Businesses Wait on BP Fines to Repair the Gulf Coast

Jim Marino was preparing to replenish the sand on a shriveling dune in Destin, Fla., when Hurricane Isaac churned up the Gulf Coast this week and washed it away. “All of the dune we were just going to restore is pretty much gone,” along with the beach in front of it, says Marino, president of Taylor Engineering, a 60-employee firm that does coastal restoration for counties and cities.

Headquartered in Jacksonville, on Florida’s Atlantic coast, Taylor is expanding with a new office in Destin, a small Panhandle city wedged between the Gulf of Mexico and the Choctawhatchee Bay. Marino hopes to hire a dozen or more engineers and scientists in the years ahead to help repair the battered Gulf shoreline. Even before Isaac, there was plenty of restoration needed.