This week the House of Representatives is poised to vote on a budget proposal that will undermine the Nation’s commitment to coastal protection and shortchange the taxpayer to reward the oil and gas industry, charged U.S. Rep. Nick J. Rahall (D-WV), the Ranking Member on the House Resources Committee.
As the House prepares to vote on the budget, the Subcommittee on Fisheries and Oceans held a hearing today on the Coastal Barrier Resources Act, which is currently being dismantled by the House Republican majority’s budget reconciliation proposal. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that the coastal barrier program, which was endorsed by Ronald Reagan, will have protected 3 million acres of undeveloped coastal barriers and saved the U.S. Treasury $1.3 billion between 1983 and 2010.
"We should all be celebrating this conservation and economic success story. Instead, just a few months after the Nation experienced hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma - - storms that were so powerful that whole communities and barrier islands in the Gulf of Mexico were literally wiped off of the map - - this Committee, in its infinite wisdom, has asked Congress to provide substantial new financial incentives to accelerate industrial and other private development along the Nation’s fragile coastal barriers," declared Rahall.
Specifically, provisions in the Outer Continental Shelf title of the budget reconciliation bill would entice States to choose to drill off their coastlines with the promise of 50% of the revenues generated, leading America down a slippery slope toward repealing the widely popular moratorium on drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf. States that opt not to drill but are adjacent to those that choose to drill will be vulnerable to the consequences of their neighbors’ actions.
"Not one day of hearings was held to determine how these drastic policy changes and ill-advised financial incentives would affect the public and its resources. We are flying completely blind and setting up Uncle Sam to be ‘Uncle Sucker’ once again," stated Rahall.
The Coastal Barrier Resources Act was passed in 1982 to address skyrocketing Federal disaster assistance costs and the need to protect undeveloped coastal areas. Its goal was simple: rather than prevent a person from building, require them to assume their own risk for building in harm’s way. For this reason, the Act often is held up as a shining example of "free market" conservation.
Rahall concluded, "This all amounts to another reason to reject the reconciliation package passed by the Resources Committee."
![[New for the Democrats - Committee on Resources - U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall, Ranking Democrat - 1329 Longworth HOB - Washington, DC 20015]](news_banner.gif)
