sit well with people in the U.S. who have seen their livelihoods ruined by the massive two-month oil spill.

"Man, that ain't right. None of us can even go out fishing, and he's at the yacht races," said Bobby Pitre, 33, who runs a tattoo shop in Larose, La. "I wish we could get a day off from the oil, too."

As social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook lit up with anger, BP spokespeople rushed to defend Hayward, who has drawn withering criticism as the public face of his company's halting efforts to stop the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

Robert Wine, a BP spokesman at the company's Houston headquarters, said it's the first break Hayward has had since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded April 20, killing 11 workers and setting off the undersea gusher.

"He's spending a few hours with his family at a weekend," Wine said Saturday. "I'm sure that everyone would understand that."

Not Mike Strohmeyer, who owns the Lighthouse Lodge in Venice, on Louisiana's southern tip, who said Hayward was "just numb."

"I don't think he has any feelings," he said. "If I was in his position, I think I'd be in a more responsible place. I think he should be with someone out trying to plug the leak."

Wine said Hayward is known to be keenly interested in the annual race around the Isle of Wight, one of the world's largest. It attracts more than 1,700 boats and 16,000 sailors as famous yachtsmen compete with wealthy amateurs in the 50-nautical mile course around the island.

Hayward was watching his 52-foot (16-meter) yacht "Bob," made by the Annapolis, Md.-based boatbuilder Farr Yacht Design. It has a list price of nearly $700,000.

The outing is one of a series of missteps by Hayward in recent weeks. He suggested to the Times of London that Americans were particularly likely to file bogus claims over the spill, then later told residents of Louisiana that no one wanted to resolve the crisis as badly as he did because "I'd like my life back."

Even the British press, much more sympathetic to the company's plight, has expressed disbelief at its media strategy.

"It is hard to recall a more catastrophically mishandled public relations response to a crisis than the one we are witnessing," the Daily Telegraph's Jeremy Warner wrote Friday.

That was before news about the yacht race broke but after the chief executive made his appearance before a U.S. House investigations panel in which he dodged question after question, claiming he was out of the loop on decisions surrounding the well that blew when the Deepwater Horizon exploded.

President Barack Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, called Hayward's decision to attend the yacht race a public relations fiasco and told ABC's "This Week," that Hayward had "got his life back."

"I think we can all conclude that Tony Hayward is not going to have a second career in PR consulting," he said in an interview taped Saturday.

Obama has also struggled to counter criticism of how his administration has handled the disaster. Up to 120 million gallons of oil has already gushed into the Gulf.

Crude has been washing up from Louisiana to Florida, killing birds and fish, coating delicate marshes and wetlands and covering pristine beaches with tar balls.

A pair of relief wells that won't be done until August is the best bet to stop the massive spill. By late June, BP hopes a newly expanded containment system can keep nearly 90 percent of the flow from the broken pipe from hitting the ocean.

But the buzz Saturday on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook was all about Hayward's yacht outing, with many noting that Gulf residents want their lives back too.

It was not clear whether Hayward took part in the race, which he attended with son, or was just a spectator. His boat finished fourth in its class. It often costs tens of thousands of dollar(pounds) to equip a yacht for a race as competitive as the Isle of Wight.

Meanwhile, environmentalists and local officials along the Gulf were infuriated by Hayward's weekend plans.

"I'm glad Mr. Hayward is on a yacht, because he certainly hasn't been helping us," said Robert Craft, the mayor of Gulf Shores, Ala. Officials on the Alabama coast estimate tourism is down about 50 percent because of the spill.

Questions remained about whether Hayward is still in charge of the cleanup effort. BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg seemed to suggest Friday that he was being withdrawn from the front line of the response.

"It is clear that Tony has made remarks that have upset people," Svanberg told Sky News television, adding that Hayward was "now handing over" daily operations to BP Managing Director Bob Dudley.

But BP spokeswoman Sheila Williams said Svanberg was misunderstood and that only a transition to Dudley, an American with 30 years in the oil business, had begun.

"Hayward is very much in charge until we've stopped the leak," she told the AP on Saturday.

BP, Britain's largest company before the oil rig exploded, has lost about 45 percent of its value since then - a drop has alarmed millions of British retirees whose pension funds hold BP stock.

Just this week, BP announced that it was canceling its quarterly dividend.

(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

Concerns mount about destination of oil-spill waste

HOUMA — Clarice Friloux knows what it's like to have oil in her backyard. She's lived near oilfield waste pits, or “cells” as the industry calls them, since the 1980s, when an oil-treatment yard moved into Grand Bois.

Now she sees the entire coast facing a similar future.

“I'm just hoping they're aware of what's coming,” said Friloux, 44, who led her community's fight against the nearby U.S. Liquids on the Bourg-Larose Highway. “I wouldn't wish this on anyone.”

Fortunately for Grand Bois residents, the facility is not receiving any oily water or waste from the spill, according to BP's waste-management plan, U.S. Liquids executives and several spill officials.

But the oilfield waste has to go somewhere. And Friloux and other residents and chemists are concerned about how the sludge, rags and oily boom are handled and whether they will cause health problems like those Grand Bois residents have claimed.

