NOT IN ALASKA
There Shouldn't Be New Offshore Drilling In Alaska
Offshore Drilling Impacts
Everyone loves our great Alaskan landscape but this new oil rig will jeopardize all of our beautiful wilderness and waters. Pipelines could break, oil could run off the rig and get into the water, and also there could be an oil spill like before in 1989 and 2006! If there's just one oil spill we could lose everything and all of the animals and even our people would probably get sick and die! Would you want to risk all of this just for oil?
Our Environment's Welfare
Risks
At night, oil rigs attract birds because of their lights. Most birds end up flying straight into the rigs or get incinerated right on the spot. They get burned because of the burning of fossil fuels to make black carbon. Black carbon affects an environment in a huge way. It makes the climate's temperature rise which could cause a really big problem in Alaska. We don't need our ice caps to melt now do we?
While drilling, a lot of firing air guns are involved. This sends a strong wave across the sea floor that could decrease catching fish,and can severely hurt the marine organisms hearing. Also, the drilling waste and metal cuttings are dumped into the ocean without care. I can tell you right now, no good intentions are going to come with this new oil rig.
The pipelines will end up messing up our environment. They can cause erosion and degrade the natural environment. Once our beautiful environment is gone, what do we have left? No one will want to come here anymore because of how disgusting it will look. Then our tourism will be shot right into the ground.
Past Oil Spills
On March 24, 1989 an oil spill occurred in Prince William Sound, Alaska. The oil tanker called Exxon Valdez hit a reef and spilled about 260,000-750,000 barrels of crude oil into the water. It is one of the worst human caused environmental disasters in history and was also the worst US oil spill up until the Deepwater Horizon spill occurred. It covered about 1,300 miles of coastline and about 11,000 miles of water.
On March 6, 2006 yet another oil spilled happened in Alaska. It is known as the Prudhoe Bay oil spill. It leaked for about 5 days and leaked about 267,000 gallons of oil into the water, covering about 1.9 acres. It is still the largest oil spill in Northern Alaska.