The damage to the coastal environment and marine life caused by the October 2 oil spill is beyond heartbreaking. And I hate to say “told you so” but Democrats in OC have long championed the banning of offshore oil drilling going back years while OC’s Republicans have been nothing but “drill baby drill.”
Rep. Mike Levin, Rep. Katie Porter, former Rep. Harley Rouda have all taken leadership positions on efforts to ban offshore drilling. State Senators Dave Min and Tom Umberg have led the fight in the Sacramento. Meanwhile, Rep. Michelle Steel has asked the Biden Admnistration for disaster relief after voting against disaster relief weeks ago.
From the AmericanIndependent, this:
Rep. Michelle Steel (R-CA) has requested federal help with an oil spill on Oct. 2 in her Southern California district just weeks after she voted to shut down the government and cut off billions of dollars’ worth of federal disaster relief funding, including millions to fight fires and drought in her own state.
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On Sunday, Steel sent a letter to President Joe Biden asking him to authorize a major disaster declaration for Orange County in response to the spill. In her letter, Steel requested “fast action” from Biden to approve the declaration and provide funds to needed for “a swift recovery and the support of assistance efforts for all Californians.”
“It is imperative that the Federal Government assist in recovery efforts,” Steel wrote. “I have serious concerns about the environmental impacts of the spill.”
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Steel’s request for assistance comes just two weeks after her vote on Sept. 21 against the Extending Government Funding and Delivering Emergency Assistance Act. The measure, which passed despite all 211 House Republicans present voting against it, includes funding to keep the government running and suspends the debt ceiling. It also contains $28.6 billion in vital funding for disaster relief, including millions to assist those affected by wildfires and drought in California.
In the 2021-2022 campaign cycle, Steel has benefitted from thousands of dollars in donations connected to the oil and gas industries. According to finance reports filed with the Federal Election Commission, Steel has received $9,871 from the oil and gas industry, with $6,000 of that total coming from political action committees funded by the industry.
Steel, along with her husband, has also held stock in oil and gas companies — including Maverick Resources, Phillips 66, and BP — that are engaged in offshore drilling, according to a financial disclosure report she submitted to the House in 2019.
Contrast Steel’s record with that of Rep. Mike Levin, who introduced a bill last May to ban offshore drilling:
U.S. Representative Mike Levin (D-CA) introduced the American Coasts and Oceans Protection Act to prohibit any new leasing for the exploration, development, or production of oil or natural gas along the Southern California coast, from San Diego to the northern border of San Luis Obispo County. The House Natural Resources Committee announced it will hold a hearing on Levin’s bill and other offshore drilling legislation on Thursday, May 13, 2021.
“The Southern California coast is home to world-renowned beaches, cherished marine life, and billions of dollars in ocean-based economic activity that are central to our quality of life but are threatened by offshore drilling,” said Rep. Levin. “Oil spills from offshore drilling have done devastating damage to our coastline before, which is why Californians overwhelmingly support a ban on new drilling activity along our coast. My bill to ban new offshore drilling leases recognizes that it’s time to put our environment and our coastal economy first, not the fossil fuel companies that profit while polluting our coastline.”
In San Diego and Orange Counties, the ocean economy accounts for roughly $7.7 billion dollars in economic activity and sustains more than 140,000 jobs in coastal tourism and recreation. Fishing, tourism, and recreation along California’s coastline supports nearly 600,000 jobs and roughly $42.3 billion in economy activity. More than 4 million gallons of oil have been released into the Pacific Ocean as a result of the 1969 Santa Barbara blowout, the Refugio Beach spill of 2015, and other leaks from oil rig and pipeline activity, affecting more than 935 square miles of ocean.
As a member of the House Natural Resources Committee and the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, Representative Levin is a leader in the fight to combat climate change, protect the environment, and expand clean energy. With over 50 miles of beautiful California coastline in the 49th District, Rep. Levin is particularly concerned about protecting our beaches, oceans, marine life, and coastal businesses from future oil spills. One of the first bills he signed onto in the 116th Congress was the Coastal and Marine Economies Protection Act, which sought to block new offshore drilling along the Atlantic and Pacific coastlines, as well as the Arctic Cultural and Coastal Plain Protection Act to prevent drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.
Next year, Steel will face off against former Rep. Harley Rouda who has a long history of speaking out against offshore drilling.
Rouda wrote this in 2018:
The risk that offshore drilling – and burning fossil fuels more broadly – poses to our planet by exacerbating climate change are monumental. The twenty warmest years on record have all come since 1995, and climate change has been linked to rising sea levels, ocean acidification, more extreme weather patterns, more intense storms, and has been cited by the Department of Defense as one our greatest national security threats. At a time when scientists are saying a majority of all fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground in order to keep global temperature rise under 2 degrees Celsius, expanding offshore oil drilling takes us in the opposite direction that we need to go.
Offshore drilling isn’t just bad for the environment – it’s bad economic policy, too. California’s beautiful coastline is one of the state’s biggest economic assets –a 2015 report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) found that the coastal tourism and recreation industries supply California with $17.6 billion per year and creates over 360,000 jobs. The same study found that these industries alone provided more than $1 billion in GDP for San Diego, Orange, and Los Angeles counties. While environmental arguments often fall on deaf ears when talking to Republicans in Congress, protecting our coastline from an economically damaging oil spill should be a bipartisan effort. Just last month, Republican California Governor Pete Wilson was quoted as saying “The California coastline is a national treasure. Our coastline also contains valuable resources available for economic activity and the enjoyment by citizens in our state and by visitors from around the nation and the world. We need not risk new drilling in areas offshore that pose a significant and needless threat.”
In Congress, Rouda was active on legislation regarding offshore drilling. From OC Breeze:
Rep. Harley Rouda (CA-48) voted to pass H.R. 1941, a bill that bans new drilling off the Pacific and Atlantic Coasts and Straits of Florida. The bill passed with two amendments authored by Congressman Rouda.
Said Rouda, “California is home to more than 800 miles of coastline, and its coastal economies annually generate hundreds of billions of dollars in wages nationally and nearly $2 trillion in GDP. A disaster could put at risk nearly 746,000 West Coast jobs and $53 billion in GDP that relies on healthy ocean ecosystems and a clean marine environment.”
“Offshore drilling disasters impact more than just coastal communities – it impacts future generations of Americans. Citizens deserve to know which companies are drilling off our shores, the locations of their facilities, and the safety and state of their operations.”
Amendment 1: Makes public the inspection information and payments into the “Ocean Energy Safety Fund,” required by H.R. 1941.
Amendment 2: Adds a provision to the bill that would require the Department of Commerce to complete an economic impact study of potential damage related to offshore drilling.
Rep. Katie Porter tweeted: “Big Oil’s offshore drilling puts the health of our communities, our local economies, and our planet at risk. Cleaning up this spill is not enough; we need to stop these disasters from happening in the first place. #NoMoreOffshoreDrilling.”