We are on the Coast with our first of two visits for North Mississippi legislators for an orientation tour of the BP Deepwater Oil Spill.

I am not going to do a series of posts like last time, unless there is something radically different.

But, a meeting today was both different and emotionally draining for some of the people telling us their stories.

We met first to receive a briefing from the Department of Marine Resources, Department of Environmental Quality, Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, the Mississippi National Guard, the Coast Guard and BP.

BP gave us a status report on its current efforts to temporarily cap the well on an operations and what the company is doing in the community, including the Mental Health issue (more about that in a minute).  The two presenters were genuine in their desires to "make it right."  But, I believe (and later others in a second meeting said the same thing), these good people have a heavy bureaucracy on top of them known as the corporate structure.

At our second meeting, we met at Gulf Coast Community College.  Attending were two restaurateurs of very popular establishments, a manager of a new luxury hotel, an owner of a seafood processing plant, and a charter boat captain who is also the president of a Charter Boat Association.

The stories were told were absolutely heart-wrenching.

A restaurateur began to weep as he told how the uncertainties surrounding the BP

Deepwater Spill. 

"I have 30 employees," he said, "all of whom have families."

“We're doing ok right now, but with seafood prices close to tripling, I don't know how much longer I will be able to hold prices to our customers."

He noted that while all the seafood from the Gulf is testing free of any chemicals and odors, customers are still asking if the food is still good.  Fresh oysters are gone and he said for the first time he is using frozen oysters from the Carolinas and they (vendors from NC) are tripling their prices for seafood.

He noted that he and his wife were planning to buy a new home for their growing family, but have put it off until they make a decision in the coming months to either close or move their restaurant.

"We're doing what we can with the menu to respond to the rising prices at the wholesale level, but we don't know how long we can continue doing this.”

The owner of the seafood processing plant (oysters) shut her doors in mid-June, laying off 300 people.  Oysters are the most sensitive of the common sea creatures.

They stay in one place their entire lives and now that the reefs which millions were spent on after Katrina have closed, they don't think the oyster population will come back anytime soon.

She noted that in an attempt to move the oil away from Louisiana, control gates were opened to allow more freshwater to change the current in the Gulf.  That freshwater is killing off the Louisiana waters, and incidentally moving some of the oil sheen towards Mississippi....for every solution, I have found through this, there is an unintended problem.

The charter boat captain began to weep as he said, "We don't want a check for doing nothing.  We want to work." 

He spoke of how owners of pleasure boats came in from as far away as Jackson to get "certified" as a charter boat captain to make money off of BP as a skimmer.  We have worked to weed those people out, but when they got hired, it prevented one of our captains from working.

I can't write anymore.  This place is a quagmire of bureaucracy...people are truly trying to help, they really are, but from what many of us on the trip have gathered, there's just too many agencies to call, submit paperwork to, get trained by or go by and see.  People are confused.

BP has 45,000 people working on this in four states.  On the ground, BP working very hard to make it right (and that was recognized by the people appearing before us) and recognizes that this is THEIR PROBLEM. 

Perhaps the bureaucracy can't be helped.  The government has just appointed someone to streamline the process, but even that has brought in a new layer.

A lot has been learned from this, I hope.  Not the least of which is if this country is ever attacked, we have learned much about organization, reaching deep into the community, and responding to issues scattered all over the spectrum of human, community, a environmental needs.

As to the Mental Health issues, one of the restaurateurs put it this way,

"We are just now recovering from Katrina.  It was an event that required clean up and rebuilding.  This spill is a process. 

“We have no earthly idea when it will end, how long BP will keep paying out, how much longer our Coast businesses can survive and whether or not some people will be able to make next month's bills.”

AND, each one of them said that calling this the "Gulf Coast Oil Spill" is ruining the Coast and will for the foreseeable future impact the way people view the Coast.  This should be referred to as the "BP Deepwater Oil Spill" to remove the negative attachment to the Coast, they told us.

That's it.  Unless there's something different, this will be the last post this week on this topic.  People are working hard to correct a myriad of issues, but if you are a Coast person, these times are frustrating, uncertain and wear on the human spirit.