Hundreds of North Carolina residents and allies gathered near a federal meeting on the Trump administration’s offshore drilling plan, presenting a loud and staunchly unified voice in protest of fossil fuel drilling in U.S. coastal waters.
About 500 people crowded a hotel ballroom near the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) informational meeting on the Trump administration’s proposed offshore drilling plan. The group included more than 200 coastal residents and elected officials who rode buses to Raleigh for BOEM’s sole session in North Carolina.
“You have brought it to them and we thank for you standing up to them,” Michael Regan, secretary of the state Department of Environmental Quality, told the packed room. He pledged support from Gov. Roy Cooper, Attorney General Josh Stein and himself to those fighting offshore drilling.
“Not in our waters. Not off our coast,” Regan said.
The Trump administration wants to open most U.S. coastlines - including North Carolina’s - to oil and gas exploration in the federal government’s 2019-2024 offshore drilling plan. That would reverse a 2016 decision by the Obama administration.
BOEM scheduled hearings in each state affected by the drilling proposal to gather public input before a March 9 comment deadline. But none of the events has been held in coastal cities: Raleigh, the site of the only hearing in North Carolina, is several hours’ drive from the ocean.
Elected officials and business leaders also made the trek from North Carolina shore communities, where economies built on tourism and fishing would be irreparably harmed in the event of an oil spill or other drilling-related disaster.
Mark Hooper, a commercial fisherman and board member of N.C. Catch, a coastal fisheries industries group, was visibly emotional as he described the danger a drilling disaster would pose to wildlife in the ocean and estuaries of North Carolina.
“They cannot run from an oil spill,” he said. “I feel responsible for them and I will stand up for them.”
The Rev. Emily Carroll, pastor of First Calvary Baptist Church of Durham, spoke of the shared responsibility all North Carolinians have to protect the natural world, regardless of where they live or with which group they identify.
“We stand together in resistance and we stand in unity,” she said. “Not on our watch. Not off our coast.”
Other speakers were Mayor Sheila Foster Davies of Kill Devil Hills; Robert Woodard, chair of the Dare County Commission; state Rep. Deb Butler; Lee Nettles, executive director of the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau; and Briggs McEwen, owner of Lisa’s Pizzeria in Rodanthe.
The rally was organized by Don’t Drill NC, a partnership of 13 environmental groups, in the same hotel as BOEM’s public session, allowing guests to walk between the two events at the Raleigh Midtown Hilton.
Part of the group demonstrated briefly outside the BOEM meeting. In the rally rooms, guests were able to participate in a Twitter photo booth, fill out public comment postcards, make demonstration signs, and collect information from the groups about the danger of offshore drilling and seismic testing.
Don’t Drill NC partners are North Carolina Coastal Federation, Oceana, North Carolina Sierra Club, Surfrider Foundation, Crystal Coast Waterkeeper, Citizens Protecting the Atlantic Coast, Southern Environmental Law Center, NC Conservation Network, NC League of Conservation Voters, Environment North Carolina, Center for Biological Diversity, Save Our Sea NC, and Brunswick Environmental Action Team.