Proposal to Drill Off Virginia Coast

SOMETIMES YOU ONLY BEGIN TO TAKE NOTICE AND CARE WHEN IT'S CLOSER TO HOME

Though no drilling would potentially happen until 2011, the Interior Department is about to release a five year plan that involves a "major proposal for expanded oil and natural gas development on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf." This includes Alaska's Bristol Bay, the Gulf of Mexico, and Virginia - my Virginia.

Suddenly, I take notice; and suddenly I care a great deal.

All I have to do is picture in my head the spill of March 23, 1989 in Alaska's Prince William Sound involving oil tanker Exxon Valdez, and photoshop that imagery against the backdrop of the Chesapeake Bay and Assateague Island.


I think about area's famous blue crab.

I think about the seasonal swim of wild ponies across the Assateague Channel to Chincoteague Island.

And maybe I'm going all Rachel Carson here, but despite the current conditions of the Potomac these years, I don't like the ideas of a drill station off the coastline of Virginia, just waiting for an accident to happen.

Hopefully and luckily two things will happen:

1. The plan will never be passed.

2. The power and control the oil industry has over our need for energy sources will finally be thwarted by new energy developments, and we can move on to have new energy crises - such as accidental fusion meltdowns threatening to consume entire continents.