The Current BP Oil Settlement is Unacceptable
Kudos to Jeff Dute for proposing a better idea!
The current BP oil settlement is unacceptable | AL.com
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By Jeff Dute,former Outdoors Editor of the Mobile Press-Register and al.com, who has covered outdoors, conservation and environmental issues in southwest Alabama for more than 20 years. He provided daily on-the-water coverage of the 2010 BP oil spill. Done the right way, thinking outside the box and with an eye to the future, there is no reason Alabama's share of the BP oil spill settlement cannot be the foundation of a legacy of unparalleled job creation, land acquisition and environmental protection.
As the settlement now stands, it will accomplish neither.
The reason many of us live in southwest Alabama is because of our love of the water.
That's why the specter of the 2010 BP oil spill that severed that connection for three months that summer and threatened to do so for much longer still reside deep in our collective psyche.
The water and woods are why 35 years ago I decided to make my home here.
Across that three-plus decades, my obsession with these wild waters and places has matured from how much I can take from their bounty to what can I do to ensure that bounty continues to thrive long after I'm gone.
I believe it is obvious to many others besides myself that Alabama has a rare opportunity to do just that with a better plan to use money awarded it through the state's share of the BP oil spill settlement.
As it stands, Alabama's roughly $2 billion settlement is split with $600 million slated to be paid over 15 years for environmental restoration and $1 billion heading to Montgomery over 18 years to compensate for economic losses incurred as the oil spill effectively wiped out the 2010 summer tourist season on the coast.
The payments are scheduled to begin in 2016 if the judge overseeing the settlement signs the final decree later this year or early next year.
It would be criminal to simply think of this money as if it were funding some governmental department
A public comment period runs through Dec. 4.
That means we have about a month to convince Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley and Attorney General Luther Strange that the current settlement is unacceptable.
Alabama should create a non-governmental trust fund or endowment and place all of the money into whichever account can be guaranteed to earn the highest interest rate.
Since the oil spill showed how Alabama's economy as a whole is directly tied to the coast's continued aesthetic beauty and healthy natural resources and habitats, I believe 75 percent of the interest earned should be designated for land purchases primarily and secondarily, environmental protection projects that secure the future of this new public land.
Since it drains, two-thirds of the state, land purchases and environmental protection projects throughout the Mobile Bay watershed should be a primary focus of uses for the new money source.
We have to do more to protect the edges throughout the watershed, including the smaller streams upstate where urban, agricultural and coal-mining runoff are threats to rare and endangered mussels and fish and marshes down here that are at risk of being turned under by the bulldozer.
Instead of recreating the wheel, the state's existing Forever Wild program would oversee these funds. Forever Wild already has a management structure in place, statewide support and has proven to be one of the state's best-run and most successful programs ever.
Over the past 20 years, managers have leveraged Forever Wild's share of interest off the state's oil and gas trust fund to get matching federal grants that have allowed it to buy more than 230,000 acres of public land from willing sellers across the state.
The vast majority of the land encompasses critical, unique and even rare habitats across the state now accessible to the public and a state can never, ever have "too much" public land.
On the economic development side, perhaps the state would follow the Florida model and create a board of trustees, charged with giving priority to projects and programs that will increase household income, expand high-growth industries, leverage regional assets and partner with tourist development councils and chambers of commerce.
The board should encourage the use of the newest best-management practices to ensure any project compliments the environments in which it is being built. By so doing, Alabama could quickly prove that economic development and environmental protection are not mutually exclusive.
It would be criminal to simply think of this money as if it were funding some governmental department where it's put into an account and we just start spending it down to $0.
What then? Do we wait for the next oil spill?
We have to be smarter than that.
To comment on Alabama's proposed BP oil spill comment, go toNOAA Gulf Spill Restoration.
What say you?
