Is re-encampment the same as an oil pipeline restart?
Can’t unhoused people just get a waiver to restart their lives in the Santa Maria Riverbed? After all, the system that aims to provide resources, housing, and help to these folks isn’t quite working for them.
So we should all collectively shrug, right? Live and let live.
That’s what the state is doing for the Sable Offshore Corporation, which can’t use a specific required corrosion protection method on the pipeline that ruptured in 2015 due to, you guessed it, corrosion. The company asked the state fire marshal for a waiver of that regulation—called cathodic protection—because it doesn’t quite work for the pipeline.
Sable received the waiver and support in the form of a notice from the federal agency in charge of regulating pipelines not objecting to the waiver.
Shrug, right?
Live and let live.
This seems to indicate that the feds are willing to let the state allow the county to allow Sable to take the risk of another oily environmental mess on the Gaviota coast. So this means there are certain risks we as a community, as a government, are willing to take—or are being told to take?
For the sake of argument, what would it take to allow people to legally live in the Santa Maria Riverbed? What risks are people willing to take? I’m not pretending to solve the problem—one so complicated that it’s taken months of work to get San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties and Caltrans on the same page with a recently drafted memorandum of understanding—I’m just posing a thought experiment. Permits? Waivers? Portable potties? Environmental cleanup crews on call 24/7? End runs around the California Coastal Commission? Extra monitoring for corrosion, I mean crime?
That’s essentially what Sable’s been up to in order to get its pipeline back up and running, a pipeline so corroded the usual mandated system won’t work. Maybe the county should hire Sable to solve the homelessness issue in the riverbed.
The oil company does appear to be “moving fast and they’re pushing hard, and it seems like that process is accelerating right now,” according to Julie Teel Simmonds, the Center for Biological Diversity’s senior counsel.
That’s where the local environmental watchdog comes in, right? This watchdog has teeth, right?
The Center was told that federal regulators would need more time to review the fire marshal’s waiver, Simmonds told the Sun. But that was in December, under the Biden administration.
“But when the administration changed, apparently that changed as well,” she said. “That was disappointing and, I suppose, not surprising.”
Live and let live. With a system that isn’t quite working. For anyone.
Sable’s restart with the waiver and extra monitoring is “a much riskier plan than having a pipeline that’s properly designed and properly functions as intended,” Simmonds said. “I just think there’s a lot more room for error.”
Exactly. This is why we don’t ditch the properly vetted protocols for health and safety, whether on the coast or in the riverbed.
The Canary is worth the risk. Send cleanup crews to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Feb 20 – Mar 2, 2025.