Five years later, St. Mary counts its good fortune after BP oil spill

As communities all along the Gulf Coast reflect on the fifth anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion and BP oil spill, St. Mary Parish leaders recalled how fortunate the parish was compared to surrounding areas in the aftermath of the spill.
St. Mary Parish Emergency Preparedness and Homeland Security Director Duval Arthur said no oil from the spill washed up on St. Mary Parish’s coastline because the Atchafalaya River, the Calumet Cut and Charenton Navigation Canal create currents, which pushed the oil away.
“That water prevented the oil from actually coming up the river and coming up the Calumet Cut or any of our navigable waterways,” Arthur said.
BP provided parish officials with a helicopter at the Harry P Williams Memorial Airport near Patterson to be able to inspect beaches every day, Arthur said. Officials inspected the waterways, Marsh Island and Oyster Bayou where a lot of fishermen in the parish go, and didn’t see any oil, Arthur said.
Some of the oil that would have come to St. Mary Parish, if not for the waterways that prevented oil from getting there, went to Vermilion Parish and Cameron Parish, Arthur said.
“We’re very, very lucky the oil floated on west of us and went ashore,” Arthur said.
With the help of the U.S. Coast Guard, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and St. Mary Parish Sheriff’s Office, Arthur received reports that people spotted oil on some of the barrier islands at the mouth of the Atchafalaya River, but officials never actually discovered oil there, he said.
“We were told we were going to get oil, and people said they saw oil. But we never really got any oil,” Arthur said.
During the oil spill, Arthur went to meetings with BP officials in Schriever. At the time, leaders had to create “a boom plan” for what to do if another spill occurred, Arthur said.
Though BP caused the spill, Arthur was appreciative of what the company did to help fix the problems it created, he said.
St. Mary Levee District Executive Director Tim Matte, who was mayor of Morgan City at the time, said his first concern, upon hearing of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, was whether any area residents were on the rig. He then learned that none of 11 men killed were from St. Mary Parish.
“To see that rig crumble to the floor, to see the oil spew like that was also something we just really hadn’t seen a whole lot of,” Matte said.
Shortly after the oil spill, Matte said he believed the solution to end the spill was going to come out of south Louisiana. Matte didn’t know at the time that Cameron, the oilfield services company, was working to contain the spill, he said.
Oceaneering had ROVs, remotely operated vehicles, filming the spill and efforts to stop the spill, Matte said. A lot of the solutions in the aftermath of the spill did end up coming out of the region, he said.
At the time of the oil spill, Matte fielded questions as to whether the Shrimp & Petroleum Festival would change its name because of a potential conflict between the industries, he said.
Matte dismissed the notion that anything of the sort would occur.
“The people that work in those two industries respect each other, and there’s kind of a kindred spirit there,” Matte said.
However, the spill did have a broad impact to many different industries including the seafood industry, Matte said.
Matte believes dedicating BP fine money to the affected areas along Louisiana’s coast through the Restore Act was the right thing to do, he said. As executive director of the St. Mary Levee District, Matte hopes the district will get Restore Act money to fund some of its projects, he said.
“The state of Louisiana has got a huge problem with providing protection and to fund the restoration efforts,” Matte said.
Coastal restoration and prevention efforts are extremely costly, but critical to the survival of the state’s coast, Matte said.

This story was written by Zachary Fitzgerald of The Daily Review staff. Reach him at zfitzgerald@daily-review.com.