Regional leaders at a Gulf Coast Restoration Summit said they're relieved that Congress passed the RESTORE Act in June. But they're unsure when money from RESTORE, which devotes 80 percent of BP's Clean Water Act fines for the 2010 spill to Gulf states, will be available.

Garret Graves, chairman of Louisiana's Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, said last week "we will not allow BP to walk out of here, wiping its hands" of the company's responsibilities.

Scientists say oil and gas seeps surrounding BP's Deepwater Horizon well appear to be mostly natural and to pre-date the 2010 spill.

Louisiana needs to get smart quickly about coastal restoration, U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu said in her hometown of New Orleans last week.

A New Orleans open house held by Louisiana's coastal restoration authority last week on a draft of the state's 2012 Master Plan for a Sustainable Coast drew mixed, earnest and sometimes vehement comments.

It took just 89 days for that well to spew over 4 million barrels of oil, but it will take much longer for us to fully understand the impact of this disaster -- and longer still to rebuild a healthy and prosperous Gulf of Mexico.

An injection of BP funds and continued spending by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers may not be enough to counter decades of erosion along the Gulf, sp...

Last summer, biologists and chemists whipped through Gulf waters collecting samples to gauge impacts from BP's spill. Analyzing some of those samples is stalled, however, until BP releases more research funds.