WASHINGTON — Two Tampa Bay-area lawmakers are once again pushing legislation to permanently ban drilling off Florida's coastlines.
In a statement Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Sarasota, announced that he, along with U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Tampa, reintroduced bipartisan legislation to make the current drilling moratorium off the coast of Florida permanent.
This comes after a previous moratorium on drilling in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico expired last year, according to a news release.
"Allowing drilling off of Florida's coasts would be a colossal mistake," Buchanan said in a statement. "As we learned from the devastating Deepwater Horizon oil explosion in 2010, our state cannot afford another spill that would threaten our economy, our environment and our way of life."
The Florida Coastal Protection Act would permanently ban oil and gas drilling approximately 235 miles off of Florida's Gulf Coast, 275 miles off Florida's Atlantic Coast and in the Straits of Florida.
"In the Sunshine State, clean water and our beautiful beaches are central to our way of life and the cornerstones of our economy, and we know that oil and gas drilling can devastate both of environment and economy," Castor added in the statement.
Former President Trump issued an executive order to protect both coasts of Florida from drilling through June 2032. However, Buchanan and Castor contend that action can be undone by current or future administrations, and it requires an act of Congress to make the ban permanent.
As mentioned in Buchanan's email, there are several other pressing water quality issues affecting our state, including harmful algal blooms. In the Tampa Bay region, The Florida Fish and Wild Life Conservation Commission has recently detected red tide blooms as far north as Clearwater Beach.