President Barack Obama talks with Carol Browner, assistant to the president for energy and climate change, left; and Admiral Thad Allen, right, at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in New Orleans on May 28, 2010. Mr. Obama stopped in New Orleans en route to Grand Isle area to visit the oil damaged area. (April Buffington/NYT Institute)

At Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport the president was greeted by Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the national incident commander in charge of the response efforts.

The president gave a quick wave to the press before removing his jacket under the blazing Louisiana sun and hopping into a helicopter that took him to Grand Isle. There, the president attended a briefing on the status of the spill containment and efforts to stop the flow of oil.

Shortly after the briefing, Obama addressed the press at the U.S. Coast Guard Station in Grand Isle. The president said response teams in areas where oil has already reached the shore will be tripled within 24 hours to assist with the cleanup.

Obama promised to make sure BP pays all claims for economic injury. He also promised to help local governments cut through the red tape that has delayed many from receiving payments for job losses.

“As I’ve said before, BP is the responsible party for this disaster. What that means is, they’re legally responsible for stopping the leak and they’re financially responsible for the enormous damage they’ve created,” said Obama. ”And we’re going to hold them accountable along with any other party responsible for the initial explosion and loss of life on that platform.”

As for the “top kill” procedure that began Wednesday, Obama said it’s still too early to tell whether it will be effective.

“If it is successful, it would obviously be welcome news,” he said. If it is not, “some of the world’s top scientists, engineers and experts,” he said, “has for some time been exploring any and all reasonable contingency plans.”

After highlighting the Small Business Administration’s efforts to increase loan approvals and defer existing loan payments to businesses affected by the spill, the president reaffirmed his commitment to making sure the people of the Gulf Coast are not forgotten.

Obama returned to Louis Armstrong Airport with Carol Browner, assistant to the president for energy and climate change, and Adm. Allen before taking off for Chicago, where he plans to spend the Memorial Day weekend with his family.

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Though President Barack Obama was less than a mile away, most residents of Grand Isle, La., never got to see his face. Some barely got to see his car.

Led by a convoy of more than 20 police motorbikes and flanked by armored cars and trucks, Obama was escorted Friday to a beach in Port Fourchon, La., before riding quickly through the streets of Grand Isle to give a short press conference at the town’s Coast Guard station.

Crowds of Grand Isle residents filtered out of their beachside homes as the commander in chief’s motorcade drove by. They waved and smiled into the car’s black-tinted windows.

The scene directly outside the Coast Guard press briefing was equally crowded. Photographers, reporters and residents camped out on the side of the road perched in the backs of their SUVs, popped the tops off beer bottles, and waved signs at the passing fleet, hoping to send a message to the president himself.
One man even pitched his own invention from the back of his pickup truck — a solvent designed to clean oil.

With acoustic guitars at the ready and “Support Green” pins affixed to their summer clothing, Jo Billups and Karen Harvill came to sing — and they didn’t mind the extra press.

“We want to send a green singing telegram to BP,” Billups said. “We are not the U.S. of BP. We want the government to step in and we want the Gulf restored. We wanted the president to see us. If this isn’t a wakeup call, there won’t be another one.”

Jonathan Henderson, who lives in New Orleans, but traveled to Grand Isle when he heard about the president’s visit, raised a white sign to the sky that read, “Clean up the Gulf,” with black letters drawn like dripping oil.

Earlier on the beach at Port Fourchon, Obama got a look at the impact of the BP oil spill on the shores. The president knelt on the beach and picked up nickel-sized tar balls, some of which could be the direct effect of oil washing up and solidifying.

“So either the boom soaks stuff up or manually you can pick up these tar balls as they’re coming ashore,” Obama said. “But obviously the concern is, is that until we actually stop the flow, we’ve got problems.”

Henderson, an organizer for the Gulf Restoration Network, an environmental activist organization, said he was happy to see Obama become a more active participant in solving the Gulf crisis.

At 2:20 p.m., Obama’s fleet rode out of the station and to a nearby helipad. As Obama’s helicopter flew away, Henderson once again raised his anti-oil sign.

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Gov. Bobby Jindal is pushing for the creation of barrier islands to protect the delicate marshlands from oil creeping towards the Louisiana coast, but environmentalists said Wednesday that they doubt the plan will work.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which would approve the proposal, is reviewing it and is expected to respond within days.

If approved, Jindal’s plan would require both the federal government and BP to cover the estimated $350 million it would cost to dredge the Gulf of Mexico to fill the gaps in the barrier chain.

Jindal, who shunned the spotlight after his disastrous response to President Barack Obama’s address to Congress in February of last year, has drawn national attention by declaring a state of emergency, seeking federal assistance in the cleanup effort and holding almost daily news conferences on the spill.

During a boat tour Wednesday in Plaquemines Parish, whose coastline is threatened by the approaching oil slick, the governor said the spill “fundamentally threatens Louisiana’s way of life.”

“The oil is here, and the time to act is now,” the governor said in a press release Wednesday. “We are asking the Corps to approve our dredging plan without any further delay.”

But environmentalists are questioning the feasibility of the governor’s levee plan, saying dredging could take several months to build the barrier, which would need to be about 300 feet by 6 feet tall, to be effective.

“Seems a little late in the game,” said Mary Lee Orr, executive director of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network. “It doesn’t seem the most thought-out plan.”

BP officials, who have reviewed the plan, said they have identified several outstanding issues that need to be addressed before considering the proposal, including the effectiveness of the measure, the pace of construction and potential opposition from environmental groups that may delay the process. BP would be left in the lurch if it paid millions to build the barrier levees and then faced delays because of lawsuits brought by environmental groups.

“If permits are granted for this project,” asked Tom Mueller, BP spokesman, were officials certain that groups such as Sierra Club or Greenpeace “won’t sue to overturn permits, thus delaying the project for an indeterminate period of time?”

In addition to the buildup of the barrier islands, the governor is proposing other alternatives to contain the spread of the estimated 210,000 gallons of oil flowing into the Gulf each day. His alternatives include flexible tubes called “tiger dams” that are used to keep floodwaters at bay; metal baskets called “HESCO barriers” that have fabric sides and are filled with soil; and freshwater diversions, which is simply an injection of fresh water into the Gulf.

Paul Orr, an activist with the group Lower Mississippi Riverkeeper, called the governor’s plan ambitious and said it would take more than six months to dredge and build the barrier islands.

“It’s a huge engineering undertaking,’’ Orr said. “We’ve got 70,000 miles of coast if you take into account all the nooks and crannies.” He added, ”We appreciate that the governor is trying to think of ways to sum this up, but this doesn’t seem like the best answer that we’ve heard so far.”

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