Rep. Jared Huffman and two other members of Congress on Tuesday kicked off a discussion on offshore oil drilling with a clear message to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke regarding the Trump administration’s plan for California.
“We’re going to make sure that there’s not one drop of oil from new drilling off our coast,” Huffman, D-San Rafael, said to a standing-room-only crowd of more than 200 at the Bay Model Visitor Center in Sausalito.
Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, organized the forum with Huffman and Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, so that a panel of local leaders and experts could talk about the risk and danger of offshore oil drilling and residents could voice their concerns.
“Personally, I can tell you, I am 100-percent against any drilling off our coast,” Thompson said, receiving a round of applause. “It’s foolish and it could be disastrous.” Speier echoed her colleagues’ comments.
“I have a message for President Trump: no way, no how will we ever allow you to drill off the coast of California,” she said.
The Trump administration in January announced a proposal to allow drilling in most U.S. continental-shelf waters, including areas of the Atlantic and the Arctic. At the time, Zinke specified 47 potential areas where energy companies would be allowed to purchase leases between 2019 and 2024.
The same month, Huffman, Thompson and Speier took the lead to send a letter, which is signed by 36 members of California congressional delegation, that urges Zinke to withdraw the plan and highlights Zinke’s subsequent decision to remove Florida’s coasts from the plan.
The members of Congress planned to take comments collected Tuesday to the White House.
Speier pointed out that an oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara in 1969 spewed about 4.2 million gallons of oil into the ocean, devastating recreation, property, the fishing industry and wildlife. Drilling off the California coast has been banned since then.
She also touched on the devastation of the Deepwater Horizon explosion and subsequent spill that released 215 million gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico, fouling beaches in Florida and Louisiana and killing 11 workers.
Speier said that Zinke and the Trump administration refuse to remove California from the plan, “because there is never a day that passes in the White House that the president of this country doesn’t want to stick it to California.”
The forum featured nine panelists, including Sara Aminzadeh, a California coastal commissioner, who said that since the 1980s the commission has taken a position against offshore drilling, saying that it conflicts with the coastal management plan and compromises coastal ecosystems and fishing industries. She has seen the effects of oil spills and called it “disastrous.”
Aminzadeh said the state’s focus has been on clean and renewable energy, and believes that the commission has a case to stop offshore drilling because “it is inconsistent with the goals and the purposes of the California Coastal Act.”
Frances Gulland is a U.S. Marine Mammal commissioner appointed by President Barack Obama, and is a senior scientist at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito. She said that blue whales, beaked whales, gray whales, sea lions and sea otters are in danger if oil drilling comes to the California coast.
She said that more than 25 years ago, the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska killed 4,000 sea otters.
“Which is 1,000 animals more than the entire sea otter population in California,” she said. “So one oil spill can take them all out.”
Other panelists included Lynda Hopkins, a Sonoma County supervisor; Deborah Penrose, mayor of Half Moon Bay; John Largier, professor at the Coastal and Marine Sciences Institute at the University of California at Davis; Deborah Sivas, a Stanford University professor and environmental law expert; David Bitts, president of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fisherman’s Associations; Claudia Vecchio, CEO of Sonoma County Tourism; and Richard Charter, of the Ocean Foundation.
The discussion included comments about how offshore drilling could also affect tourism and the local economy.
After the panelists spoke, comments were taken from the audience.
David Helvarg, executive director of Blue Frontier, a marine conservation organization, said that this is a survival issue for California residents and with that in mind he has helped form a coalition that is participating in the March for the Ocean June 9 in Washington, D.C.
“We just believe the moment is now and we have to turn it around,” he said. “The fish can’t speak … we have to be the voice for the ocean.”
Sandy Aylesworth, oceans advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said it’s a health concern for the community. Historically, oil refineries “disproportionately and negatively harm communities of color” and are situated near backyards and parks where children play, she said.
“This is why today, NRDC is asking all of our California members in Congress to stand with their constituents … to oppose the expanded option of oil and gas drilling here in California or anywhere else in the United States,” she said.
