they said they could handle an exxon valdez size spill every day. they couldn't. bp said the spill was 1,000 barrels per day. it wasn't, and they knew it. in preparation for this hearing, the committee reviewed the oil spill safety response plans for all of the companies here today. what we found was that these 5 companies have response plans that are virtually identical. the plans site identical response capabilities and tout identical ineffective equipment. >> over one million dollars will be awarded to the teams that prove that theirir cleanup systm could meet the competition's strictest requirements. >> our first p prize, the winnnn schmidt oil cleanup x challenge was s a response, essentiaiallyo something wewe all remember, the deepwater horizon oil spill in the gulf of mexico. in 2010-- i certainly remember, i'm sure a lot ofof folks do--this was ongoing every day, oil spilling into the gulf, the havoc it was wreaking on wetlands and other critical ecosystems of the gulf coast, you know, from texas all the way to florida. and the sort or feeling of helplessn

about a third of the size of the other spill, so i guess you could say instead of being 30 times exxon valdez, it was only 10 times. but it created a lot of damage, it created a wave going downstream that was 30 feet high. can you imagine how much material is required to create a wave, a flash flood of coal slurry 30 feet high? this didn't just happen away from human civilization. this wave of coal slurry killed 125 people. this wave of coal, toxic coal slurry, hit and injured over 1,000 more people, 1,121 more people. it left 4,000 people homeless, wiping out their homes, their towns. well, that's the type of damage that can occur. so why not have a rule that has looked at how these ponds are created and said, here's the standard so that the pond is not overloaded or overtopped or the wall does not collapse and cause a tidalwave that will kill more than 100 people or injure more than 1,000 or leave 4,000 people homeless? having a standard is just the logical thing to do. then every -- and then it is a help to the companies because then they know exactly what they need to do to make that pond