Gulf oil spill drifts to Virginia

The spill from an exploratory rig in the Gulf of Mexico, the one caused by an explosion last month that killed 11 men, the one still leaking thousands of barrels of oil every day, reached shore Friday.

The impact will be felt for years to come.

It will be felt by the families of the men who were lured by good money to do dangerous work.

It will be felt on the spoiled shorelines of Gulf states, where oil will linger on feathers, in the bodies of animals and in every nook and cranny of every coastal swamp.

It will be felt in businesses along the coast, which tourists will begin to avoid.

And it will be felt in places like Virginia, where politicians have been working as hard as they can to bring similar oil rigs off the shores of the commonwealth.

With arguments that drilling is safe, Gov. Bob McDonnell, Sens. Jim Webb and Mark Warner, U.S. Rep. Glenn Nye and most of his colleagues have been urging the federal government to open Virginia's waters to offshore drilling.

They promise untold riches for desperate needs, to build highways and other things lawmakers have been unwilling and unable to pay for.

They promise good-paying jobs.

They promise that onshore facilities - the kinds of places that burn or blow up even more regularly than exploratory rigs - will be safe.

They promise to protect the jobs already here, in the tourism industry that depends on clean beaches and water, in the military that needs unfettered access to the sea and sky.

And they promise not to ruin the environment.

Since the beginning of the debate about offshore drilling, it has been clear that the promises are as concrete as petroleum fumes across the Gulf of Mexico. Inland lawmakers are lining up to prevent coastal states from getting any royalty money from offshore drilling. They outnumber Virginia's advocates.

Deep drilling jobs are among the most dangerous in the world, and they pay accordingly.

If drilling off Virginia produces new jobs, they will probably be filled by folks from everywhere - not just Virginians. Oil workers commute, as they did to the rig in the Gulf, where the dead came from at least three states.

But the most important assurance to residents of Virginia's coast was the one about the environment. Oil drilling, we were assured repeatedly by its advocates, is really safe these days. It won't damage the beaches, or the air, or our marshes. It certainly won't affect the wildlife.

Tell that to the people who live along the coast in Mississippi and Louisiana.