A New Claims Process Begins Tomorrow

Most everyone in the Gulf know that starting August 23, BP will stop accepting claims from businesses and individuals suffering in the aftermath of the BP oil spill. That job now falls to the federal government group headed by Kenneth Feinberg. If you don't know Brockton, Massachusetts' favorite son, Feinberg was in charge of paying claims from the September 11th terror attacks. Consensus is that he did a good and fair job on that, so he was a natural choice for this new roll. However, all is not beer and skittles with the new BP claim process. This AP story from the WLOX TV web site describes the latest.

Clearly this will take time to play out to completion, and many things can change. But if past is prologue, one might look at the five years since Katrina to see how many people were not given a fair shake by insurance companies, FEMA and others entities.

I do not have first hand information on any claims made against BP except one. The one from Kenny DiNero, owner of a bait/tackle shop in Ocean Springs. He also runs a couple of boats to catch shrimp. He was my first interview back in July who had filed a claim with BP for lost business with his boats in early July.

I stopped down to his place this past Friday. After buying me a beer, he extracted from an envelope a small stack of papers, one of which contained the heading "Forensic Accounting". The net result was that BP was going to pay Kenny a little more than $4,200 for his losses in April, May, June and part of July. I did not study the documents in detail, nor would it have done much good if I had. I'm lousy with numbers. However, does it seem that about $1,200 per month is the right amount of compensation for bringing his business to a halt?

I will add that I've talked with community leaders, including two at the Tears to Cheers Music Festival on the Beach yesterday in Biloxi who said that large numbers of people are getting only fractions of what would be fair restitution for their hardship. I am hoping to get an interview with one of those leaders this week.

If a florist in Florida or a restauranteur in Idaho get paid off but local Gulf people and business get shortchanged then there is much wrong with the situation down here. 

The Bayou: Nature's Nursery

As I spend more time in the Gulf and talk to more people who know this region I realize that it is an amazingly diverse and wondrous place. Unlike the shores of New England where I grew up that are famous for craggy bluffs and rocky shorelines, the Gulf coast is an alluvial creation of so many different rivers that drain from America's heartland. Inshore, these rivers create habitats comprised of marshes and swamps known as bayous. Bayous are homes for an amazingly diverse spectrum of wildlife. They are the breeding ground for countless creatures, provide protection from the elements and even other predators and they are an evolving and fragile ecosystem upon which the regions animal kingdom and humans so fully depend.

That is why so much work has gone into protecting these wetlands from the incursion of oil from the BP spill. In some areas this work has been effective, but in others closer to the source of the oil, things have not gone as well. Bayous and salt marshes on the Louisiana mainland and coastal islands have been the most at risk, and they remain exposed to the oil not recovered from the Gulf.

This piece is a tour of the bayous on the Pascagoula river. Captain Benny McCoy of McCoy River Tours takes us though the many swamps and marshes, and teaches us about the many cycles of life that go on there. If one wants to see nature's creatures, this is an excellent way to do that.

View on ExposureRoom

There was so much more that wasn't captured on camera that filled Benny's two hour tour. It was so very entertaining, fun and enlightening. He taught us about gators and egrets, flowers and marshmallows and the history of this place that most that don't live here probably never knew. For instance, did you know that parts of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana were once a country independent from the United States? Neither did I.

Special thanks to Captain Benny McCoy for his hospitality and expert commentary. I learned a lot of things I'd never known and saw a lot of things I never imagines. Also thanks to Mark LaSalle of the Pascagoula River Audubon Center for setting me up with this wonderful opportunity.

Explore the Salt Marsh Ecosystem

This video from YouTube explains what makes up the salt marsh ecosystem along the Gulf coast and shows the myriad of life forms that depend on them. It's well done and easy to understand.

For those of you not from the Gulf, it will help you understand what is at risk if the oil contaminates these magical places.

The Scariest Words In The World

“I’m from the government and I’m here to help”. Yea, it’s an old joke but it’s appropriate for this post.

Let me introduce you to Kenny DiNero. He owns a bait and fuel dock in Ocean Springs and runs a couple of shrimp boats. I sat down with him this morning to talk about where the oil spill has put him and his business and what he told me was not pretty. I expected that because his business is at the nexus of everything hurt by the spill. Shrimping was banned so his boats had nothing to do. The charter business tanked because fishing was banned. Fishing tournaments were cancelled, and they were big ones.

One sad fact tells the tale. Yesterday, July 21, the shop brought in $214. That’s it. It was apparent that wasn’t going to come close to making his monthly nut.

So, he goes to the government to apply for remuneration for the business he’s lost. As he tells it, the person he spoke with couldn’t do anything relative to lost sales for bait and fuel, but he could help him file a claim on the two boats. The government needed a bunch of financial records including tax returns from 2007, 2008 and 2009. He pulls together what they need, delivers that to them and waits. After a while he called to find out what was going on. Kenny was told that he needed to resubmit all the paperwork again because the first set was filed away in an archive somewhere. Not a problem because he had copies. He sent them in and waited some more. So the short story is that almost a month has gone by and he’s yet to see a dollar, but the government rep said he should get a check in August.

That’s only part of the story that he told me for just over a half hour this morning in front of my camera. As he talked, it became clear that his situation is effected by a bunch of situations set in motion when the well blew. What came quickly clear to me is that Kenny DiNero is one sharp, hard working cat with a sly sense of humor even though he didn’t smile much or laugh at all. His situation wasn’t even remotely humorous.

I can’t even start to retell his story because it’s incredibly complex, involves things that as an outsider I don’t understand and the outcome is still unknown. That present me with a problem I mulled over at lunch and during the short drive back to my hotel. After watching the interview as it was transferred from tape to my computer I realized that I had to use all of the interview. All 35 minutes of minutes. It’s a thought that might make some news field producers and documentarians look for tall buildings to jump off of. I can’t do it any other way. To leave out any part of it would be to ignore an important part of the jigsaw puzzle he’s living in. It would alter the context of what he’s going through. It wouldn’t be his story any more. It would be the story that I wanted to tell about him, and it wouldn’t be the truth, the whole truth.He also tells it very, very well.

So I’m going to violate every rule of video production and run all of it. From his answer to my first question to when a dog that adopted him after Katrina that he named “Pirate” jumped up on the bench next to him and the interview ended, you will hear everything that he said to me. I will cut video away to b-roll periodically to show some of the things he talks about but his audio will be complete and uncut. Since I asked questions off-mic, I’ll use full screen graphics for them.

The good news is that Kenny DiNero is very articulate and tells his story well. He sounds good too. I spent the afternoon and early evening adding graphics and b-roll to his story and I don’t think that if you care about what’s happening in the Gulf, you won’t be bored. But if you are, remember that I didn’t come down here to remake Caddyshack.

Coming up…

Dispersant, friend or foe.

UPDATE: Corrected the date when Kenny submitted his claim. The original article said that months had passed since he submitted his claim. In fact, he submitted it at the beginning of July. Also corrected his gross revenue number for the day described, which my weevil filled brain remembered incorrectly.