Gulf Coast Gears Up for Oil Spill Impacts
May 18th, 2010Recovering Economies Threatened
A spectacular Sunday view of the beach in Gulf Shores, Alabama, from the new Gulf State Park fishing pier. [Click on the image for a larger view.] According to the park’s assistant manager Milton Rittelmeyer, the new pier is projected to generate more than a half a million dollars a year. If the oil were to come ashore here, and fishing was banned — or even if people just chose not to come down and fish due to the perception problem — it could have a devastating impact on revenue for the state.
by Glynn Wilson
GULF SHORES, Ala. — When the news broke on April 20 that an oil rig had exploded and was leaking the Gulf of Mexico’s light, sweet crude into the sea, creating a massive slick that could be headed for Alabama and Florida’s beaches as well as coastal marshes in Louisiana and Mississippi, it took a few days but officials charged with promoting tourism along the coast started mobilizing along with the media covering the spill and emergency responders struggling to do something about it.
Herb Malone, the President and CEO of the Alabama Gulf Coast Convention and Visitors Bureau, went into crisis planning mode like everybody else. When I ran into him Monday in his office across the street from the beach in Orange Beach, I knew I could get my hands on some facts.
I knew Malone well back in the 1980s and early 1990s, when he ran the Gulf Shores Chamber of Commerce, back in the day when I looked over his shoulder as the watchdog press in Baldwin County, then the political and environmental reporter for Gulf Coast Newspapers. That was back when it was more akin to a real news organization and used to beat the Mobile Press-Register on a regular basis.
I figured Malone had become even more of a Republican in the 18 years I had been gone from Gulf Shores, like everybody else in Baldwin County, especially during those 8 years of Bush. But I also knew Malone to be an honorable guy who understands the key to success in public relations is fast, transparent, accurate information. He and I both go back to the day when Republicans and Democrats could be friends while holding disagreements about the direction of public policy. We even played on the same team in a golf tournament once.
So when I asked for a quick briefing on the potential impact of the oil spill on the coastal economy, he hustled me into his office and started rattling off facts faster than I could write them down (I’ve just got to start videoing everything I do from now on).
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| Glynn Wilson |
| Mike Yantarakitkosol, 30, whose family has owned Niki’s Seafood restaurant on Canal Road in Orange Beach since the year of Hurricane Frederick in 1979, caught a 5-pound speckled trout last Sunday, about 22-inches long, he estimated. He came to fish on the new pier because that’s what he loves to do, he said. What will he do with the fish? “Cook it and eat it,” he said. He’s worried about the spill and its impact on his business. “Seafood prices are already going up,” he said. You could import seafood from ponds, the Atlantic or even Asia, he said. “But it would not be the same.” |
Tourism in Baldwin County alone generates an estimated “direct spending” of $2.3 billion. That’s from an estimated 4.5 million tourists who visit annually.
Estimates are if the oil spill reaches shore here, the state could face an economic loss of $200 million, mostly from lower spending by vacationing tourists, who may cancel reservations and choose another location, such as Hilton Head, South Carolina (already the subject of an advertising and promotion controversy).
Gulf Coast states could see a combined $4.3 billion in economic losses, according to other reports. Tourism is a $100 billion industry in Florida. The state could lose $3 billion of that — if the oil washes in that direction. That includes $138 million from recreational fishing and $18 million from commercial fishing.
Louisiana could face economic losses of $948 million. That’s $880 million in tourism, $37 million from commercial fishing and $31 million from recreational fishing.
The fact all along was going to be that there is no perfectly accurate way to predict how much the spill will impact the economy, because for many communities, from Dauphin Island to Gulf Shores and Orange Beach to Destin, Florida, the slick is just not here yet.
“How much of an effect will it have?” Malone asked. “There’s no way to tell. You tell me when it’s coming and how much there’s going to be, and I’ll try to give you an answer.”
But when the slick didn’t blow onto shore in storms out of the southwest on that second weekend after the explosion, Malone and lot of other people, including Alabama’s Governor Bob Riley, breathed a sigh of relief.
