You Read it First at FrumForum
Today's Washington Post reports on how fishermen in the Gulf region are benefiting from BP's spill response
The oil has mostly disappeared. And in southern Louisiana, things are finally looking normal - improbably, blessedly normal - six months after the largest oil spill in U.S. history.
But on a truly normal evening, Acy Cooper Jr. would be out shrimping. Instead, one recent night, he was staying home, as he has done more often these days.
"Why? It don't pay me to do that when they're going to pay my claim anyway," said Cooper, vice president of the state's shrimpers association.
Today, it is BP's money, not its oil, that is most visibly altering the Gulf Coast. The company has been trying - on federal orders - to protect not just the water but the way of life there. But BP's waterfall of cash has changed people's lives profoundly.-- "Adrift in Oil, Then Money", October 20, 2010
... a story first reported by FrumForum's Tim Mak:
South of New Orleans, in Venice, Louisiana, locals on the Gulf Coast are saying what no one seems to wants to acknowledge: that they’re thriving thanks to BP’s response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Fishermen who have signed on to do BP oil spill cleanup work say that their contracts forbid them from speaking to reporters, but off the record, talk about the boon that the Deepwater Horizon incident has left in its wake.
“As a fisherman, I worked twelve hour days – ten to twelve dollars an hour,” says one Venice contractor. “I make much more money now than I did fishing.”
-- "Gulf Fishermen Making More Money Off Spill", September 29, 2010