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Environmental Protection Done Right

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Naveed Iqbal SEO
Environmental Protection Done Right

There are right ways and wrong ways to protect the natural environment, and the Obama administration recently demonstrated how to do it the right way.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recently announced plans to expand two national marine sanctuaries off the northern coast of California. If approved, the proposed expansion and existing sanctuaries will jointly protect more than one-third of the state's marine waters from oil extraction, seabed mining and discharges into the ocean.

Representative Lynn Woolsey, a Democrat from California, who retired from Congress this year, correctly said "This area is a national treasure." (1) She and Senator Barbara Boxer, a fellow California Democrat, have spent the past eight years unsuccessfully seeking Congressional approval for their expanded protection  shoreline protection.

The Obama administration is handling the matter well in a number of ways. First, start by focusing on an area that is really worth protecting. The stretch of coast in question is spectacular and spectacularly productive. It alternates sandy inlets with wood-backed rocky cliffs, stormy in winter and shrouded in cold fog regularly throughout the year. The waters are teeming with marine life - fish, seabirds, and marine mammals alike.

Although conservationists have focused on banning oil drilling off the coast, the fact is that you probably won't be able to find as much oil, and whatever it is can be replaced by oil from far less sensitive places. In our endless debates about oil development, we sometimes forget that by developing the resource in less critical places, we can afford to protect the most important places. Development is less dangerous on land than on the high seas. Hydraulic fracturing allows for much more production from land-based sources, and every barrel it produces in places like the New Mexico desert or the plains of North Dakota is a barrel that we don't need to take from marine sources, whether in the Gulf of Mexico or along the California coast.

Conservation, done right, focuses first on the places we should be conserving the most. In this case, the administration has clearly chosen one of those locations.

Additionally, Obama did not opt to expand the marine sanctuaries by executive order, despite lobbying by the California Congressional delegation to do so. Although such an expansion is within the president's legal rights, it would have produced a backlash. The Los Angeles Times reported that Republicans in Congress have warned the Obama administration not to exercise its powers in this way.

Instead, NOAA will employ the standard procedures outlined in the National Marine Sanctuaries Act. This process includes public hearings that will begin this month; In total, it takes about two years. Although it can be time consuming, the process will give anyone who has an objection a chance to air it. Most likely, the objections will be few and relatively minor. Congressional approval is not required.

In the meantime, no one will drill or mine the stretch of seafloor in question anyway, so coastal defenders will lose nothing in those respects, regardless of the delay. When sanctuaries are approved, as they almost certainly will, the earliest and greatest practical impact will be in the mundane field of pollution control. Ships will be required to strictly control their waste and pollutants as they pass through the area. No one will object to that.

If the day ever comes when the nation believes there is no better place to drill or extract resources than this beautiful stretch of coastline, Congress can always step in to allow such action under conditions of its choosing. Oil extraction would not necessarily harm the region's wildlife. But the day of that debate, if it ever comes, is far off.

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Naveed Iqbal SEO
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