Thompson floats no-drill bill'

Eureka Times Standard

Rep. Mike Thompson has lodged legislation aimed at permanently protecting the North Coast from oil and gas drilling after recent moves by the federal government to pursue oil exploration.

The bill would prevent drilling along the Humboldt, Mendocino and Del Norte coasts outside the 3-mile state jurisdiction. A ban on drilling on the outer continental shelf died in the last Congress, and the U.S. Interior Department quickly moved to open some areas for exploration.

Thompson said that drilling off the California coast could threaten a critical area of ocean in which upwelling brings nutrients from the sea floor and energizes the food chain critical for fisheries, one of few such regions in the world.

"Drilling on the North Coast doesn't make sense, either from an economic standpoint or an environmental perspective," said the St. Helena Democrat. "By permanently banning drilling, we can provide our coast with the protection it needs, regardless of who is in charge in Washington."

Millions of gallons of oil spilled onto Santa Barbara area beaches from an oil platform accident in 1969, and a Congressional moratorium on drilling went into place in 1981, but had to be renewed each year.

Assemblyman Wesley Chesbro, D-Arcata, said the state had to fight every year to get the moratorium into the budget to prevent the Interior Department from proceeding with exploration. By the 1990s, he said, a bipartisan consensus was reached
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on the idea that some areas should be protected.

"We saw how tenuous that protection was when it became a political football during the presidential campaign," Chesbro said.

A number of areas off the California coast -- including off the Eel River delta -- are rich in oil and gas and have been eyed in the past by the oil industry. Those regions aren't protected like the designated marine sanctuaries from Monterey to southern Sonoma County.

Spills from the vessels Kure and Stuyvesant in 1997 and 1999 killed thousands of birds in the Humboldt Bay area, something environmentalists fear could happen again if oil spills from a platform offshore.

Pete Nichols with Humboldt Baykeeper said Thompson's bill is welcome and should have support from Congress and the incoming president, Barack Obama.

"This may be at least a way to get the discussion back on the table," Nichols said.