Page 90 - South Mississippi Living - November, 2019

r
story by Jeff Clark photo by Katherine Swetman
The summer of 2010 was a summer that many
residents in South Mississippi will never forget. Already vulnerable after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the last thing anyone needed was for one of the largest environmental disasters in history to further damage the Mississippi Gulf Coast. But like an unexpected sucker punch to an already unstable fighter, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, commonly called the BP oil spill, dumped more than 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
But the people of South Mississippi aren’t ones to stay down for long. A major cleanup campaign was launched and the U.S. Department of Justice took BP to court where they agreed to a $4.5 billion fine, of which $1.6 billion would be used in communities affected by the
oil spill. Mississippi’s share of the settlement was $750 million, with 75 percent going to the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
One of the groups hit the hardest by the BP oil spill
were small business owners along the Coast. Many small business owners depend on tourists for their business. And if the tourists aren’t coming because they can’t swim in the Mississippi Sound due to the presence of petroleum, livelihoods are impacted.
Enter HB 1, which was passed last year by the state legislature to ensure that the Coast received the majority portion of the BP settlement money. The money will
be administered through the Gulf Coast Restoration Council, which features committee members appointed by Gov. Phil Bryant, Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves and others. It has a more narrow scope of helping create and nurture economic development in South Mississippi.
“We have about $450 million coming to the Coast,” Gulf Coast Business Council President Ashley Edwards said. “We are very economic development-oriented. Our job is to recommend projects that would be catalytic and transformational for the region by creating new job opportunities and attract new and talented members of the work force. Of course, this will help the economy as a whole and it will greatly impact and benefit the small business owners.”
90 SOUTH MISSISSIPPI Living • November 2019
FOR MORE REFLECTIONS OF THE GULF COAST >> www.smliving.net
Restoration Money