Please click on the image to "embiggen" and see what a large oil spill off Virginia's coast would do to Virginia Beach, etc. It's not pretty on a number of levels, including the impact on an industry that "last year...in Virginia Beach alone generated over $1.5 billion in revenue and almost 12,000 jobs." According to Glen Besa, Sierra Club Virginia Chapter Director, "All it takes is one spill to virtually shutdown Virginia’s coastal economy, both tourism and fisheries, for years. Oil is still disrupting the natural environment in Prince William Sound 20 years after the Exxon Valdez spill." Why would we risk this, especially given the extremely low estimates for oil reserves off our coast, as well as the fact that it's unlikely Virginia would see any of the oil revenues from drilling there? I mean, nobody would be this foolish, right? Whoops.
