Oceana North America: Send your letter to Sec Ken Salazar

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Take Action
Save Both Coasts from Offshore Drilling

Protect our oceans for offshore drilling

In their recent proposed offshore drilling plan, President Obama and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar cancelled oil and gas lease sales in certain areas in Alaska and protected the entire West Coast. But in the same plan, they opened up millions of acres off the East Coast to offshore drilling exploration.

If science and precaution are guiding principals on the West Coast, shouldn't they be on the East Coast and throughout all of Alaska as well?

Tell Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar to protect our beaches, coastlines, marine wildlife, and oceans - on both coasts. The comment period closes on Monday May 3, so speak up today.


http://takeaction.oceana.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=46&utm_source=beacon&utm_medium=oceana&utm_campaign=offshore%2Bdrilling

Letter:

I am writing today to encourage you to let science, not politics, guide decisions about energy and our ocean resources. I urge you to protect the nation’s beaches, coastlines, marine wildlife and our oceans, as well as the livelihoods of those coastal communities that rely on healthy oceans.

The recent announcement about offshore drilling contains some steps in the right direction. I support the decision to cancel scheduled lease sales in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, to remove Bristol Bay from consideration for future leasing, and to protect the coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington by keeping them closed to offshore drilling. I am also very encouraged by your decision to gather more science about the Arctic Ocean before allowing any new leasing to occur there.

The government should be guided by that example for other decisions about offshore drilling. There is no need to open new areas on the East Coast or in the Eastern Gulf to leasing or exploration. Nor is there any reason to stick with the lease-at-all-costs decisions made by the Bush administration. Please cancel the leases sold under the contentious Lease Sale 193 and exploration proposals in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas and remove Lease Sale 220 in Virginia from your plan. These sensitive areas in Alaska and on the East Coast should remain closed to new leasing or exploration.

In addition, I strongly urge you not to open new areas on the East Coast to seismic exploration – there simply is not enough information on impacts seismic testing has on marine life, and the information we do have suggests that it can be very harmful to a variety of species including some that are endangered, and threatened, as well as some that are important commercially. Rather than leasing or drilling, we should concentrate on moving toward safe and clean energy from our oceans, such as offshore wind power.

We need to better understand how our oceans work and what effects industrial activities, like oil and gas exploration and drilling, could have. Our oceans are too important to risk for negligible, short-term gain. The recent explosion and spill in the Gulf of Mexico is just the most recent example of the dangers to human life and the marine environment from offshore drilling. But it won’t be the last.

Americans want energy and healthy oceans and you have the opportunity to craft an ocean and energy policy for the future that meets those goals. There is a way to do this right—to let science guide these decisions—and I encourage you to make that happen.

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1. Main website

http://na.oceana.org/

Very nicely done.

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