NRDC President Frances Beinecke was appointed in June by President Obama to the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. This interview, her first since that appointment, accompanies a series of essays in our Fall 2010 issue from leading environmental writers and thinkers on the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

You went down to the Gulf about three weeks after the spill. What were your first impressions?

It was an initiation into the culture of the Gulf and what the impact had been on people at a personal level. This was before the oil had come ashore, and the fear of the unknown was very palpable. We went out on an oyster boat near Venice, Louisiana. It was a gorgeous day, and there were lots of boats out there dredging up oysters, picking out the right ones, throwing away the shells. People told us wonderful stories about the oystering culture, how it goes back generations, how many hurricanes they’d been blown away by, and how they’d always come back. It was pretty magical. And then we got back to the dock and they found out the oyster fishery had just been closed. It was devastating.

How do people see the prospects now for long-term recovery?

There’s a lot of fear, although that may recede a bit now that the well is capped -- at least we hope it’s capped. There’s still tremendous uncertainty about how long this will last. How quickly will the ecosystem recover -- if ever? The oil and gas industry can’t wait to get back and resume work. But how do we ensure that’s compatible with sustaining an environment as valuable and rich as this in the long term?

You obviously see the human impacts and the environmental impacts as closely related.

Totally. An enormous amount of their economic activity relies on clean, abundant natural resources. The fishermen’s livelihood depends on harvesting oysters and shrimp. The hotel owners in Alabama are selling clean beaches, so it has a huge impact on them too. Why do people go to Louisiana? For the music and the food. Well, where does the food come from? From the Gulf.

How did it feel to be appointed to the commission?

Obviously I felt it was a great confirmation of the high regard in which NRDC is held. This is the biggest environmental disaster I’ve ever experienced, and if there is a role I can play to ensure it doesn’t happen again, that we can have the right kind of government oversight and safeguards, that’s a real contribution. I actually started my career working on offshore oil and gas leasing in the late 1970s and early 1980s. But in those days we didn’t look at the Gulf. I think we assumed that oil and gas was a mature industry there and that the infrastructure was in place. But as we’ve seen, accidents can happen anywhere.

So you see this basically as an accident?

We’ll find out. We’ll investigate whether this was a unique accident or whether it was the result of conditions that reflect how the industry does business in general. I don’t prejudge that at all. But one thing that is crystal clear is that there are very serious questions about whether the Minerals Management Service was doing the kind of environmental review, oversight, and enforcement that is expected of it.

There has been some controversy about your appointment.

People on all sides are very emotional about this. There’s been criticism that the panel isn’t balanced, that there isn’t adequate representation on the oil and gas side. But my response is that we have a staff and we can hire experts. We’ve already hired someone with decades of background in the drilling industry.

When you asked about chemical dispersants in the commission hearings, the audience responded very emotionally.

There are tremendous unknowns with dispersants. We don’t have any more information about their long-term effects today than we had in 1989, when they were used after the Exxon Valdez spill. Once you disperse all these microscopic pieces of oil in the water column, what happens to it? Is the oil there forever? So we need a better understanding of the safe level of use and how it is monitored on an ongoing basis.

Another controversial question for people in the Gulf is the moratorium on offshore drilling.

Listen, the whole country is in a recession. And in the Gulf it’s exacerbated by a complete work stoppage in their single biggest economic driver, which is fisheries. And then the moratorium affects the most lucrative part of their economy, oil and gas. So I completely understand their anxiety. Right now there is a temporary stoppage to assess what went wrong and whether existing deepwater rigs can be operated safely. That’s a question that has to be answered. A temporary moratorium may result in some dislocation, but I’m confident the rigs will be back as long as there is oil in the Gulf to recover.

Do you worry that the commission’s report will just end up sitting on a shelf?

I actually think these commissions do have an impact. The investigation we intend to do will be very revealing about the causes of the disaster. Was it about engineering, or human error, or lack of government oversight, or all the above? When those responsible are held accountable, I think that will change the psychology, if not the actual regulations -- though I hope it will do that too. We have a responsibility to the public to tell the story clearly and accurately, and our recommendations will be a template for the reforms we need going forward.