Protecting and Securing Florida's Coastline Act of 2019
Floor Speech
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Ms. CASTOR of Florida. Madam Chairwoman, I want to thank Chairman Grijalva for being a champion for America's natural resources. In doing so, the gentleman is a champion for jobs and the economy.
We know this in Florida. That is why I rise in strong support of H.R. 205, Protecting and Securing Florida's Coastline Act of 2019.
It is a pleasure to be here on the floor with my Republican colleague, Francis Rooney. He is passionate about protecting the State of Florida because our way of life is at risk when you put oil rigs off of our beaches.
It threatens our way of life. And the gentleman understands very well, as a successful businessman, that when you threaten our way of life, and you threaten our natural environment and our beaches, you are threatening our economy and jobs.
Even though it was 9 years ago, the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster is still fresh in my mind, and it is fresh in the minds of my neighbors who live all across the Gulf Coast. It was devastating.
April 20, 2010. You all probably remember because CNN had the video from the oil well that continued to spew oil into the Gulf of Mexico through May, through all of June, all of July, August, and they didn't cap the well until late in September.
It wreaked havoc not just on Florida's economy and not just on our beautiful environment, but on people's lives. I remember very well holding a woman in my arms who was a small business owner from the Clearwater area. The oil didn't even wash up on the shores of Tampa Bay or the beautiful Pinellas coast beaches, or down to Sanibel Island, but the economy took a hit. They lost everything they had.
It wiped out mom-and-pop businesses, restaurants, hotels, and everyone that relies on clean water and clean beaches for their livelihood. Fishermen couldn't fish. It was a catastrophe. Gulf seafood was off the menu. That meant people weren't coming to the mom-and-pop restaurants for their meals.
In addition to all of that, whether it was deformed fish and species, there was permanent damage to the ecosystem. Researchers that I work with at the University of South Florida say that even today on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico in the trench off of the beautiful Florida Panhandle, there is still a layer of what they call dirty snow.
Because if you remember, they had to pour dispersants and chemicals onto the area of the blowout to make sure that the oil dispersed.
Well, that didn't just disappear. It ended up in the food chain and in the entire ecosystem, and it is still out there today, impacting the food web and everything we love about the State of Florida.
In fact, the University of South Florida's College of Marine Science has done a lot of research on this. They did 12 separate voyages over 7 years on the USF Research Vessel Weatherbird II. They say, interestingly, the areas where you have oil rigs, they have determined that fish species in that area of the Gulf are gone. There is lack of diversity there.
The entire food web is impacted. This is going to impact us for decades to come, and there is no way to make it up. The deep sea is not recovering. In fact, clearly visible abnormalities have been chronicled just recently.
The environmental impact is right in front of us; the economic impact, as well as the impact on small business owners. The U.S. Travel Association estimates that we lost $22 billion due to the BP disaster.
Our bill will ensure that that never happens again because it says permanently. That moratorium that had a bipartisan vote that Congress took in 2006 which said that until 2022, you can't drill in that part of the Eastern Gulf of Mexico, this bill will extend that permanently because this is a dangerous, dirty business.
Florida, over time, has chosen not to industrialize its coastline. Our economy is based on clean beaches and clean water. And Floridians have spoken, by the way. Last November, there was a constitutional amendment on the ballot that said we are going to ban offshore oil drilling in State waters. It often is just a few miles off the coast. It passed by 69 percent.
I wish the Trump administration would listen. But when you install an oil lobbyist as the head of the Interior Department, I guess we know that Big Oil is calling the shots. We are going to say no today. We are going to say, the people of Florida--in a bipartisan way with a united Florida delegation--we are going to say no. It is not needed. It is not wanted, and it is not the future.
It is not needed because America is already an exporter of oil and gas. We don't need to expand into areas that are too precious to drill. It is not wanted. It is not welcome.
Even the Department of Defense has said that this is an important military testing area off of the bases in the panhandle. They have already weighed in to say: Don't bring the oil rigs into this military testing zone. It is too special to drill.
Today, once again, a united Florida delegation is asking Congress to continue to recognize this part of Florida as a special place, and to continue the moratorium permanently. Floridians and folks all over the country that come to our beautiful State to vacation, they know. It is not wanted. It is not needed.
Our future is clean energy. That is what we should be investing in. That is what we should be debating and spending time here today on. That is the future of the United States of America. That is where the jobs of the future are going to come from. Jobs in solar and wind energy are already far surpassing jobs in fossil fuels.
The climate crisis requires that America be smarter, and we don't double down on the dirty policies of the past--dirty oil drilling.
For all of those reasons, let's demonstrate it here today and push back on the Trump administration's attempt to open up the Gulf beaches to oil drilling. Let's say no. We have got a bipartisan Florida delegation that is standing up, united, and I want to thank all of my colleagues from Florida for their leadership year in and year out on this issue.
Let's send a strong vote today. Let's send a strong message today and vote ``yes'' on H.R. 205.
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