La. Pols: BP Can't Handle Slick, Let's Take Over

As oil threatens more bays and wetlands in Louisiana, including the state's most fertile fisheries, Louisiana lawmakers have ramped up calls for BP to hand over cleanup efforts to the government. “We’re relying on a private company that seems to be overwhelmed,” a state rep. complained. “We need to handle this like a hurricane, with the governor’s office in Baton Rouge in charge.”

BP is currently in charge of both stopping the gushing offshore oil well and supplying coastal towns with containment materials such as booms, which are in increasingly short supply. "We have some boom out and we’re waiting for more. We have to wait on BP," one local official tells the Christian Science Monitor. “The US government and the state need to step in and takeover from BP,” says an official in Jefferson Parish, where workers are scrambling to protect inland waters. (More British Petroleum stories.)