Opposition to Offshore Drilling Builds Along Atlantic Coast

When then-Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) first pushed the idea in 2010, it was easy to find Virginians who favored oil and gas drilling along the Virginia coast, even in this tourism-dependent city of 450,000. The Virginia Beach City Council voted 8 to 3 that year in support of the giant offshore rigs, betting, along with the mayor, that “there’s going to be money made.”

 

But that was before the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and before oil prices began their historic slide. At its December meeting two weeks ago, the same city council abruptly reversed course, voting to rescind its 2010 resolution after some of the city’s biggest business alliances campaigned against drilling.

 

“Why should we put ourselves at risk?” Laura Wood Habr, vice president of the city’s restaurant association, said in an interview after the vote.

 

The Virginia Beach council’s reversal is the latest blow to a plan that could bring offshore drilling to the Southeast Atlantic coast as early as 2017.

 

In recent months, at least 93 coastal communities — from small beach towns on the Delmarva Peninsula to the wealthy and politically powerful cities of Charleston and Myrtle Beach in South Carolina and Savannah, Ga. — have joined a revolt against a pro-drilling movement that once seemed unstoppable in the Republican-dominated South.