Nonprofit Groups Expect Long-Term Demands for Aid After Oil Spill

Nearly two months after the drilling-rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, more than $4-million has been donated—nearly half of that from oil companies—to help counter the economic and environmental damage.

That’s far less than will ultimately be needed when the full extent of the disaster’s impact on wildlife and the people who depend on the gulf becomes clear, charities in the region say.

A major concern is that the fishing industry and the wetlands were already weakened by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita five years ago. And with an especially active hurricane season predicted this year, the oil-spill disaster leaves the Gulf Coast especially vulnerable.

While charities in the region gained valuable experience after the 2005 hurricane season, “most of these organizations are stretched remarkably thin,” says Melissa S. Flournoy, director of the RAND Gulf States Policy Institute, in New Orleans. “The national foundation funding has started to dry up. The demand on organizations has not significantly decreased, but the available funding has.”

Among the organizations that have been raising money in response to the oil spill:

• The National Audubon Society, in New York, has received more than $1-million, including a $750,000 grant from Chevron for its new Volunteer Response Center, in Moss Point, Miss. So far, more than 22,000 people have registered with the group as potential cleanup volunteers.
• A benefit concert in New Orleans featuring the singer Lenny Kravitz brought in $300,000 for the newly formed Gulf Relief Foundation.
• The Gulf Coast Fund for Community Renewal and Ecological Health, a project started by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors after Hurricane Katrina, has received more than $245,000. The fund has awarded $155,000 in emergency grants to 27 grass-roots environmental groups in the region.

The money will help an already ailing region.

“As they closed down the fishing grounds and the oyster beds, people who were getting ready to go into peak season were suddenly cut off from their livelihood,” says Natalie Jayroe, chief executive of the Second Harvest Food Bank of Greater New Orleans and Acadiana.

BP Donations

Since the oil spill started, she says, food pantries and feeding programs along the state’s southern coast have seen a 15- to 25-percent increase in requests for assistance.

Last month, BP America, the U.S. subsidiary of the company responsible for the April oil-rig explosion, made a $1-million donation to Second Harvest Food Bank and its parent organization, Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New Orleans.

The company had previously made a $100,000 donation to Second Harvest to replenish its inventory and increase food assistance in St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes.

BP has also announced that it plans to use net revenue from the sale of the oil it has been able to contain from the blown well to create a new fund to restore and protect wildlife habitat along the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida.

Damaged Wetlands

The immediate threat to wildlife is obvious as rescuers try to save birds and other animals coated in oil, but experts say it will be years before scientists fully understand the spill’s effects on the ecosystem.

Ninety percent of species in the region spend at least part of their life cycle in the marshes and estuaries that make up the coastal wetlands, says Valsin Marmillion, managing director of America’s Wetland Foundation, in New Orleans.

Mr. Marmillion says species’ ability to come back after the spill will depend in part on the health of the wetlands, but it’s not clear how to clean the fragile areas without damaging them.

“You can’t use traditional oil-cleanup techniques in the wetlands,” says Mr. Marmillion. “Cleansing with power tools will just break up and disintegrate the vulnerable wetland conditions that we have.”

The wetlands also act as a buffer zone that helps protect the region from hurricanes. Coastal erosion over the past 100 years has made the region much more vulnerable to storm damage, and many experts worry that the oil spill could speed up the loss of wetlands.

“What you’re dealing with is a damaged plant and potentially a dead plant that no longer has the ability to hold the soil together with its root system,” says Steven Peyronnin, executive director of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, in Baton Rouge. “Once that kind of anchoring effect is lost, it then makes it that much more vulnerable to erosion.”

No Financial Cushion

The specter of past storms hovers over the current disaster.

Fishing families were hard hit by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and as a result many don’t have a financial cushion to fall back on, says Colleen D’Aquin Bosley, regional director of disaster preparedness and response at Catholic Charities.

“Many of them have taken out loans and other types of assistance to get their businesses back up and running,” she says. “They just don’t have the funds saved up. They’re living paycheck to paycheck.”

The organization has opened five emergency relief centers where fishermen and their families can go for food and housing assistance, counseling, and case-management services. The centers have served more than 7,800 people so far.

Catholic Charities expects that, as the disaster grows, the financial consequences will spread to people who work in other industries, such as seafood processing, charter fishing, restaurants, and tourism. The group is starting to plan for what may be a significant increase in the need for job-training programs if the fishing industry doesn’t come back quickly.

Demand for Aid

Seedco Financial started the Southeast Louisiana Fisheries Assistance Center in 2008 to provide financial and other assistance to fishing businesses that were still struggling to recover from the 2005 hurricanes.

Since the oil spill, the center—which has received a $50,000 emergency grant from the Greater New Orleans Foundation—has worked to be a source of information for fishermen. The center’s employees have been compiling daily updates with information about the location of BP claims offices and the documents applicants need to bring as well as town-hall meetings, hotlines for people affected by the disaster, and other services.

Counselors from the Small Business Administration are at the center to explain grants, loans, and other support. Translation help is available in Vietnamese and Spanish. The center also provides information about other ways fishermen can earn money, such as placing boons to protect fragile coastline or working on controlled oil burns.

The demand for assistance at the center has soared. More than 400 fishermen have obtained services since the spill. During the center’s first two years of operation, it provided help to roughly 800 people.

Before the oil-rig explosion, Seedco had been winding down operations at the center because the group’s work with fishermen had moved from emergency aid to more traditional business counseling.

“That’s just not the case now,” Robin A. Barnes, a senior vice president at Seedco Financial, says wistfully.

Plaquemines Parish, which donated the space for the fisheries assistance center, has renewed its commitment for at least six more months.

Local nonprofit officials say they are drawing on lessons they learned after Hurricane Katrina.

Catholic Charities now has two employees dedicated to emergency preparedness and response, says Gordon Wadge, one of the organization’s co-presidents.

A big part of their jobs, he says, is to build and maintain relationships to other nonprofit groups, government officials, and other entities, such as local companies and associations.

“Relationship management is a huge part of disaster response,” says Mr. Wadge. “You have to be trusted.”