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She married into a family of scheming oil barons on the television series Dallas, but in real life Victoria Principal is calling for tougher oil drilling regulations while supporting organizations working to prevent another environmental catastrophe like BP’s Gulf oil spill from occurring again. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Oceana, two groups that oppose an expansion of offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic, recently announced that Ms. Principal made “extremely generous six-figure donations” to their organizations.

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When Tropical Storm Lee pummeled the Gulf Coast from Florida to Texas over the weekend, it left many coastal residents wondering if there would ever be an end to the BP oil spill. Many residents in coastal areas from Florida to Louisiana found that the storm’s heavy winds and rough surf deposited globs of tar on the beach or exposed oil that had been buried in the sand.

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A landmark new bill that would direct billions of dollars in BP oil spill fine money to Gulf Coast recovery and restoration efforts cleared the Senate today with broad bipartisan support. Senators from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida — the Gulf states most affected by the BP oil spill – negotiated the long-awaited plan for months before coming to an agreement Thursday. The legislation is being welcomed throughout the country as a refreshing bit of progress made by a hyper-partisan government.

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BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was successfully capped a year ago, but hundreds of miles of Gulf coast beaches and marshlands are still contaminated by oil from the blown-out Macondo well. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), oil ranging in form from sticky crude to a light sheen covers about 491 miles of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi coastline. Approximately 1,100 miles of coast have been covered with oil since BP’s Deepwater Horizon platform exploded April 20, 2010.

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People have questioned the safety of Gulf seafood ever since BP flooded the water with crude oil and methane gas a year ago, then sprayed and pumped the spill with unprecedented levels of chemical dispersants. The oil disaster hit just as shrimping season was about to begin, closing once-fertile fishing grounds and drawing attention to the scope of the spill. Were shrimpers and fishermen out of work just for the season, or would the environmental and economic impacts linger for years?

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The outcry against the Gulf Coast Claims Facility (GCCF) and its administrator Kenneth Feinberg has risen a couple of notches with the filing of lawsuits in Florida and Louisiana alleging oil spill claims have been handled with fraud and negligence.

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PANAMA CITY BEACH – Florida Senator Bill Nelson added his voice to a growing chorus of complaints over how slowly BP oil spill claims are being paid to Gulf Coast residents under spill claims czar Kenneth Feinberg’s supervision. Mr. Nelson addressed the problem during a brief stop at the U.S. Naval Support Activity base in Panama City, Florida. As in other parts of the Florida panhandle, many residents and businesses in the Panama City area were severely harmed when BP’s massive oil spill destroyed fishing grounds and tourism revenues. Now, in the wake of the oil spill, recovery is being hampered by too many slow, underpaid, and denied claims.

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Florida representative Doug Broxson arrived at the Gulf Coast Claims Facility (GCCF) in Dublin, Ohio, unannounced this week to “unravel a mystery” about the claims process. “What happens to a person’s claim once they submit it? Where does it go? How is it processed and how is it that one claim of the exact same nature can be rejected and another claim is accepted,” Mr. Broxson asked.

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Florida residents have photographed nearly every mile of the state’s 825 miles of beaches, part of a campaign launched by Florida’s tourism officials to show the world that its beaches are as clean and beautiful as they were before BP’s disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

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Working with teams of doctors, scientists, and public health experts, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is currently planning and developing a large-scale study of the short-term and long-term physical and psychological tolls the BP oil spill has had upon the cleanup workers and the larger population of the Gulf Coast. The federal agency expects the study to encompass several thousands of people in the five states adversely affected by the massive oil spill: Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.

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