November 22, 2017 — Members of the grassroots group Stop Oil Drilling in the Atlantic, known as SODA, are urging people to accompany them and state legislators for an ad-hoc committee meeting on offshore oil drilling at the State House in Columbia on Tuesday, Nov. 28.
The S.C. House of Representatives’ Agriculture, Natural Resources and Environmental Affairs full-day ad-hoc committee meeting will start at 10 a.m. in Room 110 of the Blatt Building on the State House grounds. The meeting will be live streamed on www.scstatehouse.gov.
“SODA expects residents from the coastal counties to attend and speak,” said JeanMarie Neal, a SODA member. “Not everyone will be able to speak, but those who do will each have just a few minutes to address the committee.”
According to Oceana, opposition to seismic testing and/or offshore drilling includes 126 East Coast municipalities; over 1,200 local, state and federal elected officials; an alliance representing over 41,000 businesses and 500,200 fishing families from Florida to Maine; New England, South and Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Councils; other commercial and recreational fishing interests, such as the Fisheries Survival Fund, Southern Shrimp Alliance, Billfish Foundation and International Game Fish Association; numerous chambers of commerce, tourism boards, and homeowners, restaurant and hotel associations from New Jersey to Florida; NASA, the Department of Defense and the Florida Defense Support Task Force.