A fresh new voice!

Last Oil Spill Visit

By John Mayo (D., DeSoto County)

Mississippi House of Representatives

August 12, 2010

Mark Duvall of Itawamba County (and my committee vice-chairman) and I took the last group of legislators down to the Coast on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  He and I will probably go down again.  The legislators were all from North Mississippi.

We learned as much about what is going to happen in the future as we have in the last couple of visits before the well is tapped.

Attached is a picture of one of the 19 skimmers ordered for Mississippi.  We will probably take possession of nine as the rest have yet to be built out.  DEQ will operate them and I anticipate they might locate a few on the Mississippi River.

I would like to put together a tourist group for the fall to visit the Coast.  Two busloads of people from St. Louis came down to spend money on the Coast. 

If anyone is interested in going either on a bus or in your own car, let me know.  The trip on the Pascagoula River is worth more than the price of a ticket, and I believe we can charter a fishing boat to go dolphin viewing, to Ship Island and eat at some really very, very good restaurants.  Let me know if you might be interested.

We need to thank our committee assistant, Tammy Cowart, who put all of these trips together for us. She coordinated varied meeting places, local coast citizens, several state agencies, accommodations, arranged for eating places, kept track of phone numbers, found lost Representatives and arrived everywhere before we showed up.  I do not know what committee assistants are paid, but they earn their keep and more.

Here's a story that I wrote about the trip.

I think ‘uncertainty’ is how I could best describe the feeling on the Gulf Coast. Our group was led by Rep. Mark Duvall of Itawamba County and vice-chairman of the

Conservation and Water Resources Committee. 

“The Coast accounts for one-third of all the tourism dollars taken in by the state,” said Duvall, “and the impact on this as well as next year’s budget is going to be significant.”

We attended briefings by the Department of Marine Resources, Department of Environmental Quality, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, and the Mississippi National Guard.  Perhaps the most significant findings came from those people most impacted by the spill---the charter boat captains, restaurateurs, seafood processors and hotel managers. 

New to these meetings were people who put together fishing tournaments and tourism events.

They are worried that after nearly 100 days of free flowing oil into the Gulf, BP is going to pack up and leave as fast as it can.  There’s an uncertainty out there of just what the future will look like for many of the Mom-and-Pop businesses on the coast, especially those that depend on the summer tourist trade to get them through the winter months.

Many of these businesses have seen their revenues literally drop to zero and wonder where they are going to get the money to take them over the winter months, and start again next year.

Many of the seafood related businesses just began recovering last year from Hurricane Katrina and expected this year to be a banner one, only to have the shrimping, oyster and sport fishing season give way to the closures of the Gulf due

to the oil spill, vessels of opportunity used to clean oil sheen, and a loss of chartering business.

On the seafood part, I purchased 10 pounds of the largest, best-looking shrimp I could find from a seafood processor...$5.99 a pound, head on...Can't wait for the weekend to fire up the grill.

Where we make a living off the land in north Mississippi,   Coast residents and businesses depend on the fortunes of the sea for their livelihoods.  We heard from people who put together fishing tournaments, for example, who had to cancel them because federal waters are closed and although unaffected, canceled the backbay ones, too, because of the perception caused by the spill.

They saw those tournaments go to Florida and Texas.  One long time tournament, for example, went to Ft. Pierce, Florida, where organizers signed a three-year contract with that resort. 

In fact ALL of the tournaments both deep water and brackish and freshwater in the back bays were cancelled.

Not only was the tournament lost, but Gulf Coast hotels, restaurants, bait and ice shops, grocery stores, gas stations and the like also lost out.  While BP is paying claims for loss of business this year, these kinds of losses are future losses for the next three years and that creates an additional uncertainty as to whether or not BP will cover those losses from that single tournament.

BP expressed many times to us that they are committed to the long haul even though the well is capped and should be permanently sealed in the next couple of days. But residents are unsure just how long they will continue to absorb claims.

Besides the briefings, we went once again to Mobile to tour the Unified Incident Command Center which has been the heart of the operation for more than 100 days.  And, the group also took a boat tour of perhaps the most pristine river in the country The Pascagoula River where gulf sea life spawn and grow before returning to the sea.

There is no doubt a learning curve when an incident such as an oil spill occurs and this one was long.  But, kinks have been worked out and, God forbid, there is another incident of this magnitude in the Gulf or even an earthquake in north Mississippi, there is some comfort in knowing there are smart people in and out of government who can come together quickly to begin alleviating suffering brought on by the disaster.

While BP is paying for those current losses, there is growing uncertainty how those losses will impact  the state’s budget and the budget hearings that begin the first week of September.  We’re not sure just how the loss of tourism tax dollars is going to be made up in the budget for FY 2012.

Will BP make this up?  How are we going to treat the money that BP is paying in claims to Gulf Coast businesses?  How far into the future will we be impacted by this spill?

It’s going to take a while for tourism to return to normal levels on the coast, and just how long will it take for people to begin buying Gulf Coast seafood again?  We’ve lost a lot, and I mean a lot of seafood business to North Carolina and Texas that we may not get back for a while.

The oil has stopped flowing; people are collectively relieved; but, for many and certainly for the state a lot of problems have to be answered.  The Gulf Coast supplies a third of the tourism dollars to the state and almost half of the nation’s seafood supply. 

If I have learned anything on this trip, it is that this is just not a Gulf Coast problem, but one that will impact the state and the nation as well.

Unlike Katrina, which came and went and you rebuilt, this disaster and its impact will linger for years to come.