Two years ago, BP found its place in the environmental villains’ hall of fame with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Now, the Associate Press reports, environmental groups are calling for the company to buy tens of thousands of acres of land along the cost for conservation and otherwise help rebuild the area’s shattered ecosystems.
BP remains in litigation over the spill but will probably have to pay billions of dollars under the Oil Pollution Act, with government agencies determining how the money must be spent.
The new report by a coalition of six environmental and social equity groups offers recommendations for 39 specific projects, some with price tags of $100 million or more, in five states affected by the spill. The groups — Environmental Defense Fund, National Audubon Society, National Wildlife Federation, The Nature Conservancy, Ocean Conservancy and Oxfam America — want BP to rebuild coastal wetlands, reefs and other buffer zones and protect large swaths of land for conservation purposes.
The single largest line item proposed in the report is $378 million for the restoration of Louisiana’s Barataria basin, including new dunes, marsh and oyster reefs and the filling of oil canals.
BP must reach an agreement with the government or face trial in January. The company already reached a multi-billion-dollar settlement with private parties affected by the spill.
The AP calculates that, if BP were to pay the same amount per barrel of oil spilled as Exxon did for the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, it would come to about $31 billion, adjusted for inflation. But experts say the company will probably pay significantly less. It’s arguing that the effects of the spill were partly mitigated by warm waters in the Gulf and other factors, and that the area was less pristine than Alaska’s Prince William Sound, where the Exxon spill occurred. Environmentalists and government lawyers counter that the Gulf is home to a richer and more diverse array of wildlife.
Main photo credit: Deepwaterhorizonresponse/Flickr