Dear San Franciscan,

In 1969, California experienced one of the worst oil spills in the history of our nation. The Santa Barbara oil spill altered the course of environmental protection, making California one of the leaders in spearheading offshore oil drilling restrictions.   

Today, the President has stated his intent to open more than a million acres of public and private land in California, our Atlantic and Pacific coasts and Alaskan wilderness to drilling. The new offshore oil and gas leasing program, if implemented, would jeopardize the local economies that support coastal states and would put the livelihoods of millions of Americans at risk. That is why we introduced legislation to "Protect our Coast".  

This week, the House passed three anti-drilling bills, H.R. 1146, which repeals a provision of the Republican tax bill that opened the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil and gas development, as well as H.R. 1941 and H.R. 205, which place a permanent moratorium on offshore oil and gas leases on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico. I believe these measures are a key step toward ending a dangerous practice that threatens our nation’s coastal communities, oceans, national parks, marine life and climate.

Californians love their beaches. Tourism, outdoor recreation, and fishing economies up and down the Pacific rely on healthy marine and coastal resources. These job-creating industries that support coastal economies are not compatible with the potential harm of offshore oil and gas development, and in the face of climate change, offshore drilling is unwanted by the many coastal states that are trying to decrease their reliance on fossil fuels.

We all have a moral responsibility to pass this planet on to future generations in a healthy, sustainable way and House Democrats will continue to fight to protect coastal communities from offshore drilling. The consequences of exploration for oil and offshore drilling have no boundaries and would be devastating to our coastal communities.