HOUMA — An environmental group has filed a lawsuit seeking to reinstate the federal deepwater drilling ban, a move one local oil-industry representative calls “reactionary.” The Center for Biological Diversity, based in Tuscon, Ariz., filed suit Friday against Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in federal court in Washington, D.C. The suit seeks a reinstatement of the ban on deepwater oil drilling enacted by the Obama administration in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the worst oil spill in U.S. history. The ban should remain until a “comprehensive analysis” of deepwater drilling’s risks to wildlife and the environment can be conducted, the suit says. Jane Arnette, executive director of the South Central Industrial Association, a Houma-based group that represents dozens of local oil-related companies, said the suit ignores a history of safe practices in the offshore-drilling industry. “That’s very reactionary,” she said Saturday. “After years of drilling, rather than thinking through what we’ve done in the past. The industry is very cognizant of the environmental aspects of this.” Salazar lifted the ban Oct. 12. It had been in place nearly six months since the April 20 disaster on a Gulf rig that killed 11 people and spilled an estimated 200 million ...
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