NRDC President Frances Beinecke spent time last week on the Gulf Coast with Turkey Creek’s Derrick Evans and other advisors and grantees of the Gulf Coast Fund to learn about how the BP disaster is impacting coastal communities. She wrote about her observations in an article titled “Voice Off the Bayou” on her blog:

“… Still reeling from Katrina and scarred by a federal response so inept that it shocked the world, Evans and those he speaks for are bracing for another punishing round of setback and loss.

“We are a people in constant disaster,” Evans intoned as if quoting Scripture. “We don’t get to recover from one before another hits. It’s almost like a book of Job that doesn’t end.”

Evans is an advisor to the Gulf Coast Fund for Community Renewal and Economic Health, a project of the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

After touring Grand Bayou in an oyster boat last week, he hosted a meeting of other Gulf Coast Fund participants and community activists last in Biloxi, Miss. There, he and his peers spoke clearly and directly about what they need most.

First, he said, they need authoritative information about the risks to health and livelihood. Who is monitoring air and water quality, asks Evans, how are those results being shared and what do they mean to the daily lives and decisions being made by families who live here? …” Read the full article “Voice Off the Bayou”