Florida to Get $3.25 Billion in BP Settlement
Posted July 03, 2015 06:59 am | Public News Service
Last hours of the Deepwater Horizon
TALLAHASSEE, FL - Florida conservation groups say the BP settlement announced Thursday is a big step forward giving certainty that the funding will be there to restore the Gulf coast.
It comes five years after the BP Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig exploded, releasing almost four billion barrels of oil. BP will pay $18.7 billion to the five states affected; Florida's portion is $3.25 billion.
David Muth, director of gulf restoration with the National Wildlife Federation, says this is completely separate from the billions BP has already spent on the immediate cleanup.
Oil soaked wildlife. (origin of photo unknown)
"These monies are for the damage they did to natural resources," says Muth. "So it's not to clean up oil it's to put back what they destroyed. Secondly, it's the punitive fine for violation of the Clean Water Act."
The settlement will have to be approved by the court.
The agreement comes as a federal judge was just about to
rule on how much BP would have to pay in fines.
Muth says much of the restoration money will go to
improve the health of Florida's estuaries, where fresh
water meets the sea.
"You have extremely well-vetted planning and science for
how to begin to fix that system to restore flows to the
Everglades, to restore flows to Florida Bay to better
manage the water that comes out of Lake Okeechobee and
enters the Gulf," she says.
Most of Florida's settlement will be administered by a
five-member board created by the legislature called
Triumph Gulf Coast. Eight counties in the panhandle will
receive the lion's share of the funding.
Photos/graphics; links; added and updated by the Observer
This piece was reprinted by the Columbia County Observer with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.