GAINESVILLE – With the oil disaster largely considered to be over, the beleaguered Gulf States have yet to see any signs of resolution.

Thousands of residents, hundreds of miles of coastline and an unfathomable amount of wildlife are still in the midst of the struggles wrought by the Gulf oil spill disaster. The University of Florida has designated a panel of experts in several different fields of study to perform research on all facets of the Gulf oil spill including oil and dispersant remediation, ecological, socioeconomic, and human health impacts as well as legal affairs.

Since the well has been stopped, many Gulf Coast residents and business owners remain entangled in the red tape that surrounds the process of receiving compensation from British Petroleum.

“BP has since created this $20 billion trust fund that is administered by (Kenneth) Feinberg and has directed all individuals to go to that trust fund for compensation, so all individuals are going to the Feinberg arbitration mediation process first,” said Dean Emeritus Jon Mills of the Levin College of Law and Director for the Center for Government Responsibility.

Unfortunately for some Gulf Coast business owners, seeking compensation is becoming increasingly difficult.

“Where it’s going to get more ambiguous is where people had losses based on reputational damage like hotels, etc., where there was no oil on the beach, but they did lose money because people didn’t come,” Mills said.

Mills suspects additional litigation will be necessary for some of these ambiguous claims.

“There are going to be classaction suits; defining the class will be interesting,” he said. “Is it all restaurants? Is it restaurants on the coast? So that’s an issue.”

Litigation could go on for years, leaving business without compensation until a ruling has been determined. Some residents and local governments could also end up filing lawsuits against BP in the distant future.

“A longer-term issue, which some folks are talking about, is if property values decline they’ll have lower tax base. How much of that is attributable to the oil spill, and is that recoverable?” Mills said. “Certainly, all of those local governments are going to be engaged.”

To add more uncertainty to the legal future of the Gulf oil spill, it is still not clear who will pay what portions of compensation as many contractors were involved in the drilling.

“That is just unknowable; that’s going to be a complex bit of finger-pointing,” Mills said.

The future of the Gulf of Mexico’s ecology is just as unclear as the legal matters surrounding the oil spill. More damage may still occur as much of the oil has yet to be located in the Gulf.

“There is clear evidence that much of the oil is still below the surface in subsurface plumes,” said Tom Frazer, Associate Director of the University of Florida School of Forest Resources and Conservation Program in Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences.

“They are hard to quantify because when that water moves again, the rate of movement is something we don’t fully understand. We don’t know exactly where all of it is, but we are pretty sure that there is a fair amount of oil still on the bottom,” Frazer said.

UF scientists believe it could take years to quantify the ecological damage in the Gulf.

“It probably needs some number of years of work because it is a large ecosystem,” said Karl Havens, Director of Florida Sea Grant and Chair of UF Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences.

“There may be oil down in very deep water spread over a large area, so just surveying and mapping where it is and how it changes over time – that will take a while. Hydrocarbons moving up through the food web and affecting reproduction of fish and things like that, you really wouldn’t be able to see that unless you had sampling over a relatively long period of time,”

UF scientists have also concluded that the assessment of the Gulf is further exacerbated due to lack of data.

“It’s hard to say what are the effects of the oil spill on the Gulf of Mexico because there wasn’t a good long-term ecological monitoring program in the Gulf. Having something like that in place is just as important as going and studying where is the oil,” Havens said.

Resources and funds will be made available for sea grant institutions like UF to conduct research into the future and to keep long-term ecological records of the Gulf.

“There is going to be almost $500 million available over the next 10 years to do much more comprehensive research, and that will be for the entire Gulf of Mexico region. Some of that money might be used by researchers here,” Havens said.

Despite ample resources and expertise, UF researches have their work cut out for them.

“I think we are going to have questions for a long time,” Frazer said. “Even though the oil is no longer flowing, and it’s been six months, we still have a lot of activity. You saw the same thing with the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Work and research is carried out for a long time.”