On Thursday, May 20, the Sierra Club will be hosting a special benefit event for “Hands Across the Sand”. Join us 6-8pm at Croc’s 19th Street Bistro in Virginia Beach. Tickets are $30/single and $50/couple. Click here to RSVP and pay at the door or purchase online.

Proceeds from this benefit reception will help us promote HANDS ACROSS THE SAND, a protest rally against Virginia offshore drilling. On Sat., June 26, starting at 11am, join Sierra Club, Surfrider Foundation, and Oceana in lining up along the shoreline along the Virginia Beach Oceanfront between 19th and 31st Streets and lock hands for 15 minutes in protest to offshore drilling. For more information and to sign up, go to HandsAcrossTheSand.com.

(Crossposted at Blue Virginia.)

Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA06) is proposing a bill, the “Virginia Access to Energy Act” (H.R. 4942), that forces Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to conduct Virginia Lease Sale 220 within a year of the bill’s passage. “The ‘Virginia Access to Energy Act’ will remove the regulatory hurdles that have impeded development and create a path for Virginia to become ‘the Energy Capital of the East Coast’”, Goodlatte said.

“Impeding development” is the fact that the science potentially supporting Virginia’s offshore drilling is 30 years out of date. A thorough environmental study cannot not be performed in time for a 2011 lease sale.

Revealed at a Department of Interior workshop in Williamsburg in December 2008, large data gaps exist when it comes to endangered and protected species, fish and fisheries, the biology of the ocean floor, the ecosystems found in Virginia’s offshore ocean canyons and coral reefs, as well as the physical and geological oceanography.

Off Virginia’s coast, there have been sightings of sea turtles, right whales, humpback whales, and sperm whales - all of which are classified as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. Dolphins, porpoises, pilot whales and beaked whales which are all protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act have also been sighted in what is Virginia’s lease sale area. Due to a lack of consistent survey effort throughout the region, seasonal distribution patterns and abundance patterns for all these species are not well known. Also, no surveys for birds have been conducted in the region. There is limited information regarding the ecosystems of the Norfolk and Washington Canyons as they tend to be spatially diverse, complex and difficult to study.

Especially for oil spill risk analysis, current and wind information has been deemed a high priority data gap. The presence of several deep water canyons within the Virginia lease sale area complicates the physical and geological setting. There is limited understanding of the effect of internal tides and waves and their mixing with currents at the shelf break and canyon heads.

Read the rest of this entry »

Just yesterday (March 3), Interior Secretary Ken Salazar again reiterated his concerns for drilling off Virginia’s coast in 2011. For E&E Daily (only available online with subscription):

The offshore proposal will also address whether to move forward with a lease sale planned for 2011 off Virginia, Salazar said. He added that gathering more information about resources off the Atlantic Coast “is important to do because we have no recent information — it’s 30 years old, and it’s very hard to make decisions without having that information.”

He also said yesterday he would unveil a comprehensive offshore oil and gas drilling plan by the end of this month.

So far over 1,000 Virginians have emailed Sec. Salazar or signed our petition urging him to stop the rush to drill Virginia. Please join us! Click here to send Sec. Salazar an email TODAY!

What’s at risk and what are the risks should offshore drilling be expanded to Virginia? Join us as we go deep-sea diving for the answers.

Presenters: Eileen Levandoski, Sierra Club; J.R. Tolbert, Environment Virginia; Dr. Carl Hobbs, Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS)

For more info and to RSVP, call 757-277-8537.

“The fact is, these things happen”, said Louisiana’s Sen. Mary Landrieu, amazingly trying to dismiss the overwhelming risks associated with offshore drilling. Standing in front of a large poster of the flaming Australian oil platform at a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last week, she even went as far as to accuse drilling opponents of lying and scare-mongering!

“All we did was testify about real things that have really happened, to make the point that despite advances in technology, mistakes are still made and accidents still happen - and with offshore oil production, the consequences still can be severe”, writes Sky Truth’s John Amos who was invited to testify on several significant oil spill incidents they’ve investigated over the past few years.

These investigations include “the recent Montara platform blowout and spill in the Timor Sea off Western Australia; this summer’s spill in the Gulf of Mexico from the Eugene Island Pipeline operated by Shell; and the spills from hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, and Ike in 2008, that exposed the Achilles heel of offshore production: the vulnerability and severe spill risk posed by the coastal infrastructure - especially pipelines and storage facilities - that is necessary to support offshore drilling.”

Sky Truth was also commissioned to produce the image depicting the Australian oil spill off Virginia’s coast. Click here to view image.

As an LTE in today’s Virginian-Pilot points out (not online yet - see below the fold), politicians hinge their support of offshore drilling on its capacities to be done in an environmentally safe manner. The Australian spill especially shoots that pro-drilling argument to hell. The truth hurts and thus the knee-jerk reaction of people like Sen. Landrieu saying basically “shit happens”.

Why in the world do we want shit to happen off our Virginia coasts?

Read the rest of this entry »

Our nation’s coast has wonderful beaches, marshes, remarkable underwater ecosystems and amazing wildlife, all of which would be threatened by more offshore oil drilling.

According to a new report released by Environment America and the Sierra Club, our clean beaches and oceans support a vibrant coastal tourism and fishing economy that generates almost $200 billion per year. The report makes it clear that clean beaches and oceans are worth more than drilling for the last few drops of oil.

