Don’t let Florida get played on oil drilling

Floridians should be skeptical of the Trump administration’s announcement that oil drilling near our coast is “off the table.”

The Interior Department spent eight months developing its drilling plan after President Trump demanded the expansion. Yet supposedly it took just a 20-minute chat on Tuesday with Gov. Rick Scott for Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to exempt Florida because the governor is “straightforward, easy to work with.”

In our previous editorial opposing Trump’s plan, which sought to open nearly all federal offshore waters to drilling, we noted that criticism had been bipartisan. When Zinke said he would spare Florida, reaction was the same.

Republican governors in Maryland and South Carolina, both of whom are up for reelection this year, wondered why their coastlines remain in the drilling plan. Maryland would be uniquely at risk from an oil spill that fouled the Chesapeake Bay.

Democrats in California and North Carolina wondered why Zinke didn’t consider their states “obviously unique,” as he said of Florida. U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said his state also has “hundreds of miles of beautiful coastline and a governor who wants to keep it that way. Or is that not enough for (Democratic) states?” Virginia’s Democratic governor asked to meet with Zinke and never heard back.

Predictably, the strongest reaction in Florida came from U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson. Scott is expected to challenge the threeterm Democrat this year. Trump has urged Scott to run. Opposition to drilling has been Nelson’s signature issue. Twelve years ago, he negotiated the moratorium on drilling closer than 125 miles from the coast. That moratorium expires in four years.

By exempting Florida, Zinke makes Scott look like the environmentalist he never has been. “I don’t believe it,” Nelson said. “This is a political stunt orchestrated by the Trump administration to help Rick Scott, who has wanted to drill off Florida’s coast his entire career.”

Though we support protection for the beaches that are vital to Florida’s tourism industry, we have three worries about Zinke’s announcement: There’s no guarantee that the exemption for Florida would be permanent, exempting only Florida still would leave the state at risk and the state can’t trust Scott on this issue.

If Zinke can take Florida “off the table” in January 2018, he could put Florida back on the table in January 2019, after the election. Congressional action to extend the moratorium until 2027 would be much more reassuring. Nelson and his Republican colleague, Marco Rubio, have filed legislation to do that. If Trump and Zinke believe that Florida deserves special protection, they will support it.

A carve-out for Florida also would not remove the threat from drilling. As we noted in the earlier editorial, the BP spill in 2010 happened roughly 40 miles off the Louisiana coast. Because the spill was so massive, however, currents nearly took oil to the Keys and the South Florida coast — hundreds of miles from Panhandle beaches that the oil blackened.

If drills could work 10 miles off other states that border the Gulf of Mexico, Florida would remain under threat. In addition, Trump still wants to weaken or eliminate safety rules that arose from an investigation of the BP spill.

Finally, there is Scott’s own record on expanded offshore drilling. He has said often that he supports it, adding the condition that it must be done safely. When the Interior Department introduced its drilling plan last summer, Scott took no position. Suddenly, though, the governor is a convert.

Then there’s the angle of Trump’s Mara-Lago estate in Palm Beach. Trump’s plan would have opened the Atlantic coast to drilling. Walter Shaub, who ran the U.S. Office of Government Ethics during President Obama’s second term and for six months under Trump, said the administration is “exempting the state that is home to the festering cankerous conflict of interest that the administration likes to call the ‘Winter White House’ and none of the other affected states.”

Those states could challenge the Florida exemption. Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune told The Washington Post that federal law prohibits regulatory decisions from being “arbitrary and capricious.” Claiming that only Scott, among all coastal governors, is straightforward and trustworthy and that only Florida’s coastlines are unique, Brune said, “seems to be the definition of arbitrary and capricious.”

A Scott spokesman said, “This isn’t about politics. This is good policy for Florida.” A Zinke spokeswoman dismissed any skepticism as “pandering.”

Actually, this move could amount to a bait-and-switch. In a letter, Nelson asked Zinke for details of the new plan. Good answers might help, but there’s an even better way: Zinke and Trump could ditch the whole terrible drilling-expansion plan. Why won’t the administration put that on the table?

Editorials are the opinion of the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board and written by one of its members or a designee. The Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Rosemary O’Hara, Elana Simms, Andy Reid and Editor-in-Chief Howard Saltz.