Attorney worries spill is old news

TAMPA - Attorney Steve Yerrid, the Governor's lead attorney in the BP fight, says he's worrying about fading public interest in the spill and its implications.

"It's gone," Yerrid said. "Yesterday's news. I really hope that I'm wrong. I hope the propaganda being put out is right, that Mother Nature took care of this disastrous oil spill."

Yerrid points to BP's TV commercials claiming it's got to make things right.

"I don't believe everything I see on TV, and I certainly don't believe they are making it right. We need to make it right, 100 percent right, and then we need to work about restoring what's been taken," Yerrid said.

While more and more Bay Area fishermen are suing, unconvinced, so far from the actual spill, they'll be reimbursed for their losses.

Yerrid is pushing for patience.

"We've gotta keep our powder dry," he says. "One thing Governor Crist has said and told me repeatedly is that we have to be ready for a worst-case scenario and a resort to litigation, but it's not what we need to do now."

The Governor's lawyer has the same advice for local resorts and hotels denied their BP claims.

"I don't think you've gotta have oil on the beach to get a legitimate, valid claim," Yerrid said.

"People that were once taking weddings, graduations, reunions to our West Coast are now going to Myrtle Beach, they're going to California because of the anticipation not only of the oil on the beach, but what is in the water that we can't see?"

That is, of course, critics say, the 900-pound gorilla in the room.