Offshore drilling is not worth the risks to the Florida gulf coast
By Dan DeWitt, Times Columnist
In Print: Sunday, September 27, 2009
Joe Murphy of Ridge Manor is adamantly opposed to oil drilling off Florida’s gulf coast. The Gulf Restoration Network program coordinator fears the damage to the seagrass beds would devastate the tourist and fishing industries and an oil spill would be virtually impossible to clean up in the marshland coasts.
The Gulf of Mexico at Bayport is clear enough that James Frost could look down from the pier Tuesday and see crab traps a dozen feet underwater. The view offshore was of barrier islands covered with palms and sawgrass and not much else.
"I'm going to die here,'' said Frost, 48, of Virginia, who after his visit last week planned to move to Hernando County. "I came out here yesterday and said, 'Ahhh, thank you, Jesus.' "
For all the talk of Florida's diminished appeal, its coast still has this effect on people — draws them to visit, persuades them to live here. As former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham once said, shoreline is to Florida what mountains are to Colorado.
"When you start to quantify it with a dollar amount, you're talking about billions of dollars in tourism and wildlife viewing,'' said Joe Murphy, Florida program coordinator for the Gulf Restoration Network.
"Leave it alone, and you can cash those checks for 10 generations.''
I called Murphy last week after the Times' statewide environmental reporter, Craig Pittman, wrote about the plans of a mysterious company, Florida Energy Associates LLC, to drill in state-controlled water between 3 and 10 miles offshore — and about a powerful lawmaker's proposed bill to allow drilling as close as 5 miles out.
The Pinellas beaches would be off limits. So would the Florida Keys and aquatic preserves stretching from Levy County to the Panhandle. That leaves a major gap off the coast of Pasco, Hernando and Citrus counties that Murphy calls the "oil drilling sacrifice zone.''
He hates the idea, of course, and from the pier pointed out what we'll likely see if the state Legislature approves the bill:
An industrialized shoreline, with stations to separate water and natural gas from the oil, as well as docks and, maybe, new channels dug to shuttle crews and supplies to the rigs.
We would be able to see those rigs, of course, but not the releases of mercury and other toxins in the "mud'' used to lubricate drill bits. There could be devastating spills such as the one coming from a wellhead (a modern, high-tech one, by the way) that is currently spewing thousands of barrels per day off the coast of Australia, or smaller ones that in the United States account for a total of 3,898 barrels, on average, every year, according to an industry group.
Drilling so close to shore means these spills would go directly into estuaries and seagrass beds off Hernando and Citrus that are vital to the gulf's fishery.
"From an environmental perspective, from a habitat perspective, there's no difference from what's in Levy County and what's right here,'' Murphy said.
Then you hear from Florida Energy representatives, who say that mud is just that — wet clay — that will in any case be shipped onshore and recycled.
The drilling rigs are not the multistory giants used in deep water, but "jack-up'' platforms barely visible from shore, and removed as soon as the wellheads can be linked to pipelines, said Ryan Banfill, who works for a Tallahassee public relations firm hired by Florida Energy.
The murky water and tar balls associated with drilling in Louisiana and Texas come from a combination of natural soil conditions, Banfill said, and old, "Eisenhower-era'' rigs and pipelines. Florida Energy, on the other hand, will use the latest, cleanest and safest equipment.
And, though he didn't say this, the drilling sacrifice zone could also be called the out-of-work zone.
Hernando's and Pasco's unemployment rates are more than 12 percent. The shoreline here is less of a draw to tourists than, for example, the beaches of Pinellas. And both counties desperately need to develop industry other than housing.
If Florida Energy can find as much oil in state water as it says — 16 billion barrels over the next 20 years — it would create 231,000 jobs.
What to make of all this?
Well, there's no doubt drilling is cleaner than it once was. Even Richard Charter, a veteran anti-drilling activist from California, said the industry has reduced the levels of toxins in the mud and that it is no longer mixed with petro-chemicals.
But it's also clear that spills, at least minor ones, are possible, and even likely. And the assurances that Banfill and other industry representatives offer, that local government would have the power to control onshore industrial use and that the Legislature can impose environmental restrictions on drilling, are not reassuring at all, considering the company is wealthy enough to have hired some of Tallahassee's most powerful lobbying firms.
Also, I wouldn't get overly excited about the potential windfall from drilling locally, or the environmental threat for that matter.
Though Doug Daniels, a Daytona Beach lawyer working for Florida Energy, said the estimates of oil reserves come from major companies — and that his employer wasn't prepared to write off any part of the gulf — Banfill said this figure was "an extrapolation'' of a 1995 U.S. Geological Survey study. The survey found potential reserves of 3 billion barrels, mostly off the coast of the Panhandle or far to the south of us, near Lee and Collier counties.
Even those reserves are "small potatoes,'' said Charter, who thinks Florida Energy's real goal is not drilling in state waters but getting Floridians used to the idea of offshore rigs. That would allow the industry to undermine a 2006 federal law that bans drilling within 125 miles of the state's coast.
That sounds plausible to me, which is one reason I don't think our economic future lies with offshore drilling. It's a potential threat not only to sources of income Murphy likes to talk about, eco-tourism and fishing, but one he doesn't mention, housing.
But, it's not just the drilling; it's the fossil fuels it produces. They're dirty. They contribute to global warming (oh, yes, it's real alright). They can't hope to provide the world's energy needs as more and more of the planet's 6.6 billion residents start driving cars and otherwise gobbling up resources the way Americans do.
Maybe you're tired of hearing this, but France generates 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power, and, in Costa Rica, 95 percent of the energy comes from wind and solar.
It would be smarter to put the money and effort spent on expanding drilling rights into exploring those kinds of alternatives.
It would be smarter still to make at least a token effort at conservation. Those "Drill here! Drill now!'' bumper stickers would be a lot more persuasive if they didn't always seem to be plastered on pickups that get 17 miles to the gallon.
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