Category Archives: RESTORE Act

Two sides to the story: R&R reflects on the second anniversary of the spill

By | Bio | Published: April 19, 2012

In the two years since April 20, 2010, the date of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion and sinking off southeastern Louisiana, the Gulf Coast has endured its fair share of troubles, only the first of which was a massive oil spill. There were the environmental challenges of saving threatened wildlife and measuring the disaster's impact on ocean habitats and coastal ecosystems rebounding from the destructive hurricanes of the previous decade. There were the economic hurdles as well: worries about the future of fishing in the Gulf of Mexico, concerns about the drilling moratorium and the slow pace of permitting for new energy projects in the Gulf, and declines in summer tourism that left hotel owners and restaurant workers wondering if the seaside counties and parishes of this region would lose their regular customers due to public perception of the spill and its impact.

As we approach the second anniversary, there is some evidence that the Gulf is emerging from the crisis. Tourists have returned to the region, as have energy companies drilling for offshore oil. In the harbors of some fishing communities, the buzz of motorboat engines is once again heralding the start of shrimping season. Moreover, economic gauges like employment and household income are approaching pre-spill levels, suggesting that things are, at the surface, returning to normal.

However, it would be wrong to think that these superficial signs of renewal are guarantors of successful recovery for the region. We've seen the stories about tar balls continuing to wash ashore on beaches in the central Gulf Coast. We know that biologists are worried about the mixed signals that the plant and animal life of the region send regarding the pace of environmental regenesis. We see that despite the reassuring statistics on wages, tax revenue, and hiring at the state and regional levels, there are towns and households where the losses stemming from this disaster, measured by diminished health indicators, reduced commercial activity, and — for at least eleven families on the coast — loved ones who will never come home, cannot be settled simply with a paycheck or a sharp advertising campaign from a multinational firm. 

The spirit of the Gulf — resourceful, vigorous, and rich — is inextricably tied to the natural surroundings that make this region unique. Without the right efforts to ensure that the environment of this region recovers strongly from the spill, a near-term economic fillip will inevitably be followed by a reckoning of longer duration. The payouts from BP and other parties responsible for the spill have cushioned the region from a more severe downturn than originally feared, but the surest way to protect the commercial activities tied to the health of beaches, wetlands, and fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico region is to insure that the damage from the spill is corrected as best as possible, and to put in place the infrastructure to make the region's ecosystems more resilient to future damage.

That's part of the reason why a bill like the RESTORE Act is so important to remember as we approach the second anniversary of the BP oil disaster. The RESTORE Act — bipartisan legislation that would dedicate 80 percent of the Clean Water Act penalties stemming from the 2010 Gulf oil spill toward environmental and economic restoration in the region — has already passed in the Senate by an overwhelming majority, and just yesterday, a similar provision in the House transportation bill was approved by the lower chamber of Congress. Reconciling the Senate and House bills will likely take weeks, but the fact that both Democrats and Republicans in Washington have voted in favor of this legislation gives us hope that a bill to put thousands of people and billions of dollars to work on restoring coastal wetlands, cleaning up damaged beaches, studying regional animal life, and reviving the unified ecosystem will ultimately become law. 

Just think: by this time next spring, there could be guidelines in place and concrete action afoot to make full-scale restoration a reality. Wouldn't that be a great way to mark the third anniversary? We certainly think so.

 

 

Related Links

Billion dollar baby: After BP's big damage pledge, is more money needed to restore the Gulf? [Restoration and Resilience]

For richer? No, for poorer: Statistics reveal post-spill slowdown in coastal Louisiana job, wage growth [Restoration and Resilience]

Gulf oil drilling to see busiest year since 2010 BP spill [The Huffington Post]

House approves transportation bill extension with Restore Act provision [New Orleans Times-Picayune]

NWF tour finds BP oil still soaking Louisiana marshes, menacing wildlife [Delta Dispatches]

Two years later, spill's dangers linger [Tampa Bay Times]

Also posted in BP, BP Oil Disaster, Congress, Events, Oil Spill, Water, Wetlands, Wildlife | Leave a comment

What does the 90-day transportation bill extension mean for the RESTORE Act?

By | Bio | Published: April 4, 2012

by Whit Remer

 

This story was originally posted on the Mississippi River Delta Restoration Campaign's Delta Dispatches blog.

