(CN) — Fourteen years since the Deepwater Horizon explosion killed 11 crew members and spilled more than 3 million barrels of unrefined oil into the Gulf of Mexico, the region is still dealing with the effects.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the three-month-long spill also killed more than 105,400 sea birds, 7,600 adult and 160,000 juvenile sea turtles, and more than 8.4 billion oysters.
In the weeks and months afterward, as volunteers were still picking up tar balls from the shore, Dauphin Island Mayor Jeff Collier said tourists canceled their vacations, recreational and commercial fishermen stopped fishing and many businesses reliant upon the related revenue shut their doors. Some never reopened.
“If we didn't know before the oil spill that the local economy is tied directly to a healthy environment, we certainly know that now,” Collier said in a phone interview Wednesday.
The companies deemed responsible for the spill — primarily BP, Transocean, Anadarko and Halliburton — eventually reached a $20.8 billion settlement with the government under the Clean Water Act and Oil Pollution Act.
On Wednesday, the trustee council responsible for allocating the restoration portion of the settlement held its ninth annual public meeting, reporting roughly $5.3 billion has been committed to more than 350 related projects.
Chairman Gareth Leonard, whose primary role is Gulf Restoration Coordinator for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, said a total of $8.8 billion was allocated from the settlement to the five Gulf states and federal government for local and region-wide projects, meaning 60% of the settlement has been committed.
“We’ve been working together to restore the natural resources that were damaged,” Leonard said during the meeting. “These include wetlands, fish, birds and other resources that were damaged during the spill. We also focus on restoring recreational opportunities and access to outdoor recreation.”
Alabama received approximately $295 million in the settlement. As of June 2024, it has committed roughly $185 million, or 62% of its allocation, to a total of 43 restoration and recovery projects. On Dauphin Island, that has included more than $8 million for property acquisition, $26 million for beach and dune restoration and at least $11 million for economic development.
The result, Collier said, is an island that is more resilient to natural or man-made damage, while a new habitat has been created and protected. Reports from around the Gulf Wednesday largely echoed that sentiment.
Florida has committed $264 million of its $680 million settlement to restoration projects, primarily to providing and enhancing recreational opportunities. Fifty-nine projects are currently in progress and 14 have been completed, including the deployment of 3,729 artificial fishing reefs.
But just 6% of its $300 million tranche to improve water quality has been allocated, along with just 15% of funds intended for nutrient reduction and monitoring and adaptive management.
Mississippi has committed $216 million of its $295 million settlement, including the acquisition of more than 2,000 acres around the environmentally sensitive Grand Bay and Graveline Bay.
Texas has committed $150 million of its $238 million settlement, including nearly all of its $25 million to protect sea turtles and three-quarters of $30 million set aside for protecting and enhancing the habitat of shorebirds.
On Wednesday, Director of Coastal Fisheries Robin Riechers highlighted the completion of a $3 million project to divert dredged sediment to rebuild a struggling marsh system.
Louisiana, which received the largest settlement among states at $5 billion, has already committed $3.8 billion to restoration projects, including $2.6 billion for the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion Project, the most expensive and perhaps most ambitious settlement-funded project to date.
The federal government, which oversees region-wide projects and projects in the open ocean, has committed $570 million of its combined $1.5 billion. Some of those projects are administered in locations far from the Gulf of Mexico, although they may have the effect of improving the environmental quality of the region.
The settlement funds are allocated in accordance with the trustee’s Final Programmatic Restoration Plan, finalized in 2016. The affected states receive annual payments from the settlement each April and payments are expected to continue through 2031.
Collier said initial aspirations have been hampered by inflation, but he still believes his community is better off than it was before the spill.
“Most of these projects probably would have never happened in the absence of the oil spill,” he said. “It was tragic for any number of reasons, but I think we are much better positioned to withstand and recover than we were. There is still more work to do, but I think I can say we really did a lot of good with these funds that were made available through a disaster that nobody wanted.”
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