Florida U.S. Senator Bill Nelson was happy to spread some positive news Friday afternoon at Demens Landing in St. Petersburg on the 2-year anniversary of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
On Thursday the Department of Justice released a summary of a report by an independent auditor of the Gulf Coast Claims Facility, the group set up to process claims in the wake of disaster. The audit identified errors that will now send more than $64 million in additional payments to approximately 7,300 individuals and businesses in the five Gulf states, 4,450 of them in Florida.
"Why I asked for an audit is that I did not think they had done a lot of our people right in what they had requested, and sure enough, there are another 4,500 [4,450] claims that will get $37 million in the state of Florida," Nelson said. "And that's just another little step as we try to restore our people and our environment from this massive spill of 5 million barrels of oil out there."
This article appears in Apr 19-25, 2012.