Muddling through an oily mess: An oil spill response volunteer trudges through wetlands caked with crude oil near Venice, Louisiana on May 20, 2010 (Source: AFP/Getty Images)

With a March 31 deadline quickly approaching, last Thursday (March 29), the U.S. House and Senate passed a 90-day extension to the surface transportation bill. This extension means we will need to continue working hard to ensure the RESTORE Act stays alive and is included in the final version of the bill.

The RESTORE Act is legislation that would dedicate 80 percent of Clean Water Act fines from the gulf oil spill toward gulf environmental and economic restoration. Earlier in March, we reported a big win for the RESTORE Act after the Senate approved it as an amendment to their version of a new two-year highway bill. This was an impressive bipartisan win, with 76 senators voting yes on the amendment.

Last week's extension signals that the House did not agree to the terms proposed in the two-year Senate bill. The extension gives the two chambers an extra three months to craft a bill that both the House and Senate can agree on. While nothing is certain during the next three months, it is important to remember all the wins the RESTORE Act has had thus far — wins that both sides will have difficulty forgetting while moving forward on a final version of the transportation bill.

In February, House Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) introduced and passed an amendment dedicating 80 percent of expected Clean Water Act penalties from the spill towards gulf restoration. In the Senate, the RESTORE Act passed out of the Environment and Public Works Committee in September, and just weeks ago, the Senate overwhelmingly approved it as an amendment. When Congress begins to put together a long-term transportation bill, they must not forget these important wins.

The RESTORE Act is still alive and well, especially in the minds of Congress and those in the gulf who need it most. Now, perhaps more than ever, we need to encourage Congress to continue fighting for oil spill restoration in the gulf. Without action on the RESTORE Act in the new transportation bill, the Gulf Coast may lose out on desperately needed restoration funding. We must continue to energize the Gulf Coast delegation and let them know how much the RESTORE Act means to the environment and economy of the Gulf Coast.

 

 

Related Links

Congress passes 90-day stopgap transportation bill [New Orleans Times-Picayune]

How the RESTORE Act could kickstart job growth along the Gulf Coast [Restoration and Resilience]

NWF tour finds BP oil still soaking Louisiana marshes, menacing wildlife [Delta Dispatches]

The RESTORE Act [MississippiRiverDelta.org]

Also posted in BP Oil Disaster, Congress, Wetlands | Leave a comment

Could restoration work lead to better wages for Louisiana women? Part III of III

By | Bio | Published: March 22, 2012

March is National Women’s History Month, and in honor of that event, we decided to use this series to revisit a topic that we first touched upon a year ago: gender balance in the Gulf Coast’s green economy.

In our previous two posts, we looked at the past and present states of women’s employment in some of the industries that would stand to gain most from passage of the RESTORE Act in Congress. In the final piece of our three-part series, we look at how people in Louisiana and elsewhere are working to get more women into these sectors along the Gulf Coast.

The gender imbalance in the restoration sector, while significant, is not an impossible hurdle to overcome. Greater investment in rebuilding Louisiana’s wetlands will lead to more work overall, so this is not an issue whose solution is predicated on displacing current male workers. Furthermore, as changing perceptions about jobs and gender roles take root in American economy, it seems fitting that wetland restoration and other green sectors should also become more representative of the broader workforce.

Steps have already been taken in the right direction. Many of the lawmakers who led the effort to pass the RESTORE Act in the Senate, such as Senators Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tx.), and Mary Landrieu (D-La.), are women, and there are probably more female community leaders and coastal specialists working on delta restoration at present then there have ever been. 

Still, there’s tremendous work to be done. In its 2009 report to Governor Jindal, the Louisiana Commission on Women’s Policy offered several recommendations, including tax credits for child care and the promotion of science and engineering careers to young women, to create more opportunities for female involvement in restoration-related fields. To that end, local educational institutions like Louisiana Tech and LSU have begun working with the National Science Foundation to prepare more women for the jobs that will be required as wetland restoration efforts are ramped up along the Gulf Coast. Beyond these efforts at the university level, it will also be important to secure buy-in from Louisiana’s contractors and small businesses, as they will have to consider ways to employ more women at their firms.

Source: Library of Congress

We would do well to consider a historical precedent for corrective action. As the nation mobilized to fight World War II, American women of the Greatest Generation followed “Rosie the Riveter” to factory jobs across the country, averting labor shortages that might have crippled the Allied cause. As their granddaughters in Louisiana and other states confront environmental threats like land loss and climate change, they too will need role models to steer them towards next-generation careers in construction, engineering, and scientific research. Perhaps “Hannah the hydraulic engineer” or “Trisa the tree planter” could inspire Millennial women to pursue careers in water management, wetland protection, and other sectors that could grow with RESTORE Act funding.