Time to Plan
Now there was time to sit back, look at the bigger picture, and plan.
What has developed since that weekend is a remarkable new economy, thanks to the Obama administration’s arm twisting of British Petroleum, which has now agreed to pay for everything and then some, in spite of the $75 million cap on damages approved by the Bush administration in their corporate-friendly attempt to protect oil companies from being sued on behalf of injured Americans by trial lawyers.
BP is hiring subcontractors to sweep the beaches every day for tarballs, which as Malone pointed out, are not a totally new phenomenon on the coast. Some oil is said to even float up as tarballs independent of drilling operations, since it exists naturally in the Gulf. Since the Gulf became a major oil and gas drilling ground in the early 20th century, tarballs have been seen periodically on these beaches before.
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| Glynn Wilson |
| Ross Beamis, 11, of Robertsdale, likes to fish off the state pier with his stepdad John Gaines, 33. They’ve been watching the coverage of the oil spill like everybody else. “It’s pretty scary,” Bemis said. “This may be the last chance we have to fish for awhile.” |
The other thing that has developed — even though it wasn’t exactly in place ahead of time, either on the part of BP or local governments — is a disaster response mobilization that is impressive to watch. A big part of the reason is the money flowing from BP.
“From what I have seen being involved in this every day, I have total confidence that we have a team in place that will not only do everything possible to protect the beaches,” Malone said. If the oil comes ashore here, he said, “Measures and teams are already in place to get that oil off our beaches.”
In fact, advance cleaning teams are already in place, removing litter and natural debris from the coast. If the oil comes ashore, that will make it easier to clean up. If the oil doesn’t wash up here, the beaches will be cleaner as a result. All paid for by BP.
The biggest complaint Malone had about the entire disaster was about some of the media coverage, including some of the television news stories and even the Mobile paper, which was such a conservative friend to the coast during the Bush years.
“There’s been headlines that didn’t accurately reflect the stories, and headlines that even contradicted the stories,” Malone said. He indicated some of the inaccurate, exaggerated and sensationalized coverage has resulted in not only an image problem for the coast, causing cancelations. It has increased everybody’s workload on the coast dealing with callers who are not only wondering if the oil is here yet.
“Some people are convinced it is here, and you can’t convince them otherwise,” Malone said. “They just want to know when we’re going to get it cleaned up.”
Where the most damage happened was the coverage when the the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a bureau of the U.S. Department of Commerce, closed some oil affected waters to fishing. Most of the closures are far out in federal waters, but the way some broadcast reporters handled the story, Malone said, you would think it was closed at three miles out, the state line in the water.
According to an AP story out Tuesday, only 19 Percent of the Gulf is closed to fishing.
“Inshore waters were never closed,” Malone said. “They’re still out there fishing for flounder, speckled trout, red-snapper and everything else.”
Yes, that includes shrimp and oysters, although some of Louisiana’s and Mississippi’s oyster and shrimping grounds are closed due to the proximity of oil. BP has also hired about a thousand shrimpers, their boats and crews to skim oil out of the water.
Now, BP’s CEO Tony Hayward says the company will give $70 million to four Gulf Coast states to promote tourism as payback for screwing it up. Florida will get $25 million and each of the other states, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, will receive $15 million.
At the end of the day, Malone said it is still a wait-and-see scenario on the coast, mostly following the latest information and sharing it through social media sites such as Facebook, in some cases bypassing traditional media outlets altogether.
“We are working as hard as we can to get good information on the Web and spreading it through the use of social media,” Malone said. “That’s all we can do and hope for the best. We know we have a beautiful coast and we know how to protect and promote it. That’s what we’re going to do.”
A cast off the Gulf State Park fishing pier by John Gaines, fishing with his stepson Ross Beamis
Tags: British Petroleum, Economic Impacts, Gulf Shores, Gulf State Park Fishing Pier, Herb Malone, Oil Spill, Orange Beach
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