Jon S. Corzine: “today, along with Senator Torricelli, I am introducing legislation, the Clean Ocean and Safe Tourism, COAST…”

“today, along with Senator Torricelli, I am introducing legislation, the Clean Ocean and Safe Tourism, COAST, Anti-Drilling Act, to ban oil and gas drilling off the Mid-Atlantic and Northern Atlantic coast. The people of New Jersey, and other residents of States along the Atlantic Coast, do not want oil or gas rigs anywhere near their treasured beaches and fishing grounds. Such drilling poses serious threats not to our environment, but to our economy, which depends heavily on tourism along our shore. Until recently, there was no reason to suspect that drilling was even a remote possibility. Since 1982, a statutory moratorium on leasing activities in most Outer Continental Shelf, OCS, areas has been included annually in Interior Appropriations acts. In addition, President George H.W. Bush declared a leasing moratorium on many OCS areas on June 26, 1990 under section 12 of the OCS Lands Act. On June 12, 1998, President Clinton used the same authority to issue a memorandum to the Secretary of the Interior that extended the moratorium through 2012 and included additional OCS areas. Given the long-standing consensus against drilling in these areas, I was deeply disturbed to discover that on May 31, 2001, the Minerals Management Service released a request for proposals, RFP, to conduct a study of the environmental impacts of drilling in the Mid- and North- Atlantic.”