Federal officials have announced plans to conduct environmental studies that could eventually pave the way for oil drilling in the Atlantic Ocean up and down the East coast.

Oil Drilling
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Garden state officials and environmental groups are turning a big thumbs down on the idea.

Jersey Sierra Club boss Jeff Tittel calls the decision to move ahead with plans for seismic testing of the Ocean “deeply troubling”.

He says “we know that New Jersey’s almost 40 billion dollar a year tourism industry depends on clean beaches and clean water- and drilling off our coast is not worth the risk…the concern is that studies lead to drilling –cause otherwise, why would you waste the money? And so the concern that we have is that one day we may oil derricks out there – we’d rather see windmills…once you get oil out there the chances of a spill goes up , and the only oil we want to see on our beaches is Coppertone.”

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