Environmentalists link oil spill response, coastal restoration

[ProSense]

Environmentalists link oil spill response, coastal restoration

Mark Schleifstein, The Times-Picayune

Speed the reconstruction of Louisiana's coastal wetlands by tapping offshore oil revenue and dedicating a significant share of any penalties levied against BP, a group of influential national and local environmental groups urged Navy Secretary and Gulf Coast oil spill recovery leader Ray Mabus in a letter published today in advertisements in The Times-Picayune, the Advocate of Baton Rouge, Washington-based Roll Call magazine, and the online publication Politico.

"We applaud the President for giving you the restoration mandate and ask you to move with the urgency our battered coast demands," said the advertisement, sponsored by America's Wetland Foundation and published in cooperation with the National Wildlife Federation, Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, Environmental Defense Fund, the Nature Conservancy, National Audubon Society and Ducks Unlimited.

"Americans care," said the ad. "They know the world is watching and that history is recording this moment of opportunity or lost promise."

<...>

The advertisement urges Mabus, a former governor of Mississippi, to support six steps aimed at speeding Louisiana's coastal restoration efforts:

• Accelerating the payment of a greater share of federal revenue from Outer Continental Shelf oil and gas leases to Louisiana and other Gulf states. The existing revenue-sharing law would provide about $200 million a year to Louisiana in 2017.
  
• Arranging immediate financing for new freshwater and sediment diversion and barrier island reconstruction projects already authorized by Congress.
  
• Establishing a dedicated long-term funding stream sufficient for Louisiana's long-term coastal restoration plan. The ad does not say where that money would come from.
  
• Ensuring a significant percentage of penalty payments resulting from the BP oil spill are dedicated to coastal restoration "as reparations for the contamination of thousands of acres of coastal marsh that cannot be cleaned up."
  
• Cutting red tape to speed payment of existing federal appropriations for restoration projects, including more than $1 billion owed coastal states under the federal Coastal Impact Assistance Program.
  
• Creating a federal-state authority to oversee coastal restoration efforts that has the ability to act quickly enough to stave off further wetlands loss.

The organizations backing the ad all have been major players in Louisiana's coastal restoration efforts. America's WETLAND Foundation was created with state backing in 2002 to raise awareness nationally about the state's wetlands problems.

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There is also a new federal site RestoretheGulf.gov.

[ProSense]

1. Some one actually unrec'd this?

People are unrec'ing posts about advocacy for environmental, civil rights and other progressive policies? Seriously?

[kestrel91316]

2. The resident undercover RWers do it all the time.

[ProSense]

3. When it was Obama's Katrina, the interest in the Gulf was frenzy like.

Now, not so much.

[vaberella]

4. I rec'd this but it didn't help. I was watcing the Coast Guard updates---this is great stuff. n/t