Intersting read over at oildrum.com bit more complicated than just a single pipe.

My thoughts on engineering mentality these days is: TOO MUCH ARROGANCE!!

We take too much for granted in regards to disaster planning!!
And for marine ecology, we probably will not see the worst of it for one, two or three years from now. The delay has to do with killing off of the juvenile shrimp, clam, fish... They would be maturing in one to three years from now.

Words can't express my anger over the absolute arrogance of those in charge. No safety backup plan!! Complete disregard to methodology.

I just hope that they can shut it down before it spews out 100million gallons of crude. Gulf of Mexico is big but its not big enough on localized scale to deal with the volume of crude.

We all live on the Gulf Coast.
Component of the solvent being used by BP is highly volatile and its toxicity was listed as 2.4PPM (number I heard). Geeze, with the hurricane, the evaporated solvent could ride on the hurricane and make it in-land by several hundred miles. And how many gallons of this stuff have they sprayed on the ocean??

Maybe I just look at "worst" case senerios too much*.

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* Can't help it cause that is the way I think when it comes to design/engineering work.