Hey Gov. Jindal: Now Would Be A Good Time To Ask Forgiveness

Remember those sand berms our "experts" like Sarah Palin said just had to be built to protect the Louisiana coastline from the BP oil disaster, while the real experts said they'd cause more harm than good? Remember Jindal leading the Conservative Chorus in portraying the president as a dithering wonk who did nothing to protect Louisiana’s coastline because some fancy-pants geeks with a bunch of alphabet soup behind their names said sand berms would be a waste of money?

Remember this:

Gov.Jindal:to avoid ravished coast, build the berms.Ask forgiveness later;Feds are slow to act,local leadership&action can do more for coast

Good times! Well, turns out the real experts were right, and Jindal wasted over $200 million:

Louisiana Rethinks Its Sand Berms

In a story in late October, I reported on the continuing effort by Louisiana to build sand berms in the Gulf of Mexico to block and capture oil from the BP spill. Back in June, BP ponied up $360 million for the berms, of which roughly $140 million was left.

Federal officials and scientists I interviewed called the construction of additional berms pointless because little surface oil remained in the gulf and urged that the remaining money be spent on coastal restoration, a move that BP said it would support.

At the time, however, Louisiana officials insisted they were committed to spending the remaining money on more oil-blocking berms.

Several weeks later, Louisiana has changed its tune considerably. On Monday, Bobby Jindal, the state’s governor, announced that $100 million of the remaining berm money would be redirected toward coastal restoration, a move endorsed by BP.

This is what happens when the mainstream media presents the politically-motivated opinions of partisans as "the other viewpoint" in a scientific, fact-based debate. This is what happens when the Conservative Chorus outshouts the reasonable people with alphabet soup behind their names. Thanks, guys.

So, once again the reasonable people were proved right and the people who have been wrong about everything since forever are still wrong. I know, y'all are shocked. After wasting a few months (and $200 million) doing shit that didn’t work but made for some good headlines, we learn this:

Like other scientists, though, he considers the berms a failure in their original role as oil-blocking structures and a colossal waste of money. According to state estimates, the berms have captured just 1,000 barrels of oil so far, at a cost of $220 million. By way of comparison, Mr. Bahr pointed out, the recently opened Hoover Dam Bypass, a four-lane highway bridge that soars 840 feet above the Colorado River, cost $240 million.

“That’s an awesome structure that’s going to be around beyond the end of petroleum, and here we’ve spent $220 million and got virtually nothing to show for it,” he said. “It just seems appalling to me.”

Yup, it’s appalling alright.