Today we celebrate the 41st Earth Day. We also mark one year since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig sank to bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. On April 20, 2010, the platform exploded, killing 11 workers. The rig disappeared beneath the water's surface two days later, but for 87 days more than 4 million barrels of oil spewed from the blown-out Macondo well, coating nearly 1,000 miles of Gulf coastline and temporarily closing over 88,000 square miles of some of the nation's most productive fishing grounds. A repeat incident in the Gulf of Mexico would cripple the region's still-devastated economy. An accident off of the U.S. East Coast would endanger over 200,000 jobs and $12 billion associated with New Jersey's fishing and tourism industries - and that is not even counting the indirect effects as this money flows through our local economies. Yet legislation currently making its way through Congress would increase the likelihood of future oil spills in both regions by accelerating offshore drilling without proper safety and environmental reviews.
Last week, the House Committee on Natural Resources advanced three offshore drilling bills that the Republican leadership has indicated will receive votes on the House floor in early May. The first of these bills would impose artificial and arbitrary deadlines on the Department of Interior to approve permits to drill - even if safety and environmental reviews are unfinished. The second would force the Interior Department to rush into leasing new oil and gas tracts in the Gulf of Mexico without updating the inadequate environmental reviews conducted prior to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, and it would mandate a lease sale off the coast of Virginia - a mere 90 miles from the coast of New Jersey. The third bill would go even further and open up massive new swaths the East and West Coasts to drilling, including all of California as well as the mid- and North-Atlantic coasts.
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