While the federal and Gulf Coast governments have largely ceded the role of stopping and cleaning up the huge environmental disaster caused by the explosion and eventual sinking of the Deep Horizon well, British Petroleum also spent the weekend pursuing a different agenda with locals: stopping lawsuits and cleaning up their PR image.

This effort comes at a critical time. The oil slick, currently the size of Puerto Rico, is beginning to paint local coastlines. Communities that make their money from the water face “minimum” 10-day fishing bans, and the mood from Louisiana to the Florida panhandle is angry—and scared.

So BP has dispatched a litigation mitigation team, which held public information meetings in small towns along the Gulf Coast this weekend. The pitch to local fishermen, business owners and local officials, based on one such meeting in Bayou La Batre, Alabama, a small commercial fishing village: You don’t need to hire lawyer. Instead, call a BP hotline, and claim total damages for yourself and your businesses of up to $5,000. The damaged individuals and businesses would be required to sign BP paperwork, company officials said.

The exact nature of that paperwork wasn’t made clear. (A local BP representative referred questions to a national spokesman, who wasn’t available for comment last night.) But Bayou La Batre Mayor Stan Wright told the hundreds that packed the community center that he feared it would require them to forfeit their right to sue in the future. “Let me say this as your friend,” the mayor told the attendees. “If you take one penny from BP make sure you don’t sign a release form….if this thing lasts 10 years, you can forget about it.”

He received applause when he told the fishermen to work through their trade associations and “don’t work through BP.”

And so the arse covering begins…