Here’s another story, in the Wall Street Journal, documenting the chaos of the response to the spill (the New York Times had one the other day). Again, I cut everyone involved some slack in responding to such an overwhelming event, but the operation at the shoreline has been about as well run as you’d expect of something involving tangled lines of authority and multiple layers of bureaucracy:

On May 19, almost a month after BP PLC’s Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, the White House tallied its response to the resulting oil spill. Twenty thousand people had been mobilized to protect the shore and wildlife. More than 1.38 million feet of containment boom had been set to trap oil. And 655,000 gallons of petroleum-dispersing chemicals had been injected into the Gulf of Mexico.
That same day, as oil came ashore on Louisiana’s Gulf coast, thousands of feet of boom sat on a dock in Terrebonne Parish, waiting for BP contractors to install it. Two more days would pass before it was laid offshore.
The federal government sprang into action early following the vast BP oil spill. But along the beaches and inlets of the Gulf, signs abound that the response has faltered.
A Wall Street Journal examination of the government response, based on federal documents and interviews with White House, Coast Guard, state and local officials, reveals that confusion over what to do delayed some decision-making. There were disagreements among federal agencies and between national, state and local officials.