opinion

Editorial: No drilling off the Jersey Shore

The environmental advocacy corps in New Jersey is a strong one, with a long tradition and lots of training and experience in fighting shortsighted plans by politicians who care little if anything for clean land, air and water. Those groups and the thousands of New Jerseyans who support them must now mobilize to put a stop to any proposals put forward by the Trump administration to expand offshore drilling in the Atlantic, and especially as it concerns our cherished Jersey Shore.

Last week, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke unveiled preliminary plans that would provide 47 lease sales for 90 percent of the outer continental shelf for potential oil and gas drilling, including not only the Atlantic sea floor from Florida to Maine, but also much of Alaska, the Pacific coast and the Gulf of Mexico. Any such expansion would reverse a ban on drilling in those areas put in place by the Obama administration, and constitutes a direct threat to the Jersey Shore — and to the economy, marine life and communities that thrive there.

As Staff Writer James M. O’Neill reported, New Jersey officials — including Gov. Chris Christie — have long opposed drilling in the Atlantic because any potential spill like the one that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 would not only harm the environment, but place the state’s estimated $700 billion in coastal properties at risk. Indeed, New Jersey’s $45 million Shore-based tourism industry and its commercial fishing industry, which generates $8 billion annually and supports about 50,000 jobs, could also be impaired by any spill.

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As dismal as the news of proposed expanded drilling was to hear, it was also heartening to read the comments of various environmental entities that stand determined to fight, as they have been forced to fight so many times before, one more bad idea aimed at championing corporate profits over the environmental health and welfare of New Jersey and its residents.

“What’s happening here is a dream scenario for big oil — but a nightmare for our shore communities,” Sen. Bob Menendez said in remarks delivered last week in Long Branch. “It’s a gift to corporate polluters at the expense of our coastal economies. We’ve been through this fight before — and we’ve won.”

“Hell hath no fury like the Jersey Shore threatened by big oil,” said Cindy Zipf, executive director of Clean Ocean Action. “We will face this attack like we have every other.”

Few fights, however, will be more important. As Zipf noted, every New Jersey governor since Tom Kean has been opposed to offshore drilling. Indeed, Christie himself, in a rare rebuke to the Trump administration, spoke against any potential drilling last August, citing “the potential negative impacts to New Jersey’s natural resources, coastal communities and economy.”

Pushing back against this potential drilling is more critical than ever, since the administration also recently announced it would be rolling back oil drilling safety protocols put in place after the deadly Deepwater Horizon explosion and BP spill in 2010 that dumped more than 200 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

Instead of opening new drilling sites, the nation should be continuing to explore various alternative fuel sources and technologies that have been made prolific in the last decade. Tapping oil reserves off the Atlantic seaboard should be considered only in a case of extreme emergency or national security threat.

Menendez is right: An oil spill the size and scope of the Deepwater Horizon accident would be a nightmare for New Jersey, in more ways than one. We call on every public official, Democrat and Republican, state- and nationally elected, to lend their voice in opposition to this shortsighted plan that holds no upside for the Garden State.