BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — About 800 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, Dave Edmonds is struggling to remind people about the BP oil spill.
There aren’t many magazine covers with photos of oil- drenched birds now that BP has capped its massive gusher at the bottom of the sea. People aren’t looking online for information about the historic spill as they were a few weeks ago.
So Edmonds, who lives on the Delaware coast, has started a nonprofit organization to keep the disaster on people’s minds with a website and social networking campaign.
“Awareness has dropped. People don’t really care about the people who were affected. They don’t care about the fish life,” said Edmonds, founder of Taking Back the Gulf.
For gulf residents fighting for economic survival, a nation’s short attention span is deeply unsettling, especially with oil still washing ashore. Yet it is unclear whether Americans are turning their attention elsewhere, or whether it is just the media that have.
Either way, people like chef Chris Sherrill feel abandoned.
“It’s amazing how quickly the American public forgot that this was one of the worst manmade disasters in U.S. history,” he said. His wedding catering and event business in Gulf Shores, Ala., is teetering because few brides are still coming to the beach for weddings.
Oil continues to wash ashore, although in lesser amounts than during the summer. Dire predictions of environmental Armageddon have yet to materialize, but there is also no consensus on how badly the ecosystem has suffered.
At first, no one could agree on how much oil was spilling into the gulf; now there is disagreement over how much remains. A commission last week faulted the Obama administration for multiple missteps, including an effort to block scientists from telling the public how bad the spill could be early on.
“If someone could say it will affect this, our shrimp are going to be poisoned for 10 years, people would think this is a bigger deal maybe,” said Scott Peterson, 37, of Des Moines, Iowa.
Recent research also raises the question of whether the spill is being overlooked outside the gulf region, or if information on recent developments is just harder to come by. A Pew Research Center study found that only 1 percent of news coverage was dedicated to the spill last month, down from 22 percent during the height of the crisis.
However, a separate Pew survey found that 34 percent of the people responding to a poll in mid-September said they were still interested in the spill — making it the top news item that week in terms of public interest. But even if people say they’re interested when asked directly, information from Google suggests that they’re not searching as much for information about the spill online.
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Lawyers make millions aiding victims
WASHINGTON — Kenneth Feinberg and his law firm have been paid more than $2.5 million in 3 1/2 months to administer the $20 billion fund set up by BP to compensate victims of its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The London-based oil company agreed to pay the Feinberg Rozen firm a flat fee of $850,000 a month from mid-June, when Feinberg agreed to run the claims facility, through Oct. 1, according to a report Friday on the compensation by former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey.
Mukasey, who was asked to evaluate the compensation by Feinberg, said it was reasonable for demanding work under close scrutiny by Gulf Coast residents, public officials and BP.
The $850,000 monthly payments will continue through year- end and then will be reviewed, a person familiar with the contract said Friday. Bloomberg News