Louisianans of both sexes are affected by sea level rise and wetland degradation. There should be ample opportunities for Louisiana’s residents, regardless of their gender, to participate in careers that allow them to increase their earning potential and save their state at the same time. By having more women working on wetland projects supported by legislative bills like the RESTORE Act, Louisiana could serve as a model for improving gender parity in the workplace and, simultaneously, secure a brighter future for its environment.

 

 

Related Links

Census: Women closing in on male-dominated fields [USA Today]

Could restoration work lead to better wages for Louisiana women? Part I of III [Restoration and Resilience]

Could restoration work lead to better wages for Louisiana women? Part II of III [Restoration and Resilience]

Green jobs: Improving the climate for gender equality too [International Labour Organization]

How the RESTORE Act could kickstart job growth along the Gulf Coast [Restoration and Resilience]

Job Prospects Grow for Women in Construction [The New York Times]

Also posted in Analysis, BP Oil Disaster, Demographics, Green Jobs, Regional Economic Development, Targeted Jobs | 1 Response

Could restoration work lead to better wages for Louisiana women? Part II of III

By | Bio | Published: March 21, 2012

March is National Women’s History Month, and in honor of that event, we decided to use this series to revisit a topic that we first touched upon a year ago: gender balance in the Gulf Coast’s green economy.

In our previous piece in this series, we looked at the relative absence of women from environmental restoration sectors like transportation and engineering. You might have come away wondering why the gender ratios are so skewed in fields such as construction, where there are approximately 32 male Louisianans working for every one female. 

The percentages of men and women in four occupational categories in Louisiana, 2006-2010 (Source: American Community Survey, U.S. Census Bureau)

 

As in other parts of the country, the disparities in Louisiana’s labor profile were historically rooted in low levels of educational access for women and traditional social norms about female employment. In a 2004 report, Dr. Beth Willinger, who then served as the Executive Director of the Newcomb College Center for Research on Women at Tulane University, noted that: 

“The fact that fewer Louisiana women attain a high school education than women nationally has consequences for employment and earnings. While men with a high school education can obtain relatively high-paying jobs with fringe benefits, for example in construction and transportation; women with a high school education tend to obtain jobs in the service industry, or as sales clerks and receptionists that pay the minimum wage, offer little security and few health or retirement benefits.”

What makes this moment in time different is that the gap in education between males and females in Louisiana has narrowed and, more recently, reversed in favor of women. Mirroring broader trends across the industrialized world, a higher percentage of Louisiana’s women (72.4% in 2006) are now high school graduates than Louisiana’s men (59.3%). Moreover, women in Louisiana earn more than half of all degrees at the post-secondary level.

This present pool of female candidates – the best educated in Louisiana’s history – should be an obvious source of new employees for firms involved in coastal restoration and other fields identified by Louisiana Economic Development in its “Blue ocean” strategy. Yet when we look at the labor statistics, we see that Louisiana women, who represented nearly half of the state’s total workforce (48.6%) in 2009, are still dramatically underrepresented in restoration sector fields that pay proportionately well (see below chart). For example, in 2009, only 11.3% of Louisiana’s architects and engineers were women.

(Click to enlarge) The bar chart at left (above) shows the ratio of average female earnings versus average male earnings in selected sectors related to environmental restoration during the period from 2006 to 2010 in Louisiana. In five out of the seven sectors, the ratio of women’s salaries to men’s salaries is greater than 0.601 (the gender wage ratio across all civilian employee groups in Louisiana from ’06-’10), which is marked off by a vertical black line. This suggests that these five restoration-related industries scored better than average in approaching female/male pay parity. The median annual female earnings in those five sectors, highlighted in blue in the chart at right (above), ranged from just under $15,400 for installation, maintenance, and repair workers (below the Louisiana median female salary of $23,293 during the 2006-2010 period) to just over $56,000 for architects and engineers, showing that the push for wage parity affected low-income, middle-income, and high-income occupations in the restoration sector (Source: American Community Survey, U.S. Census Bureau)

In our last post of this series, we will consider some of the steps that state and federal stakeholders are taking to correct this imbalance.

