NO REALLY I READ THIS CORRECTLY 'We're Negotiating How Clean Is Clean' Adm. Thad Allen on oil spill

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, sitting where you are now, in your mind, what are the most important things that still need be to done?

ADMIRAL THAD ALLEN: Well, there is still oil out there, and there's oil in the marshes in and around Louisiana, on the beaches in Mississippi sometimes. And Alabama and Florida still will have some come ashore.

The next step is to completely clean up the beaches and marshes, at least to the extent that we can without harming them. There are some times where are you better off to leave a marsh alone, rather than have mechanical means being brought in there and actually harm the marsh itself. We are actually negotiating how clean is clean with each state and each...

JEFFREY BROWN: How clean is clean is a negotiation?

ADMIRAL THAD ALLEN: That's a euphemism we use at the end of an oil spill to say, is there anything else we can do? And, sometimes, there will still be oil there, but then the agreement is that there can be no more technical means applied to it, and we're all going to agree that this one is done as far as what we can do.

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