Letter | Don’t risk our state’s economy and environment on off-shore drilling

Community leaders representing thousands of residents and communities in the Carolinas have already gone on record opposing off shore testing and drilling. I offer kudos to the thousands who already see through the ridiculous claims of jobs and revenue that are being made by the oil and gas companies and their lobbyists.

I’m sure that these same false and misleading claims were made to the communities of the Gulf Coast when Deep Water Horizon was being proposed. We all know how that worked out.

That particular tragedy occurred in 2010. Clean-up costs alone are $14 billion. Additionally, to date, the amount in claims and existing and future liabilities approximates another $19 billion. Add to these amounts the permanent loss of thousands of acres of natural habitat and the thousands (perhaps tens of thousands) of birds, fish and mammals and the impact is catastrophic.

If we, as a society, don’t learn from our mistakes nor pay attention to what has happened in the past we run the risk of repeating these kinds of disasters.

We are fortunate here on the coast to be blessed with a job creating economy that benefits the entire state of South Carolina. The tourism industry accounts for one in every 10 jobs in the state. This industry already generates billions of dollars annually to our economy.

Unlike oil and gas products, tourism is also a clean industry that requires much less than any industrial model in governmental infrastructure and services such as schools, and fire and police. That’s because most of those billions of dollars are spent by tourists who come here, enjoy the natural and man-made beauty of our coastal expanses, spend their money and leave; leaving very little in the way of permanent footprints.

Why in the world would we risk destroying this sustainable situation?

I will close by paraphrasing a portion of a recent letter to our Governor and legislators by my friend Rick Baumann. “Welcoming testing and drilling is a very big gamble in a state where our government officials have nixed all forms of gambling and declared them illegal. Why are they so willing to take the biggest gamble of all by welcoming the filthy and accident-prone oil industry to our state?”

The writer lives in Pawleys Island.

This story was originally published April 18, 2015 at 8:00 AM with the headline "Letter | Don’t risk our state’s economy and environment on off-shore drilling."