December 2, 2012 | Read Time: 4 minutes
A new $2.4-billion fund that the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation will administer to assist coastal areas affected by the BP oil spill may not mean boom times for environmental charities along the Gulf of Mexico. But the money does represent a victory for a charity coalition pushing for big spending to restore the coastal region.
To settle criminal charges related to the Macondo oil spill, BP last month agreed to pay $4.5-billion. Much of the money, about $2.4-billion over five years, will go to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, a 28-year-old nonprofit chartered by Congress, which will use the money to improve natural resources in Gulf Coast states.
Half of the money will go for projects in Louisiana, the state hardest hit by the spill, and the other half will be split among projects in Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, and Texas.
The plea agreement specifies that the $1.2-billion to be spent in Louisiana can be used only to restore barrier islands or for river-diversion projects. The state has emphasized such projects in a 50-year, $50-billion plan to restore the coastal landscape.
These large-scale earth-moving projects, which help to rebuild coastal wetlands that are being depleted at a rate of one football field per hour, are likely to rely heavily on for-profit contractors, local experts say.
“The foundation will work with various partners to do the on-the-ground work,” says Dan Favre, communications director of the Gulf Restoration Network, which works to protect and restore the natural resources of the Gulf region. “In most cases, these won’t be environmental charities. They’ll likely be the big engineering contractors, like Shaw Group.”
Diverse Contracts
Timothy DiCintio, a vice president at the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation who oversees projects related to legal settlements, says that following previous settlements, the foundation has signed contracts with state and local governments and nonprofits as well as for-profit contractors. “We have all of those tools at our disposal,” he says. “It remains to be seen how we will move forward. Efficiency is always in our minds.”
Leslie Carrère, head of the Restore the Earth Foundation, which has reforested 30,000 acres of Gulf wetlands habitat since Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, says she fears that most of the money may already be set aside for big companies. “When it becomes apparent that resources are available, if we think we have a shot, of course we’ll do our best to secure some funding,” she says.
The $2.4-billion fund exceeds the total $2.1-billion in grants that the foundation has directed since its founding in 1984.
“While the scale of this one is unprecedented, the substance of what we’re doing is something that is well known to those of us here at the foundation,” Mr. DiCintio says.
Over time the foundation has spent $128-million on projects in the Gulf region. In the two and a half years since the BP spill, the fund has spent $23-million on 80 projects to restore about 500,000 acres of wetlands.
“We have a strong history of investing in the Gulf region,” says Thomas Kelsch, the foundation’s vice president for conservation programs.
Some Reservations
U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, of Louisiana, acknowledged the foundation’s “very good” work along the Gulf Coast, but she questioned whether it was the best choice for overseeing such a large amount of money. The foundation’s 27-person board has just two members from the five states affected by the settlement (both live in Texas), and neither lives along the coast. “I would have liked to have seen a little more representation from the Gulf Coast,” Senator Landrieu said in an e-mailed statement to The Chronicle.
The foundation is prohibited by charter from giving to advocacy groups, so Steven Peyronnin, head of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, says his group won’t directly benefit from the settlement. But he supports the river-diversion and barrier-island projects that the money will be used for, and says that the spending is a direct result of lobbying by his group and other nonprofits while Louisiana created its 50-year plan.
Supporters of the coalition include the Kresge, McKnight, Surdna, and Walton Family Foundations.
“Our hope is not that these settlement dollars will support nonprofit work, but that they will create the evidence that progress is being made so that foundations continue their grant making in this region,” Mr. Peyronnin says.
Cynthia Sarthou, head of the Gulf Conservation Network, says nonprofits may have a better shot at funds in the four other states that are splitting half of the settlement, where projects are not yet defined.
Projects in those states may include land acquisition, which would likely benefit local affiliates of national nonprofits like the Nature Conservancy and the Trust for Public Land, she says.
