President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday that potentially reopens the opportunity for offshore oil drilling in the Atlantic Ocean.
BELMAR -- Legislators and environmental activists are hitting the reset button on a fight against offshore oil drilling in the Atlantic Ocean after President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday that potentially reopens the opportunity for oil drilling in the Atlantic.
Using a familiar backdrop of the Jersey Shore, U.S. Sens. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-6th Dist.) gathered on the boardwalk in Belmar to announce the reintroduction of a bill that would ban offshore oil and gas drilling in the Atlantic Ocean.
The Atlantic Coast was excluded from the Interior Department's 2017-2022 oil leasing plan approved under President Barack Obama. But Trump's executive order directs Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to review the five-year plan, potentially reopening a fight that opponents thought they had won.
"I never expected we would be revisiting the five-year plan six months later," Menendez said at a press conference on Monday. "The Trump administration is moving to tear up that five-year plan and let Big Oil write up a new one -- one that requires at least two offshore oil drilling leases in the Atlantic each year."
The Clean Ocean and Safe Tourism (COAST) Anti-Drilling Act would not only ensure the Atlantic is off limits for five years but would move to ban it completely. The bill was introduced in 2015 but never voted on. It has to now be reintroduced in the new, Republican-controlled U.S. Congress.
Citing the possibility of a massive oil spill, opponents say drilling in the Atlantic threatens New Jersey's $38 billion a year tourism industry, $7.9 billion annual commercial fishing industry and nearly 10 percent of the state's workforce.
Menendez said the initial costs of offshore oil drilling are paid by the American taxpayers, siphoning billions of dollars away from areas such as education and infrastructure into "oil company coffers" on an annual basis.
"So Big Oil gets to drill and the American people get the bill," Menendez said. "We're here to send a message once gain to Big Oil that our coastline is not for sale."
Booker said it's not only the oil drilling that residents need to be worried about, but also the seismic blasts leading up to the drilling that would hurt fisheries and kill off ocean wildlife.
"This is unacceptable," Booker said. "We just fought this battle, we just won this battle but I'll tell you what, we still got a whole lot of fight in us."
Pallone, who is from Long Branch and once served on its city council, recalled a time when an oil tanker broke up off the coast of the Shore and the state's beaches were littered with medical waste and garbage in the 1980s.
"This isn't something that's pie in the sky, we used to see this kind of stuff," Pallone said of threats of oil spills from offshore drilling. "That's something we don't want to see again. ... You have to continue to be vigilant."
Alex Napoliello may be reached at anapoliello@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @alexnapoNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.