Protecting the Bay

After more than 80 days the county is still begging.

More than two months after requesting the fiscal support for booming operations in St. Joseph’s Bay the county remains without a plan it truly wants, or at least a plan that meets the funding approval of British Petroleum, the company that created the mess in the first place.

The company that has soiled the Gulf of Mexico in ways that may not be fully understood for decades to come is holding the county hostage to an emergency that is hard to fathom.

BP surely did not, as was stated in this space from the start, as the lack of any apparent Plan B to stop a gusher at depths that could crush a submarine remains astounding after months of watching the oil spew in the lens of that underwater camera.

So how could the county have foreseen such events? How could county emergency management plan for a catastrophe that seemed unimaginable?

Last week BP officials were showing plans for a proposed decontamination site for vessels that would require 2-3 months to construct.

But as was noted during the workshop, the county does not even have in place a plan to protect St. Joseph’s Bay because BP had yet to sign off on funding such a plan.

That remains the case when this is written, despite another revision to the plan at Unified Command.

Consider what this bay represents.

This is one of 41 state aquatic preserves in Florida, protected and designated for its beauty and more importantly for the role the bay and its sea grass beds play in the circle of marine life in the region and beyond.

Several years ago when the state commissioned a film to honor and raise awareness for these unique water bodies around Florida, the opening four-minute segment featured St. Joseph’s Bay.

That film was titled “Living Waters.” These bodies of water are the sources of life.

On top of that the bay is one of just four homes to bay scallop harvesting in Florida.

According to state researchers, it currently has the second most dense bay scallop population among those bays studied.

So this bay is a precious resource, one that threads through the fabric of the very community that surrounds it and one that is recognized as valuable and worthy of protection by the state of Florida.

Yet, more than 80 days later the county is still begging for the plan it believes will protect the bay.

The county remains waiting for the assistance that was requested on April 30 by county emergency management – provide resources to craft and execute a boom plan that would protect that bay, that resource.

County officials have asked and asked for help at the planning table from experts in such boom operations but that seemed to have only happened on Monday, once frustration had reached a boiling point.

The expertise is needed because as county officials understood early on the bay was going to be no easy body of water to protect.

As local fishermen informed county officials from the outset, tides at the mouth of the bay combined with frequent rough days on the water would make a booming operation dicey.

The plan was revised and revised again, tweaked to try to best protect sea grass beds while dealing with rough waters that were tossing anchored boom around like sticks in a hurricane.

The county’s updated plan entailed a project similar to the one Bay County is constructing to protect East Pass, pilings being used to anchor and provide reinforcement for concentrated boom lines.

The cost is not cheap considering that the mouth of St. Joseph’s Bay is significantly wider than East Pass. The estimate is $8-$10 million.

The plan has approval from everybody in this Unified Command structure – the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and the U.S. Coast Guard in particular – save the ones holding the purse strings, BP.

This is an outrage, a company seeming to be playing Russian roulette with the bay.

This is not Louisiana; in Florida there has been time to prepare. In Gulf County, a handful of tar balls of indeterminate origin are all the oil found in the county but the clock ticks and the time for preparation is evaporating.

As emergency management officials warn, just because oil is not here yet does not mean it is not coming.

And BP insists it is here to make things right. The company has tossed around tens of thousands of dollars in Gulf County on damage claims, for work crews cleaning clean beaches, on meals for those work crews, on a barge that mostly sits idle as it waiting to be called into action and on plans for a decontamination site.

But the money for a plan to truly save the bay from a mess of BP’s doing? Wait in line and it starts back yonder.

County commissioners are in part to blame. They have gone to work for BP, lauded BP’s response in meeting after meeting and backed away from proposed litigation one week after agreeing to pursue legal action.

They have enabled this lack of response to protect one of the most valuable resources in this county. They have compromised their ability to put feet to fire.

No plan may be perfect in protecting the bay, but it is time for the county to stop begging.

The plan has been approved. Time is of the essence. This is BP’s spill, funding to mitigate impacts is the least of the bill.

It is time to pony up and stop the begging. It is the right thing to do – and isn’t that the company’s advertising mantra these days, making things right?