The St. Petersburg gathering began with a welcome from Mayor Rick Kriseman, a longtime advocate for protecting Florida from coastal and offshore drilling.  The mayor called for protection against drilling to keep oil off Florida’s beaches and away from St. Petersburg.  He reiterated his commitment to solar energy in the Sunshine City and the Sunshine State, a theme that resonated throughout the event as a solution to dirty fossil fuels.  New Congressman David Jolly from U.S. House District 13 committed to Gulf protection as a “non-partisan issue”, and to maintaining protection of the eastern Gulf from oil drilling.  Florida State Representative Dwight Dudley called for an “end to memorials like this” by avoiding it in the first place, citing clean energy as the way forward. 

Cathy Harrelson from Gulf Restoration Network called for full accountability for oil and gas companies, real Gulf restoration and a shift to a clean energy economy by “keeping dirty fuels in the ground and out of our water, as climate change impacts such as sea level rise affect us here and around the world.”  David White, of the National Wildlife Foundation described oil drilling as incompatible with ocean systems, as outlined in his organization’s recently released report, “Four Years Into The Gulf Oil Disaster: Still Waiting for Restoration”.  Dr. Robert Weisberg, researcher from the USF College of Marine Science renewed his call for a baseline study of the Gulf, telling the group that a real understanding of the Gulf systems is the only way we can truly advocate for and protect the Gulf.

Unable to attend, Senator Bill Nelson’s representative, Shahra Anderson joined the gathering to demonstrate the Senator’s continued leadership and support for Gulf protection and restoration.  Likewise, Congresswoman Kathy Castor’s office submitted a strong statement: "Today we are reminded that Florida’s jobs in the tourism, fishing, recreation and wildlife industries rely upon a healthy and resilient Gulf of Mexico, and that the threat of a future spill is a threat to our economy.  In Florida and the Gulf coast, a healthy environment means a healthy economy."  Her focus on the damage from “the worst environmental catastrophe in U.S. history” has been to help small business recover, provide full implementation of the RESTORE Act, revitalize the Gulf Coast region’s ecosystem-based economy and provide congressional leadership to prevent such disasters from ever happening again.  The Congresswoman further stated: “This past year I supported legislation to significantly reduce the chance of another blowout by imposing safety standards for risky offshore oil drilling based on what we learned from this terrible accident and increase liability for polluters.” 

Despite BP declaring an end to “active recovery” this week, oil continues to wash up on the Gulf’s shores. On an April 9^th monitoring trip to Barataria Bay and Grand Isle, Louisiana, Gulf Restoration Network documented fresh tar balls on the beaches and a dead dolphin in the surf. One recent study linked BP’s oil to problems with heart health in bluefin tuna and amberjack. Similar results have been found after other oil spills, including the Exxon-Valdez disaster.

“The BP disaster was the largest manmade environmental catastrophe in U.S. history, but sadly it wasn’t the first or the last time we’ve seen the oil and gas industry pollute our environment and endanger our communities,” said Steve Murchie, Campaign Director with the Gulf Restoration Network in New Orleans. “Twenty five years after the Exxon-Valdez disaster and four years after BP, not enough action has been taken to protect coastal communities from the impacts of oil and gas development, extraction, and transportation”.  This sentiment was echoed in St. Petersburg by Lucinda Johnston of Chart411 and Phil Compton of the Sierra Club.  Compton described the toll the Keystone XL Pipeline and other oil and gas projects will take on our climate and our water and calling for clean energy and clean transportation solutions.  Johnston had a simple message – “we can all do something to change the future, it’s up to us.”

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