Jeb Bush Supports New Plan to Drill 125 Miles off Florida's Shores
Oil and natural gas drilling would be allowed 125 miles off Florida's shores under a proposal Gov. Jeb Bush endorsed after it was released Monday in Washington, D.C. The measure offered by U.S. House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, R-Calif., would put the 125-mile buffer into federal law in exchange for opening new areas of the eastern Gulf of Mexico now off-limits to drilling under congressional and presidential moratoriums.
At Bush's direction, Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Colleen Castille negotiated the deal with Pombo to give Florida's beaches long-term protection. The moratoriums are scheduled to expire in 2007 and 2012. "Florida will be able to prevent future oil and gas drilling near its shores in perpetuity," Castille wrote in a memo to Bush that was released by her office.
Castille later said that Bush enthusiastically endorsed the proposal after returning for a trip to South Florida where he inspected damage caused by Hurricane Wilma. She said the governor wanted to make sure Florida's shores are protected because fuel shortages and price increases after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita had increased momentum for offshore drilling in Congress. "Many states are looking at us and saying "It's just not fair that Florida, you use all that fuel and you're not willing to open up your waters to it,' " Castille said.
Bush had opposed an earlier Pombo-sponsored measure in part because it included a provision that immediately would have permitted natural gas drilling only nine miles from shore. Pombo removed that bill from further consideration after Bush and most of Florida's House members objected. Florida politicians for years have fought offshore drilling to protect estuaries and beaches critical to the state's ecology and tourism industry from pollution and spills. Both of Florida's U.S. senators, Republican Mel Martinez and Democrat Bill Nelson, and the state's House Democrats are opposed to the Pombo plan, preferring to seek renewal of the more restrictive moratoriums. The state's Republican House members have been split.
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