Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis pushes back on federal oil drilling

(The Center Square) – California Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, along with other state officials and environmental advocates, announced her opposition Tuesday afternoon to President Donald Trump’s efforts to expand oil drilling off the California Coast.

The announcement follows a letter to the U.S. Department of the Interior that Kounalakis sent in November. She urged the federal government to remove California from the Trump administration’s plan to expand offshore oil drilling. The letter stated that moving forward with offshore drilling would cause immense harm to the environment and communities of California’s coast.

“This is no place to try to re-open offshore drilling,” Kounalakis said during a news conference in the state Capitol in Sacramento. “The costs are just too high. We are saying no way – not over our efforts to ensure that we keep the Trump administr...