GRN to BP: We'll show you ours if you show us yours:

I suppose flinging huge amounts of money into false advertising has helped BP wash some of the oil stains from their reputation, but only for the easily duped and willful rubes.  There's this:

Restoration Project Priorities for NRDA and the Gulf's Future

A year and a half into the BP disaster, restoration comes too slow.  The Coast Guard has declared the Coast "clean," Congress has not yet directed BP's fines to the Gulf, and we rely on the laws written for Alaskans against Exxon to restore the Gulf of Mexico.  Because of the lack of action, the only new initiative is the $1 billion early restoration settlement that BP has agreed to, in order to lessen its future fines under the Natural Resources Damage Assessment, or NRDA. 

Just as trustees must massage an out-of-date law to bring BP to the table, many states are working with existing projects and programs.  But are these projects being prioritized so that the appropriate solutions to BP’s oil are picked?   This agreement allows BP a lot of power over NRDA dollars—how do we know the Gulf will not be shorted?

Following the Gulf Future Action Plan, a working group of activists and community leaders from each of the five states has evaluated hundreds of NRDA projects according to the Gulf Future goals:  ensuring Public Health, rebuilding the Environment, developing a sustainable Economy, Monitoring the damage, and Participation in the restoration process.

In the last weeks, this working group has released "Sunshine on the Gulf," a report on what projects are slated for early NRDA monies and why.  The report uses prioritization criteria that make our needs as a Gulf community transparent, for the sake of project managers and trustees alike. 

 One purpose of the report is to show how easy it is to be transparent.  Second is to show that coastal communities are not just a check box, to hold meetings at, to be spoken down to by public relations staff.  We demand conversations, not just interactive web sites. Coastal communities demand input into the process—the only way to ensure the process works for us.  We would be fools to trust the institutions that led us into the Deepwater Horizon Disaster.

This may be getting old to some of you, but a healthy Gulf of Mexico with its diverse population of sea life, is important to this nation and the world.

Read it all here.

And so it goes.

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