Kevin Costner Pitches $895M Oil Spill Plan

Actor Kevin Costner testified before a congressional panel Wednesday pitching a multi-million dollar response plan he wants the federal government to adopt for massive oil spills in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in Gulf of Mexico.

(Scroll down to watch a clip of Costner's testimony)
Special Section: Disaster in the Gulf

Costner's plan would create a fleet of about 200 specialized ships that would be deployed to a spill within hours to collect oil rather than recruit the thousands of multipurpose boats as BP did for the Gulf spill.

"Our choices are clear," Costner told members of a House committee Wednesday. "We can choose to enlist a fleet of 6,000 vessels that are hampered by their lack of training and preparedness or we can create a dedicated fleet of 190 state-of-the-art vessels."

The $895 million plan would be run through a company Costner created, Blue Planet Solutions, The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune reported. Blue Planet would implement the plan with equipment developed by Costner's firm Ocean Therapy Solutions, the newspaper reported.

For its cleanup effort, BP ordered 32 centrifuge devices made by Ocean Therapy Solutions. Costner had invested about $24 million in the project. The company says the largest of the devices can process about 210,000 gallons a day, separating gunk from water.

Deployed on barges, the centrifuges are intended to help skimmers work more efficiently by letting them unload the oil and water mix and cleaning it at sea instead of returning to port each time the tank is full.

Costner told The Times-Picayune his plan includes collapsible boats that could be driven to beaches near a spill and deployed to extract oil as it reaches the water's surface. Large barges with the capacity to store thousands of barrels of oil would then follow the boats.

The actor said his plan would cut the use of dispersant chemicals, absorbent materials and burning oil on the water to prevent it from washing ashore.

"America deserves a no-nonsense approach to spills that are certain to happen now and into the future," Costner said on Capitol Hill.

Costner told the Times-Picayune that 48 vessels could be ready by next January with the rest of the preparation completed by the beginning of 2012.

[stn_sage]

There are plenty of people with better ideas, plans, and inventions, that, unfortunately Congress WON'T listen to, because they're not celebrities or 'insiders', whom Congress would rather associate with!

Besides being ineffective, Congress has become a bunch of 'elitest snobs'!

[thesevenveils]

Nice proposal.

Knowing that a genuine fast response to offshore oil drilling catastrophes will be an important to having their proposals for new wells, a conglomerate of oil companies are looking to create a nonprofit company similar to the one Costner is proposing.

[ObjectiveThinker]

I applaud Costner's concern - but he appears to have an agenda. I hope congress doesn't have yet another "knee jerk" reaction to an isolated problem, causing them to waste more of our money on initiatives that have little value. Spend the $890M on something else, please. Better yet, don't spend it at all.

[kansas1946]

There is nothing wrong with an "agenda." No one does much with out one. Why in God's name would you say that this solution has little value? Do you know what this oil spill cost this country in money, ruined lives, and destroyed businesses. What he is saying makes perfect sense, is a relatively low cost solution for what can be huge disasters. And even in your response, you can hear that you think he is a stinkin' liberal and therefore can't have any good ideas or solutions.

[porcine_aviator]

The whole oil spill would have been prevented if the incompetent idiots in the Coast Guard wouldn't have made the knee-jerk reaction to put the platform fire out.

The minute I saw the images of those fireboats I knew we were in trouble. Sure enough, by day 3 they had sunk the platform and the biggest oil spill in human history began.

Let platform fires burn themselves out! They should have just started their bottom kill operation 1/2 mile away; 3 months later the fire goes out once the well is killed, and you don't spill a drop of oil.

So a special thank you to Thad Allen and all the other incompetent bozos in the Coast Guard, Interior Department, and the EPA. Yes, BP is a worthless, incompetent company, but you made their problem a region-wide catastrophe. Next time, DON'T SEND FIRE BOATS UNLESS THE WELL IS ALREADY KILLED!!!!!

[us_1776]

The platform sunk because all the ballast tank stabilization pumps failed due to the fire burning out the generators. All the water from the fireboats just runs off the platform it doesn't get into the ballast tanks.




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[us_1776]

At least someone is thinking about what we need to do if a big spill happens.

The oil industry certainly had no clue.

Thanks Kevin. I hope they give your company a contract for these ships.





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[us_1776]

As I said earlier, chucky, you're the one without the clue.

The Kostners are very much skilled in environmental cleanup technology.




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