After a month away from The Pirates House, RCSE was back in the swing of things on Friday, January 4th. President Cindy Kelley asked everyone to Save the Date for the RCSE Annual Oyster Roast which will be on Saturday, February 9th at Gordon Matthews house on Tybee. Details about the event will be forthcoming. Once all Rotary business items were discussed, Laura Lane McKinnon introduced our speakers for the day - Bob Paredi and Paulita Bennet-Martin.
Bob spoke first about the risk of offshore drilling to Georgia. The effective coastline distance of Georgia is 1100 miles. Some of the Georgia stakeholders are the ports authority, Gray's Reef, as well as state and private properties along the coast. He illustrated his point about risks by discussing the BP Deep Water Horizon rig off the coast of Louisiana. On April 20, 2010 oil started leaking from the ocean floor and they were unable to stop it. Four million barrels of oil leaked into the Gulf of Mexico. Huge numbers of sea life were killed and four of the five gulf states continue to suffer environmental damage. The total cost of the leakage was $66 billion dollars. Georgia only controls 3 nautical miles off of our coastline and the federal government controls from 3 miles - 200 miles off the coast. Therefore, Georgia would not receive any royalty benefits from drilling.
Paulita went on to discuss who makes the decision on offshore drilling and spoke more about the potential cost to Georgia. A few of the things at stake for Georgia are 2.3 billion in GDP, over 23,000 jobs and the only known calving ground for North Atlantic Right Whales. In 2013, Oceana became involved with preventing offshore drilling. In 2014, BOEM (Bureau of Ocean Energy Management) proposed North Atlantic drilling sites with the Georgia coastline included. In 2016, President Obama banned all offshore drilling in the North Atlantic. Then in 2017, President Trump issued an order for aggressively pursuing drilling in the North Atlantic. In order to learn more about this topic, please visit Oceana.org/CleanCoastEconomy