Coastal Areas Florida

The Interior Department and nine oil companies reached agreement Monday on the surrender of drilling leases off southwestern Florida and in Alaska's Bristol Bay, assuring protection of the environmentally fragile coastal waters. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt said the agreement "closes the door for oil and gas development offshore the Everglades and in Bristol Bay, now and for the foreseeable future."

Weeks of wind and pounding surf have chewed away at Florida's world-famous beaches in some of the worst erosion in a generation, leaving some sunbathers with a pathetically narrow strip of sand on which to spread a towel. "For a couple of blocks it's almost like there's no beach," said ophthalmologist Russ Wolfe, who often jogs along the Hollywood Beach Broadwalk. "It is really narrow. It looks like the water is right there."

The House overwhelmingly approved a compromise Interior-Forest Service spending bill that would prevent the Reagan Administration from selling oil leases off the coasts of three states. The $9.9-billion fiscal 1989 appropriations bill, sent to the Senate by a 359-45 vote, is drawing veto threats because of the oil-leasing issue and several other provisions.

A popular Atlantic surfing beach was reopened a week after it had been closed because of repeated shark attacks and sightings. The half-mile stretch of New Smyrna Beach, south of Daytona Beach, was reopened. A helicopter flyover spotted only one shark. Last week, dozens of sharks were sighted, prompting the closure.

Seventy-six cold-stunned sea turtles floating helplessly were plucked Wednesday from the chilly waters off the Canaveral National Seashore, bringing to 232 the number of turtles picked up this week. Sixty-one of the turtles have died. Twenty turtles were en route to Sea World of Florida in Orlando, where 75 were already recovering in tanks of warm water, park curator Frank Murru said. The others were to be trucked to Disney World in Orlando. "Almost all of them are doing very well," Murru said.

The White House, moving forward on a major environmental front, Tuesday established a task force to review plans to drill for oil off the California and Florida coasts. The panel, to be headed by Interior Secretary Manuel J. Lujan, is to "examine in detail the concerns over adverse impacts" of Lease Sale 91 off Northern California, Lease Sale 95 off Southern California, and Lease Sale 116 off southern Florida.

A National Academy of Sciences panel has concluded that the Interior Department lacks sufficient information to proceed with projected oil drilling leases in two sites off the California coast, according to a report to be made public today. Its finding that knowledge about the consequences of oil exploration there is "inadequate and unreliable" marks a major blow to Administration hopes to set policy for the controversial sites by the end of the year.

A Bush Administration task force on offshore drilling is seriously considering a proposal to subject oil platforms off the Southern California coast to pollution regulations set by local authorities, according to a task force document and sources close to the panel.

Here, where the wily bonefish abounds in the flats of the Florida Bay, is what President Bush plans to do on Earth Day: At the unusual hour of 7:05 a.m., he intends to award a "Point of Light," the presidential commendation he has created to recognize voluntarism, to an organization that is working to protect the fragile coral reefs of the Florida Keys. By about 8 a.m., or so, he plans to go fishing.

President Bush promised once again Wednesday that he will make a decision "soon" on whether to allow oil drilling off the California and Florida coasts, a pledge that the President and his aides have been making on and off since December. "It's a very hot item," Bush said when asked about the delay during a session at the White House with representatives of regional newspapers.

A one-mile stretch of beach will be closed this weekend after a helicopter survey Friday showed dozens of sharks off the coast. Eight people in the last week have been bitten at New Smyrna Beach. "It's due to the frequency and number of bites in a relatively short period of time," beach patrol Capt. Robert Horster said of the closure. Volusia County Beach Patrol spotted 30 to 40 sharks in the area Friday. New Smyrna Beach is considered one of Florida's best surfing spots.

Hundreds of sharks that gathered off the west coast of Florida this week have swum away, police said Wednesday. The Pasco County Sheriff's Office issued an alert to swimmers and boaters Tuesday after its marine patrol officers spotted a concentration of hundreds of sharks in the Gulf of Mexico about three miles from the county's beaches. The officers checked the area again Wednesday morning and found only a few sharks, sheriff's spokesman Kevin Doll said.

The Senate embraced President Bush's scaled-down plan for oil and gas drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico by rejecting an amendment Thursday that would have blocked energy production off Florida's shores. Eighteen Democrats, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, joined all Republican senators to kill the proposed ban. Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer hailed the 67-33 vote as "a victory for all Americans who want to see environmentally responsible energy production." Sen.

In a blow to President Bush's production-oriented energy policy, the House on Thursday voted to block oil and gas development off the Florida coast and on the grounds of national monuments. The White House is considering whether to open a part of the Gulf of Mexico for drilling, and Bush has said he would like to retain the option of exploration in some areas of national monuments.

It lies beneath the flat, shimmering waters of the Gulf of Mexico, off the coasts of Florida and Alabama: a 6-million-acre expanse that oil and gas interests believe holds a rich reservoir of natural gas. Industry officials are pushing to open up the eastern gulf to drilling by allowing the federal government to move forward with the first lease sale there in more than a decade.

Just in time for the Fourth of July weekend, health officials Thursday reopened most of the 25 miles of beaches that had been closed by a giant sewage spill. Four miles of beach remained closed. The reopened beaches included popular tourist spots like Miami Beach's South Beach and the beach at Bal Harbour. The millions of gallons of sewage that spewed from a ruptured underwater pipe have been swept away by ocean currents, health officials said.

The Senate embraced President Bush's scaled-down plan for oil and gas drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico by rejecting an amendment Thursday that would have blocked energy production off Florida's shores. Eighteen Democrats, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, joined all Republican senators to kill the proposed ban. Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer hailed the 67-33 vote as "a victory for all Americans who want to see environmentally responsible energy production." Sen.

The first thing that an oil company sinks into an offshore drilling project isn't a metal bit or a seismic probe. It's money. Under the best circumstances, a firm can expect to pour millions of dollars and seven to 10 years into a project before seeing any production--or any return on its investment. For most oil companies, it's a calculated risk of doing business, particularly when offshore areas promise the best prospects for replacing ever-dwindling domestic supplies of crude.

Six miles off shore, where the waters of the Atlantic turn deep blue and the city skyline fades to haze, they cast their net. The quarry: billfish. "Good," says Colin Schmitz as the 20-foot-long cone of fine mesh trails out from the boat's stern like an unfurling cloud. "Looks good," agrees Stacy Luthy, and she turns to signal the captain, who kicks the boat into gear. For five miles they drag the net along the surface.

When she was a young girl back in the mid-1950s, Marsha Dean Phelts rode to the beach each summer in the back of her daddy's truck, loaded down with family, clothing and enough Nehi soda pop for a two-week stay. "What I remember most was lots of sun and lots of sand," recalled Phelts, 53, a Jacksonville librarian. "There was sand in the ham sandwiches and sand in the cake. But we didn't mind. Because we were all together: Daddy, Mama, all the children, the cousins, my Sunday school classmates.