cleanup job or eight hundred twenty five million dollars this spill is ten times larger than the exxon valdez spill in alaska and is believed to be america's largest environmental disaster to date with throwing away the next generation's most valuable resource and that is water and one of the best sources of water anywhere in the world and maybe the best source of fresh water and proximity to one of the world's largest fastest growing populations. you know with all the and all the lawsuits and all the carrying on that goes on in the in the press and you know the vanity fair's in u.s. news and world reports and all at that where the authors are warning people to believe that that we're absolutely script in appalachia down to nothing. in order to get the mineral is patently untrue it's patently untrue when you look around at the forest in elton's that we have a recent environmental impact statement from the e.p.a. estimates over eight hundred square miles of mountains have already been destroyed this includes the permanent destruction of over four hundred fifty individual mountain summits acros

if you have the exxon valdez, you have regulatory response with a vengeance that cannot possibly be described a and how they calamitous failure could affect policy-making has been a major inspiration to rethink those projections but alas, there is a shadow the possibility seen one way and use the threat to of intervention on the part of the ftc in the form of legislation and all of those have aspired to adjustments and their taking place relatively quickly. are not one place goes by with a significant step with promising consequences being taken precaution policy makers go ahead? one approach is light handed mandatory requirements but a period of time how we sought industry inspired development take place. here is the dilemma. you are contemplating changes, i do believe the promises of the regulators that if you act we will be satisfied? or is that something like what you see in academia a process in which you never altman they satisfy the referee? they what more you never come up with what they want? with the consequence the desired destination turns out to be a mirage. you grow through the

. >>> and today marks the 22nd anniversary of the exxon "valdez" disaster. in 1989 the supertanker struck a reef off alaska's coast, spilling 11 million gallons of oil, the worst u.s. oil spill, until last year's bp disaster. >>> all day long, you can stay on top of the very latest in those developments and other stories as they break on msnbc. and tonight be sure to watch brian williams with nbc "nightly news." >>> and, finally, here's a look at what's coming up later this morning on the "today" show. "today" takes you to the front lines of the war in libya as explosions rock that country's capital for a fifth day. >>> and actor bradley cooper is live on the plaza to talk about his new hit film "limitless" and what it's like working with robert de niro. >>> now keep it on this channel for continuing local news, weather, sports and more. i'm lynn berry. thanks for watching "early today," just your first stop of the day, today on your nbc station.

nine million gallons of taking over fifty miles of a major river system a spill bigger than the exxon valdez we took six samples the occurrence that happened in kentucky. was simply one where you had one built over old. underground ones and they gave way in the bottom and that's what happened the structure itself to. go county west virginia within sight of massey energy c.e.o. don blankenship home carmelita brown has been battling for clean want to see. twenty some years ago. and water turned black and black straight and asked are the harness green men enough has been got up and asked and asked me what was wrong take a man and he said when he looked at it he said my god he said that's close laurie. we went and looked at fifteen wells. said the samples off to the laboratory got the testing results back and did some analysis on those results and it was pretty compelling that we needed to do more research down there i've never seen water quality that poor. are pretty good compared to what it was this morning these documents from the west virginia department of natural resources researched by mo

recovery rates for the deepwater horizon spill were 3% and somewhere between 8 and 9% for the exxon valdezill. shell's plan even fails to consider a potential uncontrolled blowout under their worst case scenario despite what happened in the gulf, and there are many more examples like these. so i'm just hoping that given this information and all we've learned we should even -- whether or not we should even allow shell and drilling in the arctic on the basis of this set of circumstances. but at the very least, shouldn't the company be required to develop a new oil spill response and be prepared to deal with this in a much more reasonable, much more effective and rational way? >> thanks for asking the question. the arctic is, obviously, one of the most significant set of issues that we have to deal with. it's a frontier area, as people describe it. it contains various kinds of challenges because of the temperatures, because of the ice, because of the relative absence of infrastructure, because coast guard is not right there. they are unique. we were working with shell to understand the plan t

because prince william sound -- exxon valdez, that was a advance taition accident. that hit something causing it to break. i say, if you do away with drilling in america, that means we have to transports it into foreign countries and the likelihood of it happening again is far greater. i hate to say this also, but when we had the spill in the gulf not too long ago, a lot of people said, we're going to stop all drilling in deepwater drilling in the gulf. well, we have tremendous reserves down there in the gulf and while the moratorium was lifted, the administration is only -- has only issued one deepwater drilling permit since that happened. now what i'm saying is we've got all these reserves out there and we can do it and i'm talking about gas and oil and -- and coal. the -- it's not just the -- the oil and gas but we have another opportunity out there if you use the next chart up, i think that's the one i'm looking for here. that's coal. all right. we talked about oil. we talked about gas. now, in oil, if we just export our own resources, that that we know is there

i was up there -- exxon valdez. i was up there. we will use this to stop any drilling in an war. i said, wait a minute -- that was a transportation accident. you have to transport more in the incident could increase as a result. then a lot of people were thinking they would do that and it worked. there was a moratorium for a time. the pressure was on and they took the moratorium off. they have only issued two deep water permits since then. we have a real crisis now. we have four things that have to be part of any mixed along with renewals. i want all of the above, oil, gas, coal, and nuclear. we have this machine called america. generally, do the two of you agree with the statements made by secretary steven chu concerning the safety of our planet? >> we work every day with bill and his staff to make sure that nuclear power plants are safe and they continue to be secured. we do intend, as we go forward, to look at the events from japan and see if there are things we can learn that would inform and possibly improve the way we go about doing our work. >> so you agree with secretary

offshore mechanical containment were 3% and somewhere between eight and 9% for the exxon valdez spill. the plan even fails to consider the potential uncontrolled blowout under the worst-case scenario despite what happened in the gulf and there are many more examples. so given this information and all we've learned whether or not we should even allow shell and drilling on the arctic on the basis of this set of circumstances. but at the very least, should the company be required to develop a new oil spill response and be prepared to deal with this in a much more reasonable, effective and rational way? >> thanks for asking the question. the arctic is obviously one of the most significant set of issues we have to deal with. it's a frontier area as people describe it contains various kinds of challenges because of the temperatures, because of the ice, the relative absence of the infrastructure, because the coast guard isn't right there they are unique. we were working with shell to understand the plan they submitted for 2011 for just the beaufort and that time it was just to drill one expl

recovery rates for the deepwater horizon speed were 3%, and somewhere between eight and 9% for the exxon valdezill. shell's plan even fails to consider a potential uncontrolled blowout under their worst-case scenario despite what happened in the gulf and there are many more examples like these. so i am just hoping that, given this information and all we have learned, we should even, whether or not we should even allow shell drilling in the arctic on the basis of the set of circumstances but at the very least, shouldn't should the company be required to develop a new oil spill response and be prepared to deal with this in a much more reasonable, much more effective than rational way? >> thanks for asking the question. the arctic is obviously one of the most significant set of issues that we have to deal with it is a frontier area as people describe it and it contains various kinds of challenges because of the temperatures, because of the ice, because of the relative absence of infrastructure, because coast guard is not right there. they are unique. we were working with shell to understand the pl