Friday, November 02, 2007

Why we protect our California Coastline

As a native Californian who was born, raised and grew up on the coast of California; I appreciate that we continue to strive to protect one of nature’s golden treasures, California’s coastline. Back in the Nixon administration, his Secretary of the Interior, Walter Hickle, who was a former governor of Alaska issued an order to not allow offshore oil drilling. He lost his cabinet position over that action.

A decade later we precincted and gathered signatures to qualify proposition 20, the California Coastal Initiative. This was done back when signature gatherers were not paid. We did all this when I was a college student. We created the California Coastal Commission which helped protect our coastline all these past years.

Lately the Liquid Natural Gas industry has taken two runs at getting approval for an LNG offshore terminal off of our coastline. They failed in Long Beach, and have been stopped at the Oxnard hearing of the State’s Land Commission. Now they are pushing for an offshore floating terminal in the Santa Monica Bay, or even taking over an unused former oil platform off of Santa Barbara.

We must strive to protect our pristine, natural coast to prevent any dangerous and environmentally tragic proposals such as an LNG terminal. This is a critical battle that we must win, we have to win every battle and the overall war. Let your elected officials, local, state, and federal know that you oppose any LNG terminal on our coastline.

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