Spill Commission's Second Meeting Set for Aug. 25
The second meeting of the seven-member National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling has been set to begin at 9 a.m. Aug. 25 in Washington, D.C., and this will be where the panel gets down to business. The Energy Department's Federal Register notice said the meeting will "inform the Commission members about the relevant facts and circumstances concerning the root causes of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster" and will include an hour of public comments from 3:45 to 4:45 p.m. EDT.
The notice says the meeting will be broadcast live at the commission's website, www.OilSpillCommission.gov. An agenda will be posted there, as well. This meeting will take place at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW (phone 202-312-1300.
The commission's co-chairs are former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham of Florida and William K. Reilly, who was EPA administrator from 1989 to 1993 and president of the World Wildlife Fund from 1985 to 1989. Reilly is a founding partner of Aqua International Partners, LP, a private equity fund dedicated to investing in companies engaged in water and renewable energy, according to biographical information posted on the commission's site.
The American Association of Poison Control Centers said as of 4 a.m. Friday, Aug. 6, poison centers had received 1,068 exposure calls involving someone who reportedly had been exposed to a toxin related to the oil spill. The state with the highest number of such calls was Alabama, with 266, followed by Louisiana (257), Mississippi (236), and Florida (225), AAPCC said.