NEW: RI Environmental Group Opposes Off Shore Drilling

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Wednesday, December 15, 2010

GolocalProv News Team

Environment Rhode Island sites the economic benefits of tourism and fisheries and blasts the concept of off shore drilling today. According to Environment Rhode Island, the State’s coastal tourism and fishing businesses generate just over $2 billion annually and provide 56,000 jobs. "These businesses and jobs would not exist without clean beaches and a clean ocean, both of which would be threatened by risky offshore drilling. BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill illustrates the damage that one large spill can cause to a coastline, its wildlife, and its economy," wrote Environment Rhode Island.

Accroding to Environment Rhode Island, a spill like the Deepwater Horizon would cover the entire Rhode Island coastline from the Providence harbor to Block Island, devastate beaches from East Providence to Narragansett, and special places like India Point that Rhode Islanders love.

Environment Rhode Island announce they support the Obama Administration’s announcement that they would take drilling proposals for the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the South Atlantic ‘off the table’ until at least 2017.

“As we saw this summer with BP’s disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, oil drilling is still a dirty and dangerous business that usually brings some spilling. The potential returns from offshore drilling are not worth the risk of destroying our treasured coastline,” said Gregory Anderson, state associate with Environment Rhode Island.

Using government data, the report also finds that the annual value of tourism and fishing along the New England coast is 12 times higher than the annual value of any oil or gas that might be found there. “BP’s catastrophe in the Gulf wiped out tens of thousands of commercial fishing, recreational fishing and tourism related jobs in a 600 mile swathe of Gulf coast. A spill off our coast or a nearby state would do the same,” said Anderson.

Rhode Island has more than 100 beaches and the state has many parks and wildlife areas along our shores including Point Judith, Fort Adams, Rocky Point and sensitive marshes along the coast.