Surprise, Surprise - Coastal State Republicans Not Happy W. Drilling Plan; Interior Muffles Meetings
EDIT
As the Interior Department hosts public “listening sessions” through early March to explain its proposed five-year lease plan — which would open 95 percent of the nation’s outer continental shelf to potential drilling — a growing chorus of bipartisan opposition is finding its voice. At least a half-dozen similar rallies have taken place in other cities where sessions were held, including in New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Oregon and California.
Mace’s defiance is an indication of how deep the opposition goes. Atlantic and Pacific coast governors, congressional delegations and attorneys general delivered the first waves of protests. Now state lawmakers, mayors and city councils are mobilizing in an attempt to stop the administration’s plan.
From the front steps of South Carolina’s capitol, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke was targeted by Republicans and Democrats alike for exempting Florida from the leasing plan less than a week after it was announced. Zinke said Florida was spared because its geology is different, although he offered no scientific studies to support his claim. Sen. Chip Campsen (R) was outraged. “If Florida is unique, we’re more unique,” he said a few days after speaking at the mid-February event. “We have the most beautiful and historic coastline on the East Coast.”
EDIT
The meetings at the Interior Department contrast with the listening sessions the department is holding in 23 cities in coastal states, from Boston, Trenton, N.J., and Tallahassee to Olympia, Wash., Salem, Ore., and Sacramento. The sessions are far different from the sometimes boisterous public hearings they replaced: After a video presentation about the drilling plan, anyone in attendance can log comments into a bank of computers.
The powerful emotions at Columbia’s rally fizzled under the new format, which included experts from the department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management quietly answering questions one on one in a hotel meeting room. Only once did the volume rise, when a man with a bullhorn leaped on a chair. “Mic check!” yelled Drew Hudson, a local resident opposed to the drilling. “This process is a sham!” Renee Orr, chief of the bureau’s Office of Strategic Resources, said the new format is a better way to exchange ideas as opposed to the shouting and booing that often characterizes public hearings. But across the country, participants have disagreed, including a New Jersey protester who described the listening session as “dodging democracy.”
EDIT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/for-some-south-carolina-republicans-trumps-offshore-drilling-plan-and-beaches-dont-mix/2018/02/27/a953dc98-1359-11e8-9065-e55346f6de81_story.html?utm_term=.155c02b7f044
