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Oil
threat a potential ‘disaster'
By
Kevin Wadlow Senior Staff Writer
kwadlow@keynoter.com
U.S. lawmakers battle
Cuba's plans for drilling
Seventeen years ago, the Florida Keys resounded with a battle cry: “No
Valdez in the Keys!”
A no-drilling campaign, mounted to protest plans to lease ocean bottom
near the Keys reef tract to oil drillers, drew inspiration from the
Exxon Valdez disaster that coated the shores of Alaska's Prince William
Sound with a thick film of spilled oil in March 1989.
Since the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary Act was passed by
Congress in 1990, local concern about drilling shifted to focus on the
Gulf of Mexico.
Now,
the oceanside threat has returned.
Cuba dictator Fidel Castro is pushing a plan to drill in Cuban national
waters of the Florida Straits - perhaps as close as 20 miles to the
southern boundary of the Keys marine sanctuary.
“This is probably the biggest threat we've faced environmentally in some
time,” said Todd Firm, a Key Largo dive shop owner who represents the
dive industry on the Keys' Sanctuary Advisory Council.
“If
an oil spill occurred in Cuban waters, as the rafters get here, so would
the oil,” Firm said. “That would do a number on us all.”
The nonprofit Reef Relief organization, based in Key West, has focused
its oil-drilling attention in recent years on leasing plans for the Gulf
of Mexico, where spill likely would get caught in a loop current and be
carried to the Keys.
“We've all made such strong efforts to protect the shores of the Keys,
this [Cuban plan] is an alarming prospect for the reefs of the Keys,”
Reef Relief Executive Director DeeVon Quirolo said.
Group
founder Craig Quirolo said he remembers a sailing trip where they caught
a Gulf Stream current just off the Havana coast and rode it “straight
into Key West Harbor,” he said.
“The Gulf Stream meanders and is not as consistent as the Gulf loop
current,” he said, “but if the conditions were right, the potential for
a disaster is certainly there.”
Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson has authored a bill to let an
international trade agreement with Cuba expire unless the island nation
vows to keep oil rigs away from the Florida Straits and the Keys.
“At risk are the Florida Keys and the state's tourism economy, not to
mention the $8 billion that Congress is investing to restore the
Everglades,” Nelson said in a prepared statement.
The 1977 Maritime Boundary Agreement, which divides control of the 90
miles of sea between Cuba and the Keys, must be renewed every two years.
It was last renewed in 2004.
Other senators, concerned about the high cost of oil and gasoline, say
the time has come to expand offshore drilling near the U.S.
The Keys Sanctuary Advisory Council earlier this year passed a
resolution opposing Gulf of Mexico drilling, Firm said.
Now the Florida Straits threat seems to dwarf that threat, he said.
“What would happen if Cuba brings in the Chinese to drill? Neither of
them have the most stringent environmental records,” he said. “They
could have a spill and not care a darn.” |
