Kure Beach: Big Oil Prioritized Over Citizen Voices
At the Kure Beach Town Hall on Tuesday night, three commissioners showed a complete disregard for the voice of the citizens. Kure Beach citizens have been educating and organizing themselves to end the proposal for seismic testing, an extremely loud and damaging form of oil and gas exploration. Citizens have clearly demonstrated an overwhelming communal agreement of intolerance for seismic in the Atlantic Ocean.
The council voted 3-2 against the resolution dreamed for by hundreds Kure Beach residents. Steve Pagley tipped the scale in favor of industry with his vote. Commissioner Pagley is a salesman for Consolidated Pipe and Supply, which supplies materials to the oil industry, and should have stayed out of it, in light of possible conflict of interests.
Mayor Lambeth, another biased voice in this vote, has been involved with the multi-million dollar lobbying firm, the American Petroleum Institute, attending conferences, listening to and repeating industry propaganda word for word.
It is a shame that elected representatives in Kure Beach went against the obvious will of the people, as made clear at January’s meeting where the room overflowed with citizens calling for an apology and a recall of Mayor Lambeth’s pro-seismic letter to the federal government.
Here’s the bright side: Kure Beach residents have put the issue into national attention. Coastal towns from New Jersey to Florida, including Carolina Beach, have begun to pass resolutions against seismic testing. The fight continues, and coastal citizens are growing stronger and more committed to ending the threat of seismic testing.
Brady Bradshaw
Campaign Coordinator, Echo Friendly Action!
EFA! is a project of The Ocean Foundation
facebook.com/echofriendlyaction
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