With the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management moving closer toward decisions on Atlantic oil and gas leasing, the political competition is heating up among states and coastal communities.
Even states with nominal majority support in favor of exploration have significant opposition. This includes South Carolina, where Charleston, Beaufort and other cities with prosperous coastal tourism insist the risks of potential oil and gas production are not worth it.
That opposition movement has built enough momentum for South Carolina environmental regulators to ask BOEM for additional restrictions on seismic surveys during times of sea turtle migrations.
It’s a flexing of state power under the little-known Coastal Zone Management Act, a federal law passed more than 30 years ago that allows governors of coastal states some say in important ocean policy decisions in federal waters.
The administration of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is sueing the CZMA in a court challenge of federal permits granted for a scientific seismic survey off that state’s coast in the past month. With the survey ended, a court hearing sought by fishing and environmental groups was cancelled.
Considerable rancor remains between those advocates and scientists conducting the study at Rutgers University and Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Institute of Earth Sciences.
But New Jersey environmental officials are still pursuing their side of the case in court. Their approach helped their South Carolina counterparts formulate their position on seismic surveys for energy leasing, said Cynthia Zipf of Clean Ocean Action, the group that organized opposition to the Rutgers/Columbia project. “The South Carolina people called up here to ask how they did it,” Zipf said.
The Carolinas may be the most strikingly divided of the states. Conservative Republican strongholds that are supportive of energy and resource development also have populous seaside counties that depend on tourism and fishing. That’s triggered some dueling legislation in Congress.
After Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., offered an amendment to a Department of Interior funding bill to ensure that Atlantic waters are not excluded from leasing, Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., countered with a bill to block any leases for five years.
Then, in the deeply weird way Congress often works these days, a true South Carolina tragedy intervened. As Bo Petersen, environmental reporter at The Post and Courier of Charleston reported, debate on the Interior bill was suspended last week in a furor, after another member put in yet another amendment: To guarantee Confederate flags can still be flown over Confederate soldiers’ graves. Stay tuned, this debate is likely to get more complicated.
