Louisiana Wants U.S. Help, and Its Own Way - NYTimes.com

Louisiana Wants U.S. Help, and Its Own Way

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Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana at a cleanup effort in Barataria Bay. “We’re not letting the bureaucracy stop us,” Mr. Jindal says. More Photos »

NEW ORLEANS — For weeks, Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana has attacked BP and the Coast Guard for not having adequate plans and resources to battle the oil spill.

Charlie Riedel/Associated Press

CRITICAL STANCE Gov. Bobby Jindal talking to the media in front of a brown pelican mired in oil on the beach at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast. More Photos »

But interviews with more than two dozen state and federal officials and experts suggest that Louisiana, from the earliest days of the spill in the Gulf of Mexico, has often disregarded its own plans and experts in favor of large-scale proposals that many say would probably have had limited effectiveness and could havLouisiana Wants U.S. Help, and Its Own Way - NYTimes.com