On Saturday January 31st, 2015 Team Marine members Kimberly Fuentes and Julian Apter, along with Andres Orellono went to the Heal the Bay headquarter in Santa Monica to participate in Phone Banking. For those of you who do not know what phone banking is, it is when volunteers call constituents of a city to see what their knowledge of the No on O Campaign was and encouraging them to oppose drilling in the Santa Monica bay and keeping the ban that we currently have on oil drilling in place. It was interesting to make these calls and hear the concerns and overall opposition to drilling in Hermosa. This was a new experience for the Team Marine, but we loved helping out our amazing partner, Heal the Bay. This is only one of the several phone banking events that Heal the Bay is holding, which is only one part of many similar events in their “Keep Hermosa Hermosa” Campaign. This campaign is working to raise awareness regarding the harms of oil drilling in the Santa Monica bay. Although (as Team Marine members found out) many people find opposing this “common sense” their are still several people that do not oppose the drilling. This is because they do not fall in the direct fall out zone of negative impacts associated with oil drilling. However, what they do not realize is that a highly potential oil spills would be catastrophic to the entire community. As we saw in the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill of 2010, when these spills happen not only does it destroy the marine environment and take a long time to clean up; it also kills beach tourism and negatively impacts the economy. There has also been some worrying due to the $17.5 million fine that the city would have to pay if they kept the ban in place, but rest assured because this would not raise taxes not the residents. Hermosa has been preparing money for this situation for a while now. Many thanks to Sarah Sikich and Randi Parent for helping us accomplish all the calls too!
We hope that everyone who is a registered voter in Hermosa Beach turns out to vote on March 3rd in support of our “Keep Hermosa Hermosa” and do not forget to vote No on O!
