Let me tell you what I saw and heard on the Gulf Coast this week. I spent a week down in the New Orleans area, made a few stops along the way as well. I talked to other Environmental folks like myself, and some unlike myself. I spoke with fishermen, and just plain people. We ate at the local owned restaurants and talked to those people as well. I was surprised at what I heard there, versus what I am seeing here.
Before I go any further, I am not taking up for BP. If in the end it is proven that something they or someone else did caused or lead to this disaster in the Gulf, then those people need to have their butt nailed to the wall, and nailed hard. However, there are a lot of things going on down there that you have no idea about. Things that had I not heard and seen for myself, I wouldn’t know about today either. NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, MSNBC, CNN – no one is telling of the things I saw. They are busy haggling about who did what, whose fault it is, Govt this and Govt that.
BP has set up claims centers all across the Gulf Coast, even the areas that have yet to see the oil. You can go to any of these centers to make a claim. Now you have to be able to substantiate your claim, meaning you better have the paperwork to back up the fact that you want $100,000 from BP for last month’s losses. That’s right, a month at a time. In addition to that, they will give you a portion up front, right then until they can verify the rest by doing an accounting of your paperwork. The point here is that they are putting money in people’s hands quickly, and working out the details of the rest later once it’s verified. At the same time, they are making sure that the people who truly have a loss get that compensation. So you do have to do a little more than just say “Hey, I lost $10,000 last month and you owe me”. You do have to prove it.
Every morning on one of the largest Talk Radio stations, BP is there for two hours taking calls and talked to people about how to make claims, what they can claim, where to go, when to go and so on. If someone calls in and has had trouble, they go to work on not only fixing that problem, but then also making sure that there are mechanisms in place to make sure that others do not experience what that person did.
BP is hiring fishermen, their boats and their crews as fast as they can, and training them. This fleet you will hear about in the coming days/weeks as the locals that are getting involved to help in the clean up. Each one that we had the chance to talk to will be making slightly more than they would if fishing. In most cases they are out of the fishing business because of closed waters. However, and this is a down side, in some cases people are leaving fishing to do this work.
Restaurants are open for business, seafood is available, and yes there are even Oysters available. Although, I stayed clear of the little slimy piles of goo myself, but the group with me had their fair share for sure. Now in a few months, the locals are going to go nuts down there because the ‘local’ Oysters are going to run out. There are Oysters in other parts of the world, there are even shrimp in other parts of the world, but the locals are big on their stuff, and it’s their stuff that they are accustomed to eating. Not the Blue Point Oysters. For now though, there are waiting lines everywhere to get in to eat and the prices are not skyrocketing.
Most importantly, you don’t hear about the three Environmental Professors that were in the area making the circuit talking on TV and radio about the spill. One was from LSU, one from Texas, and one from the east coast so two of these guys know oil for sure. I learned something from them and that is how resilient Mother Nature is. Even as bad as this is, they all agreed on one thing – it’s not going to take decades to recover from this. Years, yes, decades no. However they all stressed that all efforts at this time should be on two things, stopping the leak and capturing oil. Not holding hearings on who is at fault and not arguing about what regulations should be in play.
After All I heard and saw down there I came to a few conclusions. Is this release of oil bad? Absolutely and it’s the worst in the history of the world. Can it be fixed? Sure, but it will take time. Are people being affected? No doubt, but at the same time that the world is dealing with the largest release of oil, BP is now dealing with the largest coordination of payouts as well. We live in an instant world and a world where we say “How dare they mess up what we have”? No one got upset about the second largest of oil released, even though it did make it to our shores, because it was in some other Country, not our problem. (No, it wasn’t the Valdez)
We see the pictures, we hear the news, we may even know people affected and we get all of this at a moment’s noticed. What is not being seen are the people being taken care of financially, the locals saying “I don’t want a handout, I want to work for my money even if it means trolling for oil”, or the lines to get in the business’ in the area to spend money with them. Americans are tough, times are even tougher, but I bet we come out on top. There will be lots of sad stories, but you must know that at the same time, there are currently and will be to come, happy ones as well. When it’s all said and done, let’s get the people responsible for this and hold them accountable, for now, let’s do something to help.
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