Kenneth Feinberg, who will administer BP's $20 billion compensation program, visited the Orange Beach Rec Center gymnasium this morning for an hour-long town hall session. The gym was filled to overflowing with local residents and others affected in some way by the spill.
Feinberg told those present they should not wait until his office is fully up and running in August before filing claims and also that they should be prepared to provide documentation, such as tax returns and canceled contracts, to help his office determine proper compensation.
Several of those in attendance were able to ask questions at two microphones stationed at the front of the gym, including real estate agent/brokers, condo owners, church administrators, charter boat fishermen, restaurant owners, retail shop owners and more. TV media were present and taping for nightly news programs.
Feinberg said several major factors would govern the decision-making process regarding claims, including whether a claimant's income was directly linked to the natural resources of the Gulf water and ecosystem (charter boats, fishermen, oyster harvesters, etc.) and the proximity of the claimant's business to the gulf. He said while claims for fishermen or charter boat captains are easy to resolve, it is more difficult to resolve claims of potential lost income from real estate agents/brokers, retail businesses that rely on tourism traffic, and others who do not derive their income directly from the affected waters.
At the same time, Feinberg said he would apply consistency to the claims resolution process and would also staff a local office with local residents who have a deeper understanding of the community and how it has been affected.
One of those who asked a question at the meeting was a condo owner who was unable to close on the sale of her condo after the buyers backed out due to the oil spill. Feinberg said as long as she and others could show canceled contracts for loss of business, the claims resolution process should be expedited.
He also said that his office would pay claims not on a monthly basis but on a six-month emergency basis or a one-time lump sum final payment. Claimants would not give up their right to sue BP for losses if they accept an emergency payment. However, those who accept the lump sum final payment would be required to sign a waiver releasing them from the right to sue at a later date. "Life's full of choices," Feinberg said. "If you think you'll experience losses later on down the road, don't take the lump sum. It's up to you."
Cleanup Efforts Scaled Back
MOBILE PRESS-REGISTER—It has been 102 days since the BP-owned Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in the Gulf, killing 11 and causing the nation's worst-ever oil spill.
On the Baldwin County coastline, crews continue working with sifters during daylight hours to separate oil from the sand, said Marcus Little of Semmes, who has served in the cleanup for the past three weeks.
At night, machines sweep miles of beaches. Essentially, said Gulf Shores City Administrator Steve Garman, the entire beach in his city gets cleaned every two nights.
As of Wednesday, however, the number of local people working on recovery efforts had declined significantly from its height a couple of weeks ago: 1,099 people were cleaning Alabama beaches and 181 boat operators were working in Alabama waters as part of the Vessels of Opportunity program.
Little said that he has been notified that today would be his last day.
Also, Little said, plenty of small specks of tarballs are being left behind, and there's a layer of a cola-colored substance an inch or so below the surface. The latter, he said, makes the sand look like "vanilla ice cream with chocolate swirls."
"If you bring a shovel, you'll see that the top of the sand is littered with what looks like chocolate chips, but they're actually tiny tarballs," Little said. "I clean the beaches, supposedly, and I find it very disturbing."
Garman said city leaders are coordinating with BP to make sure that the work is being done properly. He said that cleanup efforts have improved in recent weeks after getting off to a rough start.
He said he knows that some small specks are being left behind, but that'll change this winter, when contractors will do a "deep cleaning" of the sand. Workers will dig up sand inches below the surface, "digging deeper and sifting finer," he said.
"We're not going to do that until a) there's no indication of more oil coming in at all, and b) it's cool enough so the tar is easier to pick up," Garman said.
For now, "We can't get 100 percent. We never anticipated that," Garman said. "We're getting all we can."
Cleanup methods themselves have come a long way, Melick said, as new inventions have been introduced to aid in the effort.
"We started with guys with shovels and bags. Behind that came front-end loaders," Melick said. "Over the course of the summer, we started using a better rake system, sifting through the sand. If people have been out there, they've seen the system improved."
Melick said BP may introduce even better cleanup technology soon.
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