Florida Senator Bill Nelson stopped in Ft. Myers to talk about why offshore drilling is bad for Florida. Speaking at Page Field airport鈥檚 base operations building, he outlined reasons why oil extraction shouldn鈥檛 be allowed off the Gulf coast.
Nelson鈥檚 visit comes amidst talks that the Trump administration plans to undo Obama-era bans of offshore drilling in the Arctic and the Atlantic.
鈥淣ot only do we have our tourism-driven economy on our side, not even to speak of the environment and what we learned from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill,鈥� he said. 鈥淎lso, that鈥檚 the largest testing and training area for the United States military in the world 鈥� is the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida.鈥�
Nelson said two former Republican Secretaries of Defense side with him on his military argument 鈥� Robert Gates and Donald Rumsfeld.
Betty Osceola, of the Miccosukee tribe, came to see the senator speak. She said Native Americans鈥� voices aren鈥檛 often heard when it comes to environmental issues.
鈥淎s an indigenous person, we鈥檙e always taught to respect and protect the environment that we live on,鈥� she said. 鈥淎nd for offshore drilling, I鈥檓 not in favor of that, because we can see with the last oil spill that occurred off the west coast [of Florida], it was very damaging.鈥�
The Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010 dumped more than 200 million gallons of oil in the Gulf of Mexico when the oil rig exploded.
Nelson said preventing offshore drilling is an 鈥渆ndless fight鈥� and that last month a Louisiana senator presented legislation that would 鈥渋ncentivize鈥� offshore drilling. Nelson said he鈥檚 going to travel up and down the Gulf coast of Florida to get people to realize the negative impacts of extracting oil offshore.
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