U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) met with city and county leaders as part of a push to get the administration to release hundreds of millions of dollars intended to help Florida’s coastal communities recover from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident.
Two years have passed since Congress passed the RESTORE Act as a way to distribute an expected $5 billion-to-$20 billion in civil fines from BP and other companies involved in the spill that ravaged coastal environments and tourism from Louisiana to Florida.
But final rules governing precisely how the money is to be distributed and used aren’t finished yet – while coastal areas are stalled in planning for environmental restoration and tourism promotion.
Just last week, Nelson grilled administration officials at a Senate Commerce subcommittee hearing on why it’s taking so long to implement the Restore Act that he and other lawmakers passed in 2012. “The message from us to you is, get on with it,†Nelson said at the hearing.