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Author of Bristol Bay bill renews call for protection
April 8, 2008
The author of the Bristol Bay Protection Act, H.R.1957, panned the Bush Administration for announcing it would open 5.6 million acres of the salmon-rich bay to oil and gas development.
“As global temperatures rise and climate-change alarms go off, the administration gets more frenetic about drilling for the very fossil fuels that are at the root of the problem,” said U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.), the member of the House Natural Resources Committee who penned the Bristol Bay bill. “Rather than feed global warming and put a sensitive ecosystem at risk, we should be frenetic about transitioning our economy from one based on oil to one based on clean-energy technologies.”
Today, the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service issued a formal proposal in the Federal Register on allowing drilling in the North Aleutian Basin, which includes Alaska’s Bristol Bay. The area had a moratorium on offshore oil and gas exploration since shortly after the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster until President Bush lifted the ban in January 2007.
Filed in the House almost one year ago, the Bristol Bay Protection Act would reinstate the moratorium on oil and gas drilling in the North Aleutian Basin. The legislation currently has 42 bipartisan cosponsors.
Bristol Bay is an ecologically important area and is home to several endangered species and fisheries that supply 40 percent of our nation’s seafood catch. The area targeted for oil and gas leasing overlaps with important habitat for pollock, cod, red king crab, halibut and salmon, as well as waterfowl, shorebirds and marine mammals.