Environmental advocates have issued a notice disclosing plans to sue the federal government over the failure to review and update offshore drilling plans for platforms off the coast, following an oil spill in Southern California last month.
The Center for Biological Diversity spokesman Patrick Sullivan told the Southern California Record his group can legally sue 60 days after the notice to sue was sent early in November.
“These plans are old, they're very old and in fact they envision these platforms already having ceased operation at this point,” Sullivan said. “So, what we want is the federal government to go back, look at these plans and ideally realize that these platforms are way past the sell-by date and shouldn't be operating in our coastal waters anymore.”
The Center for Biological Diversity sent the notice to the secretary of interior outlining the intent to sue in pursuance with requirements for lawsuits against the federal government. According to Sullivan, the group states infrastructure plans for a cluster of oil platforms that had been improved back in the 1980s and are still in operation today.
At the time of their approval, the platforms laid out an operating period, expecting to cease operation around 2007. According to a release Nov. 2, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management failed to review and require revision of the plans despite the recent oil spill, age of the infrastructure and other changes since the plans were approved about four decades ago.
The intended lawsuit seeks to stop the use of these original plans. This comes after the October oil spill resulted in tens of thousands of gallons of oil seeping into the Pacific Ocean, closing beaches and killing wildlife.