Oil-drilling order alarms Fla. leaders

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, DFla., warned Monday that President Donald Trump’s embrace of offshore oil drilling poses a threat to Florida’s Atlantic coast — from both distant oil spills that ocean currents could spread on nearby beaches and from the possibility of drilling directly off the southeastern part of the state.

“The oil boys will not stop. They think that they have a friend in the White House, and this is the opening salvo,” Nelson said in response to a presidential executive order signed Friday that could result in more offshore drilling. “Even though it did not mention the eastern seaboard of Florida, just watch out, because it’s coming.”

Nelson appeared with U.S. Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, and Ted Deutch, D-West Boca, at Nova Southeastern University’s oceanographic campus in Dania Beach.

They criticized Trump’s climate and energy policies.

“Keep your ‘drill, baby, drill’ policies away from our vital Florida coasts,” Wasserman Schultz said. Possibly the only thing that could prevent drilling from taking place along the Atlantic Coast in southeast Florida is Trump’s love of his oceanside Mar-a-Lago Club, Deutch said. The region could be spared drilling rigs “maybe selfishly because he doesn’t want to have his views from Mar-a-Lago obscured.”

They said the potential threat to Florida’s coasts, its environment and its economy is too great for partisan politics.

All three Democrats called for a return to what was once an anti-offshore drilling consensus among Florida’s Democratic and Republican elected officials. “There is not a person who lives in Florida on the coastline, a family in Florida who visits our beaches, a small business who thrives on the business generated on our pristine coastline who thinks it’s a good idea of have drilling off our pristine coastline,” Deutch said.

They touted legislation sponsored by Nelson, Wasserman Schultz and U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Sarasota, that would extend a ban on offshore drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. Continuing the ban on drilling in the eastern Gulf is important for the environment and economy of southeast Florida, they said.

The Marine Oil Spill Prevention Act would extend the current eastern ban on drilling at least 125 miles off the Gulf Coast until 2027. The current law, which was originally sponsored by Nelson and former U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., is set to expire in 2022.

The legislation would make oil companies responsible for spill cleanup efforts, direct the Coast Guard to designate areas that are at heightened risk of oil spills and implement measures to reduce the risk, require a review of the government’s responsibility to respond to oil spills, and require long-term environmental research and monitoring for the Gulf of Mexico.

Buchanan wasn’t with the Democrats in Dania Beach but echoed many of their concerns in a statement. “Florida’s beaches are vital to our economy and way of life,” he said. “Our coastal communities depend on a clean and healthy ocean.”

The Democrats said they expect more Republican support for the legislation. But they acknowledged opposition. Nelson said U.S. senators from Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina have been in favor of drilling.

Exhibit A for Buchanan, Deutch, Nelson and Wasserman Schultz was the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, better known to many as the BP oil spill. In addition to the 11 lives lost in the accident, the massive oil spill cause environmental damage and economic wreckage in many Gulf Coast states, including Florida.

Deutch, who represents most of Broward’s coastal communities, recalled images of birds drenched in oil struggling to fly, sea life suffocated by oil, beaches blackened with oil, and Gulf Coast resort towns emptied of visitors.

Southeast Florida was fortunate in 2010, Nelson said. He said the “loop current” hadn’t reached the area of the Gulf affected by the spill that year. As a result, it didn’t bring Deepwater Horizon oil to the shores of South Florida. The loop current originates in the Caribbean Sea, curls around the central Gulf of Mexico and heads through the Florida Straits to join the Gulf Stream.

They said the Deepwater Horizon incident is relevant because of the executive order Trump signed aimed at expanding oil drilling in the Atlantic and Arctic oceans. The president ordered a rollback of regulations implemented under former President Barack Obama that banned drilling in some areas and told the Department of the Interior to reconsider post-Deepwater Horizon safety regulations.

“We’re unleashing American energy and clearing the way for thousands and thousands of high-paying American energy jobs,” Trump said at the White House when he signed the order.