 

 

Related Links

Could restoration work lead to better wages for Louisiana women? Part I of III [Restoration and Resilience]

Female graduates increase in usually male-dominated fields [The Daily Reveille (Louisiana State University)]

Gender equality and the green economy: Women underrepresented in Louisiana’s construction, engineering sectors [Restoration and Resilience]

Program would require contracts to consider only local for coastal jobs [The Houma Courier]

The wage gap – Unconscious bias in judging the value of predominantly “female” professions [Psychology Today]

Also posted in Analysis, BP Oil Disaster, Demographics, Green Jobs, Regional Economic Development, Targeted Jobs | Leave a comment

Could restoration work lead to better wages for Louisiana women? Part I of III

By | Bio | Published: March 20, 2012

March is National Women’s History Month, and in honor of that event, we decided to use this series to revisit a topic that we first touched upon a year ago: gender balance in the Gulf Coast’s green economy.  

For many years, Louisiana women have lagged behind their male counterparts in take-home earnings. In part, this has been due to their near exclusion from male-dominated fields such as construction and engineering that offered better pay scales for skilled and unskilled labor than the service sector, which was disproportionately female. Now, with the recent Senate passage of the RESTORE Act as part of the Surface Transportation bill, and steps at local institutions of higher learning to steer greater numbers of female undergraduates towards career paths in the sciences, there could be an unprecedented opportunity for more women in coastal Louisiana to move up the salary ladder by participating in restoration projects. In a three-part series of posts, we will examine some of the roots of the existing gender imbalance, and look at why addressing this issue could be beneficial for the Bayou State.

At present, many of the industries that stand to gain most from the RESTORE Act — a bill that would direct 80 percent of Clean Water Act penalties from the 2010 oil spill towards gulf restoration efforts in the states affected by the disaster — have disproportionately few local women in their ranks. For example, based on 5-year estimates from the 2006-2010 American Community Surveys conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, only 3% of Louisianans working in the construction sector during the latter half of the ‘00s were female. At first glance, this doesn’t seem that surprising, since the figure roughly mirrors comparable statistics for women’s participation in construction at the national level. But when you consider that this skewed imbalance coincided with a heady period of investment in heavy infrastructure and flood- and hurricane-damaged home rebuilding following the levee failures and storms of 2005, it’s apparent that many women missed out on participating in one of the main drivers of economic activity and wage growth in southeastern Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina.

Indeed, in an August 2008 report from the U.S. Census Bureau, researchers from the Commerce Department noted that in 2007, Louisiana ranked second from last among all states for gender wage parity, with median earnings for Louisiana women that year ($27,469) equaling only 65.4 percent of the median earnings for Louisiana men ($41,980). And, judging by the below map of gender gaps on wages at the state level, it is pretty clear that differences in occupational choices between the two sexes – and their consequent effects on take-home pay – are also pronounced in Alabama and Mississippi, Louisiana’s neighbors on the central Gulf Coast.

(Click to enlarge) The map above shows women’s earnings as a percentage of men’s earnings in each of the fifty states and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, based on data from the 2007 American Community Survey. That year, median annual earnings for women in the United States were $34,278, equivalent to 77.5 percent of men’s earnings. However, in Alabama and Mississippi, median women’s earnings amounted to only 72.9 percent of median earnings for men, placing both states near the bottom of national rankings for gender wage parity (Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, Wikimedia Commons)

 

In our next post, we’ll look at some of the historical and sociological reasons why this might have been the case.

 

 

Related Links

Gender gap on wages is slow to close [The New York Times]

Green jobs: What about the women? [Mother Nature Network]

Hurricane projects fueled economic boom for New Orleans area [The New Orleans Times-Picayune]

Women’s earnings as a percentage of men’s, 1979-2007 [Bureau of Labor Statistics]

Also posted in Analysis, BP Oil Disaster, Demographics, Green Jobs, Regional Economic Development, Targeted Jobs | Leave a comment

EDF’s new vision for restoring Mississippi River Delta is timely

By | Published: March 13, 2012

Great news for the gulf! On Thursday, in a 76-22 bipartisan vote, the U.S. Senate passed an amendment to the transportation bill – the RESTORE Act – which would ensure that 80 percent of Clean Water Act (CWA) fines from the gulf oil spill are dedicated to gulf environmental and economic restoration. A few weeks earlier, the House passed a similar amendment that would also dedicate 80 percent of fines towards gulf restoration. Next, the two chambers will work together to resolve the differences between the bills, a process that will hopefully lead to enactment of this historic legislation.

