Let’s rewind almost exactly two years to early October 2010.  In the wake of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, President Obama established the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force, an advisory group of federal and state officials to coordinate federal Gulf Coast restoration activities.  The main function of the Task Force was to expedite Gulf restoration by cutting through the bureaucracy that too often delays critical ecosystem projects. 

After a year of conducting public meetings around the Gulf, the Task Force released its Gulf of Mexico Regional Ecosystem Restoration Strategy in 2011.  The Restoration Strategy is a groundbreaking document that resulted from, and reflects, the collaboration of all relevant regional entities.  The breadth of the document is impressive, extending to larger issues outside of the immediate oil spill impacts.  The Strategy lays out goals for improving water quality, restoring marine resources, and building community resilience.   It prioritizes stopping wetland, beach, and sand loss.  And significantly, the strategy calls for upstream changes in the Mississippi watershed to reduce agricultural and urban nutrient pollution.  

The Task Force lacked, however, any funding to carry out its recommendations.  Consequently, the Strategy recommends that ...

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