Remarks During a Discussion With Community Members in Gulfport

[The President's remarks were joined in progress.]

The President. ----the problem is, most of this stuff had been tested with a much smaller amount of oil. And so the amounts of dispersants, for example, were much lower. We really have never seen up to a million----

Participant. Gallons

The President. ----gallons of dispersant put out there. And so we already provided some waivers, because our attitude was, given the toxicity, given how toxic the oil was already--it's a matter of the lesser of two evils--it was better to go ahead and put that out. And we tested it for safety, and the EPA has been involved in that.

But the point I made earlier is the one that I think we have to focus on, and that is that the technologies generally, whether it's dispersants, boom, skimming devices, they really haven't developed much over the last 30, 40 years. We're using the same stuff--the industry is using the same stuff that the industry was using 40 years ago. And we've got to--part of the review that we're doing involves making sure that whether it's private industry or a public-private partnership that people start developing better mechanisms to respond to this kind of disastrous situation

But for the press pool, I just want to thank the business owners as well as the mayor and the Governor and first lady for talking to Thad and myself.

As you can see, this is a spectacular beach. You've got Missy, who's got a wonderful inn, the Edgewater Inn, and George [Scott]*, he's got a terrific restaurant--what's the name of the restaurant?

Scott Weinberg. The Blow Fly Inn.

The President. And Missy was mentioning she has already seen a 40-percent drop in her occupancy since this crisis occurred, partly because of cancellations of large groups that were planning to stay there.

It just gives you a sense--and those folks who were going to stay at Missy's would have been eating at George's [Scott's],* so it gives you a sense of the kind of potential economic impact that a crisis like this can have on individual business owners. And obviously, they've got to make payroll, and they've got employees, and it trickles down and has an impact on them as well.

So we are going to be working with business owners like this, with Governors and mayors to make sure that they are made whole as a consequence of this crisis. But we also want to make sure that we are in this for the long haul. And the full effects of this may not be known immediately. They may not be known 3 months from now and may not be fully known for another 6 months or a year. And we just want to make sure we've got structure in place so that people like Missy and George [Scott]* are adequately dealt with. That's going to be a top topic of mine when I meet with the BP officials on Wednesday. And so I just want to say how much I appreciate them sharing their stories.

All right? Thank you, everybody.