Political Quotes

“Thank you, Madam President. The tragedy, of course, started there with those 11 lives lost and we must never forget that, including as we redouble our efforts to ensure safety in those sorts of drilling environments in the future. Of course, the second big impact was on the environment, particularly the gulf environment where I live, in Louisiana--4.9 million barrels of oil were discharged during the spill. That was about 50,000 barrels a day, every day for 3 months; 320 miles of Louisiana coastline were oiled. That was a little over half of the total coastline on the gulf that was oiled--600 miles. Over 86,000 square miles of waters were closed to fishing; about 36 percent of Federal waters in the gulf were closed. We did that on a very aggressive, proactive basis to make sure we avoided any contaminated seafood ever reaching a store shelf, ever reaching a restaurant. The good news is we accomplished that. Through that proactive closing, not a single piece of contaminated seafood ever reached a store shelf or ever reached a restaurant customer. That was quite an accomplishment. Lots of dead animals were collected--6,800; 6,100 birds and also other sea turtles and dolphins. It was the biggest ever in American history, a huge environmental disaster. Two years later, as we pause and look at the environmental effect of that, frankly, there is good news and bad news--or at least good news and continuing challenges.…”