On July 28, Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado led a delegation to Louisiana to help with recovery efforts related to the catastrophic BP oil spill. Maldonado, who’s also a member of the California State Lands Commission, met with Louisiana officials to discuss ways to better protect their respective coastlines. “California is a state that is experienced in disaster recovery, where wildfires and earthquakes have taught us to reach out to our neighbors in times of need,” Maldonado said in the release. “I’ve seen firsthand the devastation a moderate oil spill can do to coastal lands, and the Gulf states deserve to have all hands on deck to respond to this crisis.” After taking an aerial tour of coastal response efforts, Maldonado held a meeting with Jim Hutchinson, Louisiana’s secretary for tourism, to brainstorm ways to revitalize Louisiana’s tourism industry. He also co-led a training session with Lin McNamara, a California Conservation Corps’ hazardous waste cleanup expert, for dozens of local volunteers. During the training, Maldonado stated the interstate communication pathways are possibly not being utilized to their fullest capacity and announced that California’s Conservation Corps can offer hundreds of specially trained Corps members to help with cleanup.
This article appears in Aug 5-12, 2010.
