"Think about it," says Susan Lewis of the Earth Ethics Institute at Miami Dade College. "Spills are inevitable -- especially in hurricane season -- and it's going to be messy and smelly." On top of that, she says, "It's going to kill off half the things we're trying to research."
Dressed in black, 200 people linked hands a few blocks from South Pointe Park Saturday to make a statement: Drilling is not just an ecological problem. It's a brown stain on South Florida's tourism industry, which relies on pristine beaches.
Dubbed "Hands Across the Sand," the protest was organized by the Miami chapter of the Surfrider Foundation. About 50 more demonstrations went on across the state, from Key West to Pensacola.
The bill passed through the House last year, and state Rep. Dean Cannon of Winter Park told the Orlando Sentinel last week that the committee he leads is on track to filing the bill during the upcoming session. A spokesperson for Cannon told Riptide they are "reviewing it carefully."
