USA Today reports on BP oil spill threat to numerous businesses, of all types, along the Gulf Coast, discussing “tens of thousands of Gulf Coast business owners and workers whose livelihoods have been or could be hurt by the oil spill, which has defied efforts to be capped.”
From Louisiana to Florida, optimism and fear among hoteliers, fishermen and tour boat captains rises and falls with the wind, which pushes the massive slick in the Gulf of Mexico this way or that — toward their livelihoods or away from them. While the national economic impact is likely to be small, economists say, the oil slick could devastate the Gulf Coast tourism and the seafood industry that had expected a rebound to pre-Katrina health this summer.
“We hadn’t turned the corner yet. But we could see it. Now, it’s a little farther away,” says Richard Forester, executive director of the Mississippi Gulf Coast Convention and Visitors Bureau.
(Source: USA Today, May 12, 2010)