After the federal bureaucracy finally got notified by Jake Tapper of an untapped inventory of boom that could be put to good use in the Gulf disaster, the Joint Command insisted that Packgen’s boom didn’t meet its quality standards.  Packgen responded by having an outside analyst inspect its product.  As Jake Tapper reports in his follow-up, it not only meets the standards but is actually superior to its competition:

[Ian] Durham was recently hired by Packgen — the Maine packaging company that manufactured roughly 80,000 feet of boom that the US Coast Guard says failed an initial BP quality control test. Packgen president John Lapoint III has expressed frustration at BP/Coast Guard bureaucracy, insisting that the boom he’s making will work well in the Gulf, where boom is desperately needed.

Durham would not say how much he was paid, but he says he’s generally paid $100 an hour for consulting, and his analysis of Packgen boom took rougly 40-45 hours.

You can read Durham’s report HERE.

He says Packgen’s boom is superior to other boom. Its woven polypropelene is “practically indestructible,” he says. “Packgen uses it to make toxic waste disposal containers.”

Does Durham believe that the government and BP should be acquiring Packgen’s product?  “Absolutely,” Durham tells Tapper.

The excuse prior to this has been that Packgen’s product didn’t meet quality control standards and didn’t come with universal connectors.  Packgen has already agreed to change connectors, even though the boom already being deployed doesn’t have them.  This report demolishes the quality-control argument as well.  These now appear to have been nothing but an excuse to distract people from the fact that the Obama administration’s team knew nothing of Packgen’s inventory despite media coverage of their production in anticipation of the demand in the Gulf.

So what’s the next excuse?  The color clashes with battleship haze gray?

Update: I’m informed by multiple commenters that “battleship gray” is an outdated term, and I’m an old fogey for having used it instead of the current term, “haze gray.”  All I can say is … turn down that radio and get off my damned lawn.  Kids these days …