And Now, The Beginning

Just the start:

With thick patches of oil tarring coastal Louisiana marshes, a haven for migratory birds and rare wildlife that will be virtually impossible to clean up, local leaders have started to despair.

"Twenty-four miles (nearly 39 kilometers) of Plaquemines Parish is destroyed. Everything in it is dead," Billy Nungesser, head of the parish in southern Louisiana, told US cable news station MSNBC. "There is no life in that marsh. You won't clean it up."

"We've been begging BP to step up to the plate," said Nungesser. He said the slick was "destroying our marsh, inch by inch," and would keep on coming ashore for weeks and months.

And what does Gov. Jindal think?:

But with some 40 miles of shoreline now affected, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said more action must be taken to hold back the black tide.

"This spill fundamentally threatens Louisiana's way of life," Jindal said after inspecting the thick black oil pushing its way into his state's fragile wetlands. "The oil is here and the time to act is now."

No, the time to act was a long time ago, with efforts to make certain that all contingencies in such dangerous activities fully accounted for (like dealing with a catastrophic leak - seven fire hoses, plus - a mile under sea level). It is now - too late.