February 14th, 2018 Committee on Environmental Conversation
Legislative Auditorium
725 Veterans Memorial Highway
Smithtown, New York 11725 Members of the Committee: Thank you for the opportunity to submit testimony. My name is Assemblywoman Stacey Pheffer Amato and I represent the 23rd Assembly District which includes the South Queens neighborhoods of Ozone Park, Howard Beach, Lindenwood, Broad Channel Hamilton Beach, and the Rockaways. I am a lifelong resident of the beautiful Rockaway Peninsula and am raising my two children here with my husband. I am writing today to voice my concern with the possible expansion of natural gas, oil drilling, and extraction from offshore areas of our state. My district is almost entirely surrounded by water and includes some of the areas in New York City that were hardest hit by Superstorm Sandy. Roughly eighty-five percent of my district was affected by flood or fire during the Superstorm, including my own home. No one can forget the images of our community burned down to their foundations in Breezy Point and Belle Harbor; flood waters engulfing Cross Bay Boulevard in Broad Channel and surrounding the Belt Parkway in Howard Beach; the narrow streets of Hamilton Beach plunged into darkness; or the destroyed sections of the Boardwalk thrust onto residents’ cars, homes, and businesses. It has been over five years and we still are not whole, each and every day we still work towards recovery. Now, if there was an oil spill, how would we come back from that? How can we make a conscious decision to expose our residents to these same dangers and experiences? How can we make the conscious decision to impact our marine life and water quality, when we have the opportunity today to avoid it? What do we say to our children and grandchildren who may not get the chance to experience the marine life and wonder of the bay and ocean, with no tangible benefit to our communities? Today, we have an opportunity to eliminate the possibility altogether. We can rest assured that we took collective action to preserve our beaches, our marine life, our water quality, and most importantly the hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of coastal residents that we would intentionally be putting at risk. The decision to expand offshore drilling has the potential to negatively affect our coastal communities drastically through potential irreversible damage to our ocean, coastlines, and cost billions of dollars to once again recover and rebuild. I am adamantly against the announced plans for the expansion of natural gas and oil drilling in New York State. We have a duty as New Yorkers to protect our communities to ensure that our children and children’s children can inhabit it- and if we allow this type of drilling it unnecessarily puts us all at risk. Sincerely, Stacey Pheffer Amato
Member of Assembly, 23rd District