Monday, June 28, 2010
In the film Forrest Gump (and the novel by Winston Groom), Forrest starts a shrimping business in the small Alabama fishing town of Bayou La Batre. Bayou La Batre is a real place, and it is now struggling to survive in the wake of the gulf oil spill. With their shrimping grounds closed due to oil contamination, local fishermen have had to rely on BP to earn a living by participating in the oil spill mitigation program.
But getting work through the Vessels of Opportunity project has not been easy for Bayou La Batre shrimpers. Once word got out that BP was paying upwards of $1,400 a day for fishermen to help with the oil spill cleanup, many people from out of state flooded into coastal Alabama.
In response to complaints from locals, BP has tried to better screen applicants to make more jobs available for Bayou La Batre, a community where the median household income is $24,539, according to 2000 census data.
Bayou La Batre also has the distinction of producing the first lawsuit out of Alabama against BP following the Deepwater Horizon platform accident.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Cleanup Hiring Feeds Frustration in Fishing Town (by John Leland, New York Times)
No Shrimping in Forrest Gump's Bayou La Batre (by Bryan Gobin, Huffington Post)
Bayou La Batre Shrimper Sues BP Over Gulf Coast Oil Spill (by Brendan Kirby, Mobile Press-Register)
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