|
Take decisive action to
stop offshore drilling
An open letter to our
Florida Sens. Nelson and Martinez, U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and
Florida Gov., Jeb Bush:
Reef Relief is a
nonprofit grassroots membership organization that protects coral reefs.
Our thousands of members throughout the United States encourage you to
support the strongest possible protection for
Florida
and other fragile marine environments from the impacts of offshore oil
and gas exploration and development, including additional efforts to
expand exclusionary zones, extend presidential and congressional
moratoria, and defeat legislation to open up our coast to offshore oil.
We support the Permanent
Protection for Florida Act, ... as do many other environmental
organizations. However, we encourage you to work for the strongest
possible protections and larger exclusionary zones via this legislation.
[U.S.
Department of] Interior's new five year plan and the Domenici bill must
be stopped. We've worked too hard for too many years to lose valuable
protections earned in past years that prevent such oil drilling in
Florida.
Our coral reefs,
mangroves, seagrasses, beaches, fisheries, endangered species, tourism
and quality of life depend upon clean ocean waters. Please do your part
to protect them from the impacts of drilling muds and spills, which can
be carried great distances by the Gulf Loop Current onto Florida's
coasts. Routine drilling muds release thousands of pounds of toxic
chemicals into the environment, harm fish, corals and marine mammals,
and place Florida at risk of a large or catastrophic spill.
We urge you to:
* Oppose any new offshore
oil and gas leasing, exploration, drilling activity and seismic
inventories affecting Florida's coast;
* Permanently cancel the
90-plus existing and active leases, some as close as 11 miles from our
coast. Compensate the holders of those leases through rents due and
royalty forgiveness for other current drilling activity;
* Support new
congressional moratoria against offshore oil drilling near Florida and
other fragile coastal areas;
* Encourage extension of
the presidential executive order that bans leasing off America's east
and west coasts and parts of Alaska from 2012 to 2020; and
* Cancel any activity in
Lease Sale 181 and establish a 150-mile buffer zone against drilling on
Florida's
east coast.
DeeVon Quirolo
Reef Relief |