Opponents dominate NJ hearing on plan to allow offshore drilling along Eastern Seaboard

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Opponents dominate NJ hearing on offshore drilling

NEWARK, N.J. — Public testimony at a hearing in New Jersey Tuesday was overwhelmingly against President Barack Obama’s plan to allow oil and gas drilling in the Atlantic Ocean.

State residents and representatives of environmental groups told federal officials that they feared for the state’s already compromised economy and environment. They were joined by a smattering of drilling proponents at one of the first hearings on the issue since an explosion at an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico renewed concerns about offshore drilling.

The federal Minerals Management Service hearing was officially about whether to authorize seismic testing in the Outer Continental Shelf, a precursor to drilling. But nearly everyone who testified referenced the oil rig explosion that killed as many as 11 missing workers and is spewing 42,000 gallons per day of crude into the gulf off the Louisiana coast.

“New Jersey has already done too little to contend with the devastating pollution to our waterways and air quality in the wake of industrial and chemical wastes being developed and dumped every day,” said Deborah Beal of Ridgefield Park.

Obama last month announced an expansive new policy that could put new oil and natural gas platforms in waters along the South Atlantic coast from central Florida to Delaware.

Jeff Tittel of the New Jersey Sierra Club said the Obama administration is “going in the wrong direction” by promoting oil and gas exploration in the Atlantic when it should be promoting clean energy and green jobs.

But James Benton, executive director for New Jersey’s Petroleum Council and one of a handful of proponents at Tuesday’s hearing, said tapping the Eastern Seaboard’s oil and gas reserves would fuel the economy as it recovers from the recession. Despite the accident in the Gulf, Benton said he still believes it is right to drill in the Outer Continental Shelf.

“Such an event is one of the rarest of industrial accidents,” he said. “Oil and gas companies are determined to learn from it and work extremely hard to prevent a recurrence.”

Others said the destruction to wildlife would begin with seismic tests designed to map the ocean floor for oil and gas deposits.

“Whales depend on sound for their survival,” said John Weber of the Surfrider Foundation, which opposes offshore drilling. “They use sound to find food, to find mates and to interact socially. Intense undersea noise from air gun blasts will interfere with those processes threatening these whales’ survival.”

In announcing his plan, Obama said expanding domestic production of oil will lessen America’s foreign dependence on energy.

That position has gotten little support in New Jersey. The state’s two Democratic U.S. senators and Republican governor all oppose offshore drilling, which could come to within 10 miles of the state’s southern tip, the popular and environmentally fragile tourist destination of Cape May.

A spill could be devastating to the state’s $39 billion tourist industry along the shore and Atlantic City casinos. The commercial fishing industry also would be battered.

“I don’t know why the government is pursuing this,” said Deborah Chaiken of Palmyra. “All of the damage it will do to the oceans, which are already polluted almost to the point of no return … to our whole planet, couldn’t possibly be worth the little bit of energy we will get.”

Hearings also are scheduled this week in Wilmington, Del., Norfolk, Va., and Charleston, S.C.

Florida’s Republican governor, Charlie Crist, said the oil leak fouling the Gulf has him rethinking whether drilling off his state’s coast is a good idea.

Republicans in Florida have been pushing the idea of drilling within 10 miles of the coast. Crist has said he’s willing to listen as long as drilling is far enough, clean enough and safe enough to protect the state’s beaches. But Crist said Tuesday that something is wrong if the explosion doesn’t give people pause.

The oil slick is now within about 90 miles of Pensacola’s beaches.