'We're reviewing ways to make the program even more generous to the shrimpers,' he says
The administrator of BP's Gulf Coast compensation fund promised a congressional panel Thursday that in the next few weeks he will come up with a better method to make shrimpers whole in the aftermath of last year's oil spill disaster.
Kenneth Feinberg was photographed in April during a meeting at the Louisiana Supreme Court in New Orleans."I think we've got to do better by the shrimpers," Gulf Coast Claims Facility administrator Kenneth Feinberg told a hearing of the House Natural Resources Committee. "We're reviewing ways to make the program even more generous to the shrimpers."
Rep. Jeff Landry, R-New Iberia, told Feinberg that the fund had done a better job so far of making payments to hobbyist shrimpers and people dressed up like shrimpers than legitimate commercial shrimpers, whose livelihood is now hanging by a thread.
Landry said Feinberg's initial offer to make immediate payments to shrimpers and others without having to provide much in the way of evidence of damage had turned into a "blue-light special on white boots that allowed people to claim they were shrimpers but were not shrimpers, not traditional, commercial shrimpers."
Instead, Landry said, Feinberg should have from the start, and should now, check with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, which could identify the 1,500 certified commercial shrimpers in Louisiana.
"He didn't pay any of that 1,500, I can you promise you that, none of them" has reached a final settlement, said Dean Blanchard, of Dean Blanchard Seafood of Grand Isle, who attended the hearing. "They're not settling. They'd be crazy to settle. They're hiring lawyers right now. Everybody I know has a lawyer. Everybody."
Storms clouds on horizon
Blanchard said a deceptively satisfactory brown shrimp season had been followed by a disastrous white shrimp season that is a harbinger of very bad days ahead.
Blanchard said for years he had been the biggest shrimp buyer in America -- 20 million pounds a year -- but now finds himself "making more deals than Bob Barker ever made" to buy shrimp from farther and farther out in the midst of an increasingly bleak and desperate scene in Grand Isle.
"I can't even go to my office. As soon as I walk in my office I got more people there to borrow money than anything else," Blanchard said. "That's why I'm up here -- it's cheaper for me to stay at the Willard Hotel for $600 a night that to sit at my desk lending money."
Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., told Feinberg that shrimpers in particular face a special dilemma of not knowing whether the damage to their livelihood will extend well beyond the dissolution of the fund in August 2013.
"It looks as if there will be hard time for years to come," he said.
"We have processed and paid plenty of shrimp processors, shrimp harvesters, the shrimp industry, but you are absolutely onto something," Feinberg replied. "I've been down in the Gulf, and it is clear that GCCF does have to be more responsive to the shrimpers. There are a lot of shrimpers that haven't filed a claim with the GCCF because they are watching and waiting to see how GCCF will treat the shrimp industry."
"So many broken promises," Rep. Jo Bonner told Feinberg, noting that Feinberg is being paid handsomely -- $1.4 million a month -- for his efforts.
Feinberg corrected him, saying it's only $1.25 million.
"At a million 25, he ought to at least be required to come up with a new lie every month," said Blanchard. "He tells you the same lie, 'I'm going to personally take care of you, you write your name down here.' Every meeting that's it. I know a hundred people who did that, and not one has been taken care of."
95% of claims processed
But, even amid skeptical questioning from Gulf Coast representatives, Feinberg, who directed the fund for victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, remained calm, presenting the commitment of BP of $20 billion to the escrow account from which the payments are drawn as without precedent, and the claims facility's work as titanic in scope.
"Since its inception on Aug. 23, 2010, the GCCF has received approximately 1 million claims from individuals and businesses located not only in the five-state Gulf region, but from all 50 states and 38 foreign countries," he said. "The GCCF has processed 95 percent of all claims received, an extraordinary accomplishment considering the volume and complexity of the claims. As of Oct. 21, 2011, we have paid approximately $5.5 billion, with an additional $400 million in outstanding offers, to some 213,068 claimants, honoring approximately 379,611 claims."
Overall, the claims facility has denied about a third of all claims, and a marginally higher percentage -- 38 percent -- in Louisiana.
"It just seems like the process is taking way too long," said Landry, who also complained that those harmed by the administration's drilling moratorium remain out in the cold.
"I share your concern on the moratorium claims, I wish I could pay those 1,600 claims; I would like to pay them, but I can't," Feinberg said. He said it was beyond his jurisdiction, and that he had referred those claims to the foundation charged with overseeing the $100 million BP gave to address the needs first of rig workers, and then those in supporting occupations.
"I'm not sure the foundation is doing as well as it should in honoring those moratorium claims," Feinberg said. But officials of the Baton Rouge Area Foundation have said they made every effort to find potential recipients for that money before recently transferring $75 million of the $100 million to a new Future of the Gulf Fund to meet other needs identified in the wake of the spill.
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Jonathan Tilove can be reached at jtilove@timespicayune.com or 202.450.1404.