Download applauded the decision

Press Release
from the
CHESAPEAKE BAY FOUNDATION
Dec. 1, 2010
For Immediate Release
For Information Contact
Tom Zolper
Maryland Communications Coordinator
443-482-2066
CBF welcomes Obama decision to halt oil drilling on East Coast
ANNAPOLIS—The Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) applauds President Obama’s decision not to pursue
offshore drilling on the Eastern Seaboard.
“The Chesapeake Bay is a national treasure, and drilling offshore poses unjustifiable risks to the Bay, its living
resources, the tourism economy, and the many jobs dependent on clean water. Watermen dependent on blue
crabs are especially at risk. A spill could devastate the crab industry,” said Roy A. Hoagland, CBF Vice
President for Environmental Protection and Restoration. “The President is right in saying ‘no’ to offshore
drilling along the Eastern Seaboard.”
The waters off the mouth of the Bay are indistinguishable both biologically and hydrologically from the
Chesapeake. Ninety percent of the blue crab population utilizes those waters during the early life cycle stages.
The crab larvae can float miles out into the ocean at the top centimeter of the water column (vulnerable to even
the smallest oil spill) after they are spawned at the mouth of the Bay.
For four decades, CBF has taken an uncompromising stand against any addition or expansion of the oil industry
on the Chesapeake Bay. While two huge battles against oil refineries in the 1970s were met with extreme
criticism, supporters in both cases later agreed that oil refineries in their particular locations (Baltimore and
Hampton Roads) would have been unwelcome, “like a snake at a picnic” as one proponent later editorialized.
In 1978, in response to the refinery proposal, CBF President Will Baker wrote in a New York Times op-ed
opinion piece, “We are now about to gamble these renewable, aquatic resources for a single nonrenewable
petroleum resource.”
Last March, when President Obama called for the opening of oil and gas drilling leases off the mouth of the
Chesapeake Bay, CBF immediately opposed the proposal.
CBF has urged the President to pursue renewable energy and conservation. “We can drive less, buy more fuelefficient cars, and conserve energy at home and business. Conservation is one energy policy we can employ
immediately to reduce our reliance on foreign oil and oil from environmentally risky off-shore drilling,” added
Hoagland.
SAVE THE BAY
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