Boynton backs ban on offshore oil drilling, seismic airgun blasting

BOYNTON BEACH -- City officials in Boynton Beach have a message for the Trump Administration: Don't go drilling for oil off Florida's Atlantic coast.

On Tuesday, Boynton Beach became the fourth municipality in Palm Beach County -- joining Boca Raton, Delray Beach and Ocean Ridge - to approve a resolution calling for a ban on offshore oil drilling activity, including seismic airgun blasting.

The resolution has no enforcement power, but city commissioner Christina Romelus, who proposed the measure, said its sends a clear signal to Washington, D.C., that Boynton Beach "wants to protect our residents" from the "devastating effects" that drilling can have on the environment.

"It's telling the federal government to get on board with this," said Romelus, who was joined in voting unanimously for the resolution by Mayor Steven Grant, Vice Mayor Justin Katz and commissioners Mack McCray and Ty Penserga.

"The resolution is really a way to bring attention and conversation to this issue and to ask for something more tangible to be done. This is a start."

A stalled Trump administration plan unveiled in 2017 would open up more than 90 percent of U.S. coastal waters in the outer continental shelf to oil and gas drilling. President Trump' s executive order was blocked in March by a federal judge, who ruled that drilling bans enacted by President Barack Obama could only be overturned by the U.S. Congress.

In November, Florida voters approved an amendment to the state constitution permanently banning offshore drilling 3 miles into the Atlantic and 9 into the Gulf of Mexico. The measure needed approval from 60 percent of voters to pass. It received nearly 70 percent.

Catherine Uden, a local campaign organizer for the advocacy group Oceana, said the amendment "doesn't offer us a whole lot of protection" from potential environmental disasters like the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in April 2010 that killed 11 people and dumped about 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

"Residents don't realize that isn't very far," Uden said of the 3-mile barrier between Florida's Atlantic coastline and possible oil drilling. "The airgun blast sounds don't respect those lines or boundaries, and neither do oil spills."

Christian Ehmrooth, an 18-year-old college student from Ocean Ridge, attended Tuesday's city commission meeting and urged the board to pass the resolution.

Ehmrooth said he's an Olympic sailor who "who spends the vast majority of my time on the water" and has "sailed with whales and dolphins in most oceans on the planet."

The possibility that seismic airgun blasting - which involves scanning the seafloor for oil and gas reserves by using high-powered airguns - or an oil spill could take that away is "incredibly horrible," he said.

"We have to protect our coastlines at all costs," said Ehmrooth, an economics major at the University of Chicago and the president of Generationblu, which aims to get college students involved in ocean conservation.

On Monday - a day before Boynton Beach passed its resolution - Ehmrooth spoke before Ocean Ridge's town commission and also urged its members to approve their own measure to ban offshore drilling and seismic airgun blasting. The five-member board agreed unanimously.

Boca Raton's city commission approved its resolution in December, 2018. Delray Beach followed in February. Palm Beach County commissioners passed a resolution against offshore drilling in 2010 but has not tackled seismic airgun blasting, according to Oceana's website.

Katz, pointing to the ocean's importance to the city's economy, voted to approve along with his colleagues on the Boynton Beach city commission.

"This issue is very intimate to all Floridians and while a resolution is symbolic, it sends a clear message that the City of Boynton Beach, along with the rest of the state of Florida do not want activities off our coastline that could lead to an ecological disaster that not only harms the environment but destroys our economically vital tourism industry," he said.

jmilian@pbpost

@caneswatch

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