SHELL BEACH, La. -- Lisa Jackson remembers fishing with her father and her older brother in this tiny town about 30 miles east of her native New Orleans.

Now the U.S. EPA administrator, Jackson returned to the village in the wake of a massive oil spill that threatens to devastate Gulf Coast fisheries and tourism.

Louisiana shut down fishing last week, and the Obama administration restricted fishing yesterday for at least 10 days in federal waters, where oil is gushing from BP PLC's capsized Deepwater Horizon rig. BP and federal officials are struggling to stem the flow of oil and to mitigate its threat to natural resources and the regional economy.

Jackson walked through a parking lot paved with crushed oyster shells here Saturday, greeting fishermen who are hoping to be hired by BP to assist with the cleanup efforts. Jackson and other officials have been urging the oil giant to hire fishermen to help lay booms in the effort to keep oil out of the marshes and away from other sensitive marine resources.

U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson speaks with fishermen at Shell Beach, La. Photo by Robin Bravender.

The trip here was one of several in Louisiana after she was dispatched as part of the White House's oil-response team. Throughout the weekend, she met with state and local officials and with community and religious leaders and joined President Obama during his visit to the Gulf Coast yesterday.

Jackson's agency is monitoring regional air and water quality. It is also prepared to assist with the cleanup once the oil reaches the shoreline.

In the meantime, Jackson, who grew up in New Orleans' Pontchartrain Park, said she is hoping to soothe a community ravaged by environmental disasters, most notably, Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

"There's a sense of sort of panic and fear in their eyes that isn't normal for an oil spill, even normal for a hurricane," she said. "But this is like another repeat concern."

At a meeting Saturday with community members in New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward -- one of the areas hit hardest by post-Katrina flooding -- scared and angry residents pressed Jackson about what they called a scarcity of information about the oil spill.

Residents say they want to be included in the spill recovery in a way they believe they were excluded after Katrina. "We need to have people that we can trust to bring information to us," Mary Fontenot of the group All Congregations Together told Jackson.

Alice Craft-Kerney of the Lower 9th Ward Health Clinic urged the administration to protect the mental health of residents affected by the spill. "We are not well," she told Jackson.

The spill is not adding insult to injury, she said, "it's adding injury to injury."

In an interview after the meeting, Jackson said she feels determined to reach out to Gulf Coast communities.

"We're dealing with a population that needs extra love and extra attention and consideration because of what they have been through," Jackson said.

"They just feel like they've been through wars, so they're overly sensitized," she said. "Everything causes them to be panicky and prickly and a little bit paranoid because they don't know who to trust, and they don't know if really there's something much worse going on but they're just not being told because people don't want them to know, and that's all fair."

That is part of the reason that BP hiring fishermen is a victory, she said.

"They're being mobilized to actually respond, so they're not standing on the side just feeling like they've been swooped in on," she said.

Jackson said she is glad she can be here to offer her support during the crisis. That is something she was not around to do after Katrina.

The house where Jackson grew up was badly damaged during the hurricane, according to an Associated Press report, and Jackson did not return to help her mother with the cleanup because she was under consideration to be then-New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine's (D) top environmental aide.

"The last time, I had a job that didn't allow me to come back," she said. "This one not only allows me to come back, it sort of demands that I come back, and I feel like I'm in a unique position to make a real difference."