Outside of Congress, settlement talks have continued in earnest between the federal government and BP over the spill, including negotiations about how many billions of dollars in CWA fines could be used to launch comprehensive, long-term ecosystem restoration in the gulf. Meanwhile, scientists and state officials have been busy finalizing Louisiana’s 2012 Coastal Master Plan, a comprehensive, 50-year restoration strategy for the state.

While we applaud this good news, we know that there are still many real challenges facing the Mississippi River Delta. Every hour in Louisiana, an area of coastal land the size of a football field vanishes under water. Since the 1930s, almost 1,900 square miles of wetlands – an area about the size of Delaware – has disappeared from the Louisiana coast.

For more than 35 years, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) has been working in the Mississippi River Delta, advocating for large-scale restoration projects to restore and revitalize the region. We are working to instill a sense of urgency and a national commitment to a bold restoration plan for the area.

As a companion to "Decades of Destruction," in their a new video, EDF’s Mississippi River Delta Restoration team tells the story of their vision for saving and restoring America’s largest delta:

“To get to the solution, we need a bold new vision, one that allows society to get what it needs from the river and allows the wetlands to get what they need to survive. Instead of managing the river, we need to learn to build with the river, letting its powerful flow naturally replenish the wetlands that support a healthy Gulf Coast and create the conditions for a powerful economy.”

“Environmental Defense Fund has taken a leadership role in forming a broad coalition of national and environmental groups to implement this bold new vision. We are the catalyst for a major societal change that will benefit not just the wetlands, but the entire gulf region and indeed [Thomas] Jefferson's America that depends on a healthy delta.”

To find out how you can support EDF’s vision to restore the Mississippi River Delta, please visit our website: www.edf.org/restore.

Related Links

EDF releases big picture video "Before the BP Oil Disaster: Decades of Destruction" [Restoration and Resilience]

Also posted in BP, BP Oil Disaster, Coastal Master Plan, Congress, Land Loss, Oil Spill, Videos | Leave a comment

Senate will vote on RESTORE Act amendment today

By | Published: March 8, 2012

This story is originally posted on the Mississippi River Delta Restoration Campaign's Delta Dispatches blog.

It’s an important day for recovery in the Gulf Coast. Nearly two years after the BP oil disaster, the communities, economies and environment of the gulf are still struggling to recover. Today, Congress has the opportunity to take a crucial step towards making the gulf whole again: by voting yes on the Nelson-Shelby-Landrieu RESTORE Act amendment to S. 1813, the Surface Transportation bill. The RESTORE Act amendment has been paired with an additional $1.4 billion in funds towards the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). The LWCF funds large-scale conservation projects in America’s most-treasured places.

The RESTORE Act amendment is legislation that would dedicate 80 percent of Clean Water Act penalties from the gulf oil spill are dedicated to gulf restoration. The bill has bipartisan support in both chambers of congress and from members nationwide. It would ensure that fine money be used to restore and revitalize the environment and economies of the Gulf Coast. Passage of this legislation is not only important to the people of the gulf, but to the entire nation that depends on a healthy gulf region. In fact to date, over 73 thousand people have taken action and told Senate leaders Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell that restoring the Gulf Coast is important.

In February, over 140 faith leaders sent a letter to Senate leadership urging them to pass the RESTORE Act and help repair the gulf. “Restoration projects that would be funded under this bill can help protect communities, restore ecosystems, revive the tourism and fishing industries, and create tens of thousands of jobs as residents rebuild and diversify their economy,” says the letter. “This legislation represents a significant, bipartisan and achievable step toward justice for Gulf Coast communities and ecosystems.”

Last week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents the interests of more than three million businesses and organizations, sent a letter to Senator Mary Landrieu supporting the bill. “The RESTORE Act, as currently written, is a common sense and bipartisan approach to a situation that has impacted the entire Gulf region,” states the letter. “The Chamber supports S. 1400, and applauds your leadership on this important issue.”

On Monday, the National Association of Counties (NACo), which was founded in 1935 and represents the interests of the nation’s 3,068 counties, accepted a resolution supporting the bill: “NACo supports the concept established by the RESTORE Act, that diverts penalty money from the responsible party to local economic and environmental restoration plans, and supports the expansion of this policy to future pollution incidents.”

In addition to these groups, associations including the American Shore and Beach Preservation Association(ASBPA) and the Association of State Floodplain Managers (AFPM) sent letters to Congress supporting the RESTORE Act. And sportsmen organizations representing hundreds of thousands of hunters and anglers also reached out to the Senate, urging swift passage of the bill.

Also posted in BP, BP Oil Disaster, Congress, Oil Spill | Leave a comment