PackGen part 3...

Yeah, I know.. I'm in the middle of a "rut" (you have the last 24 hours I have had, and you might have one too..), but I called it (along with a few other people....) when I said that the EPA and Coast Guard and Obama and BP were all playing "CYA" when it came to the quality of their booms...

Guess who was right?

Ian T. Durham [of the Department of Physics and Cooperative Engineering at Saint Anselm College.] was recently hired by Packgen -- the Maine packaging company that manufactured roughly 80,000 feet of boom that the US Coast Guard says failed an initial BP quality control test. Packgen president John Lapoint III has expressed frustration at BP/Coast Guard bureaucracy, insisting that the boom he's making will work well in the Gulf, where boom is desperately needed.

Okay, it implies that Mr. Durham is coming in totally unbiased, with no aspirations either way...

He says Packgen's boom is superior to other boom. Its woven polypropelene is "practically indestructible," he says. "Packgen uses it to make toxic waste disposal containers."

Using woven polypropelene means the Packgen boom isn't "going to twist like the vinyl" boom. "And it's easier to deploy. It's nice and stiff and it floats really nicely."

Durham says he was hired to make sure that the Packgen boom met all of the ASTM standards, which he says it did. He "absolutely" believes the government should buy and deploy it. "I don’t work for Packgen, I have no loyalty to them," he says. "I think it certainly will work" in coastal areas, though he "wouldn't deploy it deepwater."

 Ruroh Shaggy ... Anyone daring to ask the Coast Guard to defend their QA claim now?