Learn more:
Wednesday, November 25, 2009, 7:00-8:45pm
Meyera E. Oberndorf Central Library, 4100 Virginia Beach Blvd., Virginia Beach

Speakers:
Eileen Levandoski, Sierra Club, Virginia Chapter
J.R. Tolbert, Environment Virginia

Click here to RSVP.

(Click on image to enlarge).

Yesterday, on day #46 of the devastating oil spill that continues to dump oil into Australian seas, the Sierra Club Virginia Chapter released images of that spill plotted off Virginia’s coast.*

The images were commissioned from SkyTruth who used NASA and other government generated satellite images to depict the Australian oil spill that as of September 3 has grown to almost 9,900 square miles – larger than the square mile size of Vermont. The simple overlay of the Australian spill originating at a hypothetical well in the Lease Area 220 shows an oil spill of this size reaching Virginia Beach, Virginia’s Eastern Shore and the northern Outer Banks.

Images available here:
http://hrsierraclub.org/VASkyTruth.jpg
http://hrsierraclub.org/VASkyTruth1.jpg
http://hrsierraclub.org/VASkyTruth2.jpg
http://virginia.sierraclub.org/onespill.html

“Supporters of offshore drilling have been saying there is no risk of a spill in Virginia waters with modern drilling technology. What is happening in Australia right now with a new rig built in 2007 proves that claim wrong,” added Besa. “Plotted off Virginia’s coast, the Australian oil spill should give Virginia great pause” said Glen Besa, Sierra Club Virginia Chapter Director. “All it takes is one spill to virtually shutdown Virginia’s coastal economy, both tourism and fisheries, for years. Oil is still disrupting the natural environment in Prince William Sound 20 years after the Exxon Valdez spill.”

Read the rest of this entry »

To be exact, 280,083 individuals and over 400 scientists and organizations have submitted public comments to DOI’s Mineral Management Service on the proposed 2010-2015 5-Year Outer Continental Shelf oil and gas leasing program. Today is the deadline for those comments. Click here to submit them to MMS via Sierra Club’s site TODAY!

As the oil rig blowout near Western Australia enters its 19th day of uncontrolled release of oil into the sea, the extent of the spill is now the size of the State of Connecticut, at approximately 5,800 square miles and growing.

A NASA satellite image of the Timor Sea taken on September 3 reveals the area of slicks and sheen more than doubled in size in just 4 days, from 2,500 sq miles on Aug. 30 to 5,800 sq miles on Sept. 3. Dramatic remote-sensing photographs provided by NASA and other federal agencies are available to view online at http://blog.skytruth.org/.

The Australian government also announced yesterday that it has launched a major investigation into the cause of the blowout and resulting spill.

The West Atlas drilling rig involved in this offshore blowout was built in 2007. The Montara oil platform was constructed in 2008.

Controlling the flow of oil from this rig blowout is expected to take at least seven weeks. Officials estimate that until the spill can be brought under control, between 300 and 400 barrels of oil continue to spill into the ocean each day.

“This so-called modern offshore drilling operation has allowed a tragic oil spill in Australian waters. Even industry’s best available technology cannot stop it for weeks,” said Richard Charter, Co-Chair of the National Outer Continental Shelf Coalition.

“Offshore drilling is risky business. This spill shows what could happen if we open more of America’s coasts to drilling,” said Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope.

Last year, the nearly 30-year-old congressional and Presidential ban on offshore drilling in the lower 48 states was lifted. In November 2008, the Bush Administration designated a 2.9 million acre area off the Virginia coast (Lease Sale 220) for oil and gas drilling.

“The scale and duration of this huge spill should be an ongoing lesson to which we in Virginia pay close attention,” said Eileen Levandoski, Hampton Roads organizer with the Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club. “For despite new drilling technology, the risk of spills still exists and even just one spill would levy disastrous impacts on our Virginia coastal economies and environment.”

“The whole world is watching,” said Charter. “We face votes very soon in the Florida and California legislatures, as well as the U.S. Senate, that will determine whether or not this same type of drilling rig will be allowed to operate in long-protected coastal waters here.”

As I wrote about here in August, clearing all legislative hurdles, Delmarva Power inked a deal with Blue Water Wind whereby a wind farm will be constructed off Rehoboth Beach, DE.

Last month came news that New Jersey’s first offshore wind farm took another step forward when a state agency awarded a $4 million grant to Garden State Offshore Energy to build a facility  off Ocean City, NJ. A grid of 96 turbines will generate enough juice for 125,000 homes- the first of the turbines could begin generating power by 2012.

Meanwhile in Virginia, on Wednesday this week, Minerals Management Service Director Randall Luthi will announces the first of a multi-step process for oil and gas leasing offshore Virginia. Instead of wind farms, Virginia Beach gets offshore rigs, pipelines, and stinky refineries. Instead of tapping into the Class 3 and higher winds that could easily power over 20% of the Commonwealth, and is part of a clean energy economic push that stands to bring in more than 4 times as many jobs to the Commonwealth than anything brought in via the oil/gas industry, Virginia is going to pursue a practice that contributes greatly to global warming and the sea level rise that will cause Hampton Roads to be underwater and that much more vulnerable to storm surges.

Now that’s certainly moving Virginia forward…. NOT!