Gulf States Draw Down National Guard Troops
By Brian Mastroianni and Emily Rand
With the Deepwater leak now plugged, a CBS News review finds gulf state governments are cutting back on the number of National Guardsmen deployed to clean the spill.
In June, Louisiana had 1,053 troops deployed -- a number that now stands at 1,030.
Alabama had 432 troops deployed to help with the spill clean up in June, while today 226 are deployed. In Florida, the number of troops has remained about the same: 90 troops are deployed, down from 97 in June.
The sharpest decline is in Mississippi, where officials announced on Tuesday plans to reduce the number of troops deployed by 75 percent to just 50, down from the current 230 by Aug. 20.
"With two weeks of no oil sighting, the time has come to right-size the force," Col. Lee Smithson said in a press release.
The View from Over the Oil Spill Site
As we reported in June, nearly two months after the Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal requested -- and the Department of Defense approved -- the use of 6,000 Louisiana National Guard troops, only 1,053 had actually been deployed to fight the oil.
The Louisiana governor had been particularly vocal about needing more Federal resources to combat the spill in his state, despite having used only a small fraction of the National Guard troops made available.
Ashley Hogans contributed to this report