{"id":4809,"date":"2018-01-26T02:33:52","date_gmt":"2018-01-26T07:33:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/?p=4809"},"modified":"2018-01-26T02:33:52","modified_gmt":"2018-01-26T07:33:52","slug":"public-meeting-to-be-held-on-n-j-offshore-oil-drilling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/2018\/01\/public-meeting-to-be-held-on-n-j-offshore-oil-drilling\/","title":{"rendered":"Public Meeting to be Held on N.J. Offshore Oil Drilling"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>

The north jetty of Barnegat Inlet at Island Beach State Park. (Photo: Daniel Nee)<\/p><\/div>\n

As local and state officials line up to oppose a leasing program that would open up oil drilling off the New Jersey coast, the federal government has scheduled a public meeting on the issue.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration has proposed opening up nearly the entire Atlantic coast of the United States to oil drilling. A similar proposal floated by the Obama administration in 2015 was quickly shot down, but with a new administration \u2013 one that observers believe is friendlier to the idea \u2013 comes the reopening of the debate.<\/p>\n

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, a federal agency tasked with overseeing the leases of federal waters to oil drilling, will host a meeting Feb. 14 in Hamilton Township to discuss the proposal.\u00a0At the meetings, participants will be able to ask questions, share information, talk with BOEM team members one-on-one, and learn more about the national drilling proposal, an announcement from the agency said.<\/p>\n

Since the administration announced the drilling plan, Florida\u2019s governor, Rick Scott, was able to convince officials to bar drilling activity off its coast. Interior Secretary\u00a0Ryan Zinke said last week that Florida\u2019s coast was \u201cunique\u201d and \u201cheavily reliant on tourism as an economic driver.\u201d<\/p>\n

New Jersey officials are hoping they can have the same influence. The Ocean County freeholder board voted this week to pass a resolution opposing drilling. Rep. Tom MacArthur, as well as many local municipal councils, have followed with opposition.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have been, and remain opposed to oil drilling off the New Jersey coast because of the potential threat to the environment and the Jersey Shore\u2019s tourism and fishing industries,\u201d said MacArthur, who is planning discussions with\u00a0Zinke.<\/p>\n

Protecting the Jersey Shore from negative environmental impacts has paid off, with tourism revenue growing exponentially since offshore dumping was eliminated, largely closing the book on incidents of waste washing up on shore.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe started this going back over 40 years ago when New York City was dumping into the waterways,\u201d said Ocean County Freeholder Joe Vicari. \u201cWe are protecting not only tourism but our natural resources. In New Jersey, most of the coastline is in Ocean County.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the drilling plan were to be approved, leases for waters in the sector off the New Jersey coast would be awarded in 2021 and 2023. No drilling has taken place off New Jersey since 1983, and even that activity was exploratory in nature, environmentalists have said, offering up images of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to bolster their case against expanded drilling.<\/p>\n

The public meeting will be held Feb. 14 from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the\u00a0Hilton Garden Inn, 800 US Highway 130, Hamilton, NJ 08690.<\/p>\n

\u201cI genuinely believe that we can work together to protect our environment and our shore economy from the dangers posed by drilling for oil off New Jersey\u2019s coast,\u201d MacArthur said.<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As local and state officials line up to oppose a leasing program that would open up oil drilling off the New Jersey coast, the federal government has scheduled a public meeting on the issue. The Trump administration has proposed opening up nearly the entire Atlantic coast of the United States to oil drilling. A similar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4810,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-shore-environment"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/DSC_0165.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgsn9q-1fz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}