Existing landfills and oil-treatment facilities across the Gulf Coast are taking in collected oil from BP's yet-to-be-plugged well. The leak, which followed the April 20 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion that killed 11 rig workers, spewed millions of gallons of oil into Gulf waters.

Collection totals are being reported to the top federal environmental agency, but BP cleanup officials would not release that information this week. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has not released that information either, said Wilma Subra, a New Iberia chemist and environmental activist.

But some data about specific landfills has been made public. For instance, as of Wednesday, Colonial Landfill in Sorrento had received 1,910 tons of solid waste, Tidewater Landfill in Venice had nearly 780 tons and River Birch Landfill in Avondale had accumulated 28 tons. That equals more than 5 million pounds of waste to those three landfills alone.

Leonard Crame, BP's waste-management group leader at the Houma command center, said no hazardous material has been collected.

What regulators consider hazardous, however, has been scrutinized by residents and environmental activities for years.

“Just because it came from oil-and-gas production doesn't mean it's not hazardous,” Friloux said.

DISPERSANTS IN THE WASTE

One of Subra's concerns, she said, is whether treatment facilities and landfills are prepared to properly treat oily booms and wastewaters. The disposal sites, for instance, may not have a water-discharge permit that includes monitoring for the specific chemicals in the Corexit-brand dispersants used to break down the oil slicks at sea.

“Any of this oil, whether it's been on the surface, whether skimmed or picked up on booms, will have potential to have dispersants and crude oil,” Subra said.

The dispersants, Corexit 9527 and 9500, have never been applied in such large quantities and company officials admitted this week that they lack scientific testing at the depths now being used.

The oil companies know what is in Corexit, said Mike Bushman, spokesman for the dispersant manufacturer, earlier this week.

“It's primarily soaps, and it degrades relatively rapidly,” Bushman said, adding that Corexit begins to breakdown within four days and is almost entirely degraded within a month.

RECLAIMING OIL

BP-contracted companies and cleanup workers are recovering as much oil as possible to be reused and recycled, Coast Guard and state officials have said.

“It's in their best interest to reclaim it and use it as product because disposal options are very expensive,” said Sam Phillips, solid-waste permits administrator at the state Department of Environmental Quality.

Oil that can be reused, mainly the crude skimmed and collected near the spill site, is going to refineries and facilities that take exploration and production wastes, according to the Houma command center's waste-management plan. These sites are APEX Environmental in Theodore, Ala.; United Environmental Services in Baytown, Texas; PSC Industrial Outsourcing in Jeanerette; Aaron Oil in Saraland, Ala.; and BP's Texas City refinery, site of the 2005 explosion that killed 15 workers and injured more than 150 others.

THE EVOLVING PLAN

A waste-management plan was put together shortly after the April 20 explosion, by state and federal officials and oil-spill responders.

“We had the same concerns: what's going to happen when this hits,” Phillips said.

The latest waste-management plan, updated earlier this week, shows more landfills and treatment facilities on the list to receive waste than in the May version.

Solid wastes, such as tar balls, oily soil, rags and gloves, are going to five landfills, all in Louisiana: Colonial in Sorrento, Jefferson Davis Parish Landfill in Welch, River Birch in Avondale, Tidewater in Venice and Waste Management in Westwego. The solid wastes also include absorbent and hard boom, which has had oil removed to the greatest extent possible. Waste Management's Pecan Grove Landfill in Pass Christian, Miss., is listed as “pending,” meaning it has not yet received any spill-related waste. Dead wildlife is being shipped to landfills in Venice, Sorrento and Welch, the plan says.

These landfills, Phillips said, are “by far the safest way to handle the material.” They have double liners, a collection system to catch leaking oil and groundwater monitoring.

While the Louisiana's Department of Environmental Quality is overseeing waste taken to landfills, the state Department of Natural Resources is overseeing how liquid wastes are handled.

Oily wash-water, a byproduct of cleaning booms and other equipment, is going to New Park Environmental's transfer facilities in Fourchon, Venice and Morgan City, with others pending approval, according to the plan.

New Park's barges are taking their wastewater to Port Arthur, Texas, where it's offloaded and sent to injection wells in that state, said Patrick Courreges, Department of Natural Resources spokesman. According to the company's website, it owns a 50-acre injection-well facility in Big Hill and a 400-acre site near Fannett, Texas, the primary facility for disposing of exploration and production waste.

PSC Industrial Outsourcing in Jeanerette is also receiving oily liquids, he said.

Contractors hired by BP to clean up the oil, namely Heritage Environmental Services, are separating waste into appropriate containers at staging areas, Phillips said. DEQ is monitoring that process.

“It is the responsibility of the generator, in this case BP and contractors, to characterize the waste,” Phillips said.

Heritage's office staff said the company has no-comment policy “for the duration of this project.” A representative did confirm the firm is under contract with BP.

Even though agencies are overseeing the disposal, Jonathan Foret, a 33-year-old Bourg resident and grant writer, said he's still concerned the spill's legacy will be a high concentration of oily waste in landfills and treatment facilities.

“I want all these people to have the big picture to make informed judgements that will protect us,” Foret said of lawmkers and others. “The disposal of this stuff should be a priority.”

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