Congress debated two bills in 2006 that would significantly undermine Florida’s existing protections against offshore drilling.

The U.S. House passed a bill that would repeal the 25-year-old moratorium against new drilling leases off Florida’s coast and allow drilling as close as 25 miles from Florida’s beaches.

A bill passed by the U.S. Senate provided a stronger buffer zone of protection than the House bill, but gave away 8 million acres of Florida’s gulf waters to the oil industry.

“The good news is that we were able to derail final passage of the terrible House drilling bill. The bad news is that the Senate drilling bill passed in the final hour of the 109th Congress,” said Environment Florida Director Mark Ferrulo.

There are currently no drilling rigs off the Florida coast. When President Bush signed the Senate drilling bill into law on Dec. 20th, Congress and the White House gave the green light to the first production oil drilling rigs in history off Florida’s coast.

However, in other good news for the Save Our Shores campaign, Gov. Charlie Crist outlined a vision for Florida in his inaugural address of a Florida with “coastlines free of oil drilling.” Opening Florida’s shores to drilling would put the state’s beaches and coastal waters at great risk for a small, short-term supply of oil and gas. A small increase in auto fuel efficiency standards would save more oil than exists off the entire coast of Florida, yet federal gas mileage standards haven’t significantly changed in 20 years.

In 2007, Environment Florida’s Save Our Shores campaign will continue to advocate a permanent drilling ban that protects all of Florida’s coastline and marine waters.

Environment Florida testifies before U.S. Interior Department

Last fall, U.S. Interior Department Secretary Dirk Kempthorne and officials from the EPA held a “Cooperative Conservation” public hearing in Orlando. Cooperative Conservation is a White House initiative to join landowners, communities, conservation groups, industry and governmental agencies together to conserve our environment.

Below is an excerpt from testimony by Environment Florida Field Director Holly Binns.

“Cooperative conservation can be an effective tool to protect and conserve wildlife and natural areas, but it should work in concert with, not in place of, our core environmental laws. The Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and Endangered Species Act have all been remarkable successes.

These protections must be strengthened, not weakened; the appropriate agencies must be fully funded; and strong enforcement of these laws must be a priority.

Environment Florida members are particularly concerned about the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed “no protection” policy that effectively eliminates Clean Water Act protections for a number of small streams, wetlands and other water bodies, including 4,000 acres of wetlands here in Florida.

”We strongly urge you to drop this policy and instead make sure that the Clean Water Act protects all of our water bodies here in Florida and across the country.”

MEMBER ACTION:
Visit our site, where you can learn more about Environment Florida’s preservation program, including efforts to strengthen the Endangered Species Act.

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