The board of local officials responsible for steering hundreds of millions of dollars in BP oil spill settlement money toward South Alabama has decided to hold off on new spending decisions until it receives clearer direction from federal courts and regulators.
The Alabama Gulf Coast Recovery Council, made up of mayors and county commissioners from Mobile and Baldwin counties, voted last week to pause its appropriations process. Board members said they are waiting on U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier to finalize the broader settlement stemming from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster before committing any additional funds.
Bayou La Batre Mayor Brent Dungan said the sheer scale of federal oversight attached to the settlement money has made the process slower and more complicated than many residents realize. “There is more oversight on this money than there ever has been in the history of America,” Dungan said, adding that keeping the process transparent requires significant behind-the-scenes work.
The council was created under the 2012 RESTORE Act and has discretion over $308 million in Clean Water Act penalties tied to the spill, according to state and federal officials. Local leaders, including U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne, have pushed for faster federal action, noting that project requests already submitted for consideration total roughly $1.59 billion — far more than the council currently has available to spend. An additional pool of roughly $300 million in penalties will also require sign-off from a separate federal council before it can be released.
Those RESTORE Act dollars are part of a larger $2 billion settlement Alabama expects to receive overall, with $1 billion of that directed to the state’s General Fund over an 18-year period.
Orange Beach Mayor Tony Kennon said unresolved financing questions are part of why the board chose to wait. The only new item the council reviewed at its recent meeting was a proposal from the Dauphin Island Sea Lab to serve as a regional “Centers for Excellence,” a designation that would let the lab administer at least $4 million already received by the council, with the potential for roughly $22 million more in future funding. The Sea Lab was the sole applicant for that role, according to AGCRC executive director Eliska Morgan, who said the council wants a fuller picture of the settlement before moving forward.
Fairhope Mayor Tim Kant said whoever administers grant funding needs deep environmental expertise to guide applicants effectively. Kennon voiced support for prioritizing Bayou La Batre and Dauphin Island, calling them the hardest-hit communities on the Alabama coast. Dungan agreed, noting the seafood industry in south Mobile County bore an outsized share of the spill’s economic damage and said federal bureaucracy will likely continue to slow how quickly any of the money reaches local projects.