St. Petersburg, Florida -- The Coast Guard has quietly released a new report. It's an independent review of how the agency handled last year's oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
There was no press conference and no fanfare surrounding its release. Why? The short answer: It's critical of the Coast Guard in several key areas.
DOCUMENT: Read the Coast Guard ISPR report
Responding to the BP oil spill was not expected to be easy, and the report makes that point.
The spill was unprecedented, leading the Coast Guard to create procedures on the fly. Plus, the Coast Guard had to work with more than a dozen other agencies, plus a private company -- BP -- through months of intensive effort.
Still, the report found several areas where the Coast Guard dropped the ball in coordinating the response and in getting ready ahead of time.
The report, called an "Incident Specific Preparedness Review," came from a panel of eleven different experts. Their key concerns:
- A lack of planning and stockpiling from the agency whose motto means "Always Prepared." In particular, the report finds the Coast Guard didn't work enough in advance with local folks to predict future problems and spot environmentally sensitive areas.
- Not turning to scientific experts for help on figuring out how much oil was really flowing or the effects of pumping dispersants into the Gulf.
- And, the issue that may be the most concerning: the Coast Guard doesn't consistently learn its lessons from disasters and practice drills.
The report also says the Coast Guard dramatically overestimated the amount of oil that could be picked up by ships skimming the surface. In the end, only 3 or 4 percent of the oil was scooped up that way, despite an armada of boats.
There were some key positives in the report.
The decision to burn oil slicks on the surface -- far out at sea -- was very effective. That process, called "in situ burning," was done a total of more than 400 times.
Plus, the report found that BP and the Coast Guard did cooperate and work well together. However, there was no sign the Coast Guard backed down from confronting BP or let up on its responsibility to look out for the public's best interest.
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Grayson Kamm, 10 News