Crude gushing into the Gulf of Mexico and washing ashore in Louisiana is exposing how ill-prepared theAir Max 95 U.S. has been to respond to a major offshore oil spill. In the fight to limit environmental damage from the month-old spill—which is on track to rival the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in size—BP PLC executives, government officials, and scientists are learning as they go, even though the industry has been drilling in the Gulf for decades and has 77 rigs operating there, according to ODS-Petrodata, a research firm. The Environmental Protection Agency says it is still assessing the ecological effect of the 600,000 gallons of chemicals that BP has sprayed into the Gulf to break up the oil so far. As of Sunday, the agency and BP were locked in a standoff over whether to continue using the same chemical dispersant. Some scientists researching the spill don't have the right instruments to Air Max 93measure the spill or to study its impact. Maps that federal officials are using to identify priority areas to protect from spreading oil are outdated. And the Coast Guard says the country lacks enough plastic piping, or "boom," to keep the incoming oil away from the coast. "The national system did not contemplate you would have toAir Max 97 do all that at once," Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen told a Senate committee last week, referring to laying boom across a coastline as big as the Gulf's. Sunday, on CNN's "State of the Nation," Mr. Allen likened the effort toAir Max 04 address the Gulf oil spill to fighting a multifront war, as officials work to respond to oil coming ashore in southern Louisiana, tar balls in Alabama and Mississippi and the still-leaking well. He said BP had the means to cap the spill and that "our responsibility is to conduct proper oversight to make sure they do that." But BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward told his staff, in anAir Max 03 email Friday, that he was frustrated by the company's failure to stop the leak and warned an attempt to do so as early as Tuesday could fail. Mr. Hayward said that BP's plan to cap the well using heavy drilling fluids, a process known as "top kill," would be "another first for this technology at these water depths and so, we cannot take its success for granted." And a BP spokesman said Sunday that the amount of oil BP now is siphoning from the leak has declined to 1,360 barrels a day, compared with 5,000 barrels BP said it had been collecting last week, as more of the oil evades the insertion pipe. The White House insists it is doing everything possible toAir Max 1 fight the spill, which began with an explosion April 20 on the Deepwater Horizon rig as it was drilling a subsea well for BP. On CBS's "Face the Nation" Sunday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs dismissed media critics who have said the spill would become the Obama administration's Katrina, the hurricane that devastated New Orleans in 2005. In the case of Katrina, Mr. Gibbs said, the federal government didn't response in the beginning. With the BP incident, "we were there immediately. We have been there ever since," he said. Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar said at a news conference inAir Max 96 Houston Sunday that the U.S. would "push BP out of the way" if it didn't stop the leak and adequately clean up. Mr. Salazar and Secretary of Air Max 180 TR+Homeland Security Janet Napolitano will visit Louisiana on Monday to inspect the response to the BP oil spill. Yet, signs that the spill is overwhelming the U.S. environmental infrastructure can be seen in the dispute between BP and the EPA over the chemicals BP is using to break up the oil slick. BP has been spraying unprecedented quantities ofAir Max 180+ Corexit 9500, which the EPA approved for use on oil spills although EPA tests show it is more toxic to certain sea life than some other dispersants the agency has also approved. BP has been spraying the chemicals on the Gulf's surface and in smaller amounts directly at the well on the sea floor, a tactic never before tried at these depths and approved on May 15. Then, last Thursday, amid mounting questions in the media and on Capitol Hill, the EPA changed course. It told BP to switch to less-toxic dispersants by Sunday night. But, according to a letter from BP that the EPA released over the weekend, the oil company wants to keep using Corexit. BP says alternatives raise other environmental questions and are not available in sufficient volume for this spill. The EPA said Sunday that it would "continue toAir Max Wright review and discuss the science" through the Sunday-night deadline and then decide what to do. Some scientists fault the federal government for not having investigated dispersants more fully earlier. Knowledge of dispersants' environmental effect is limited because the government "had virtually no money to put into that research," Nancy Kinner, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of New Hampshire, said at a congressional hearing last week. Although thousands of people are working to fight the spill, basic questions about its environmental impact remain. One is how much oil is spewing into the gulf. Scientists' estimates vary widely—from some 5,000 barrels a day to more than 50,000 barrels a day. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief, Jane Lubchenco, said last week that efforts to measure the leak have been delayed in part because they would require sending more robots to the ocean floor. That would increase the chance that the robots might impede eachother's work and lead to an accident, she said. Federal officials say 16 robots already are working in the vicinity of the leaking well to try to plug it.A government team spent the weekend crunching reams of existing data—from video footage and pressure readings to overhead imagery—to try to come up with a more accurate estimate by early this week. Equally unclear is how the leaking oil is affecting undersea life. Earlier this month, a research vessel sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration produced water samples from the Gulf that researchers said suggested oil was collecting in a plume deep below the water's surface. But scientists analyzing the samples say they are of limited value because they were taken with equipment not designed for oil. The researchers on the ship took the samples using bottles designed to test for substances that dissolve in water—but oil doesn't, said Edward Overton, an emeritus professor of environmental sciences at Louisiana State University who is analyzing some of the samples. The oil stuck to many of the research bottles, he said, potentially skewing lab results."This is not a very satisfactory way to do it," Mr. Overton said of the water-sampling method. "Unfortunately, it's all that we've got out there right now."Air Max 360 Nike Air Max 90 Nike Air Max 95 Nike Air Max 97 Kobe Bryant Shoes