February 2, 2018 — The top lawyers for a dozen coastal states want the U.S. Interior Department to cancel the Trump administration’s plan to expand offshore drilling, warning it threatens their maritime economies and natural resources.
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and her fellow attorneys general, all Democrats, wrote Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Thursday about his agency’s proposed five-year oil and gas leasing plan that opens new ocean waters.
“Not only does this irresponsible and careless plan put our state’s jobs and environment at risk, but it shows utter disregard for the will and voices of thousands of local businesses and fishing families,” said Healey in a prepared statement. “My colleagues and I will continue to fight this plan.”
Healey first announced her opposition to the plan in an August 2017 letter to Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. The Northeast Seafood Coalition and the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association agreed with her that the Interior Department’s plan to expand offshore drilling threatens Massachusetts’ $7.3 billion commercial fishing industry — the third largest in the country — and more than 240,000 jobs in the state.
The plan also could devastate the state’s robust recreation and tourism industries, according to Healey, as well harm the state’s coastal environment and protected endangered species, including the Northern Right Whale, which feeds in the waters off of Cape Cod and Nantucket, according to the comment letter. There are only about 460 critically endangered Northern Right Whales remaining worldwide.
Read the full story at the Gloucester Times