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"The Deepwater Horizon blowout was a game-changer," Montero said. "It really illustrates the risks that are inherent in deepwater drilling." Feldman asked Rosenblum if it's true that a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing by Hornbeck suggests "basically things are pretty good" for the company and it can survive the moratorium. Rosenblum said the full impact of the shutdown cannot be calculated. "Thousands of businesses will be affected," he said. "These dominoes are falling as we speak." Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's office filed a brief supporting the plaintiffs' suit. A lawyer for the state told Feldman that the federal government did not consult Louisiana officials before imposing the moratorium, in violation of federal law. Catherine Wannamaker, a lawyer for several environmental groups that support the moratorium, said six months is a reasonable time for drilling to be suspended while the government studies the risks and regulations governing the industry. "The risks here are new," she said. Government lawyers said the plaintiffs haven't seen much of the data that served as the basis for the Interior Department's decision to suspend drilling operations. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar "wants to be sure deepwater drilling is as safe as we all thought it was on the day before the incident on April 20," said government lawyer Brian Collins. U.S. District Judge Nancy Atlas in Houston listened to Monday's hearing over the telephone. Atlas is presiding over a similar case against the Interior Department filed by Diamond Offshore Co., which operates a fleet of drilling rigs. Along the coast Monday, some cleanup workers reported progress. On Barataria Bay off the coast of Louisiana, thick globs of oil that washed onto marshy islands a week ago had disappeared, leaving a mass of stained bushes and partly yellowed grasses. Blackened lengths of boom surrounded the islands, which were still teeming with brown pelicans, gulls and other seabirds, some with visible signs of oil on their plumage. Nearby, shrimp boats that have been transformed into skimmers hauled absorbent booms across the water's surface, collecting some of the remaining oil. Crews aboard Navy and Coast Guard boats teamed with local fishermen using booms to funnel oil into a vessel and haul it away. This is the area's new economy -- dependent as ever on the sprawling bay, but now those who made their living harvesting its bounty are focused on its healing. "It looks 10 times better than it did a week ago," said Carey O'Neil, 42, a commercial fisherman idled by the spill who now provides tours of the damaged areas for media and government observers in his 23-foot boat anchored in Grand Isle. "But what impact will this have for the future
-- two, three, four, even 10 years? That's what worries me." The number of oil-soaked birds in the area is down significantly, from 60 or 70 a day at the triage center on Grand Isle to more like seven or eight, said Steve Martarano, a spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "We've been sending 55 boats a day out pretty much since day one, when the oil hit this area, and so we feel like we've really made inroads," he said.
[Associated
Press;
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