We can still picture oil flowing, unchecked, from the Deepwater Horizon well into the Gulf of Mexico. As days turned into months, the fact that the flow hadn't been stemmed became more and more unbelievable. When the well was finally capped after three months, every Gulf Coast community experienced a brief period of distortion: relieved it was over but anxious about the long road to recovery.

Thanks to the RESTORE Act, that recovery is about to get a lot more tangible. The Clean Water Act of 1972 kept the companies responsible for the spill fiscally accountable, but it's the RESTORE Act that will channel the majority of those critical funds directly to the individual counties that need it.

Multi-Year Implementation Plans

Counties and parishes who are eligible for RESTORE Act money are required to present a list of projects, called a multi-year implementation plan (MYIP), before they have access to their allotted share of RESTORE Act allocations. Developing an MYIP is major undertaking with a complex navigation process. Preparation can take up to 18 months, and firms are regularly brought in to establish the underlying project selection criteria and develop processes for proposal application and evaluation.

The goal is to have a MYIP worth submitting to the Federal Treasury Department, because that's the only way to receive RESTORE Act money. However, creating a plan that simply meets the basic requirements can be (and most often is) a short-sighted approach.

Two MYIP Models

In general, there are two models to MYIP planning:

• The Bare Necessities: This minimalist approach focuses on whatever has to be done to get the money. If a locality is eligible for $100 million, the only thing that matters is getting enough projects to cap out. This is too often the dominant approach, falling short of leveraging a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Gulf communities.
• Integrated Leveraging: This preferred approach uses the money as a strategic blueprint that lays the foundation for greater returns. Localities leveraging this approach will use RESTORE Act funding as an opportunity to set a much higher standard for what can be produced in terms of scale, capacity, outcome, and opportunity. This approach can lead to vastly larger and better projects for Gulf communities.

In the second model, communities move from, "What has to be done?" to "What is the maximum attained improvement that can be mustered from this opportunity?"

The Challenge to Serve All Communities Equally

The challenge many consulting firms are facing right now is supplying the same quality and quantity of services to small, often rural communities as they do to metropolitan areas. Many firms simply (1) don't have the regional presence and/or (2) can't meet the critical mass necessary to serve these small- to medium-sized counties or parishes. We are one of only a few firms with the capability and capacity to provide such services to the full range of communities.

Our professionals are doing incredible things to achieve legacy-based accomplishments from the influx of their RESTORE Act funds—drawing together superior compliance planning with integrated engineering solutions and science adaptations that attain highly leveraged outcomes for all sizes and situations. In many cases, we're helping communities use RESTORE Act funding as a strategic "down payment," engineering leveraged revenue streams for decades of support that will carry on long after RESTORE funds have run out.

We're doing our best not to look at what the dollar amount can do today, but what the dollar amount can do over 10 to 20 years—maximizing its legacy to secure many years of full project implementation.