Hard hats, work boots, and orange vests crowded the chairs in the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors chambers in Santa Maria on Jan. 17.
A chartered bus had just awkwardly backed its way out of the parking lot. Anti-oil signs filled the overflow room for the 6 p.m. public hearing on Aera Energy’s 667-page draft environmental impact report (EIR) for its proposed project to re-establish oil production in East Cat Canyon.
“Two minutes is not nearly enough to address all the inadequacies in this EIR,” a pharmacology student from UC Santa Barbara said during her allotted two-minute slot for public comment. “We shouldn’t need an EIR in 2018 to tell us that digging up more fossil fuels is a bad idea.”
The public comments made over the course of three hours were nothing new for the project: jobs, safety, and socioeconomic impact versus global warming, impacts from potential spills, and groundwater contamination. One side touted Aera’s attempts to go “above and beyond” in its effort to be thorough and mitigate project impacts. The other side pointed to the fact that any groundwater contamination is unacceptable and the EIR’s admission that there would probably be oil spills over the life of the project. Plans include construction and restoration of 72 well pads and more than 9 miles of roads as well as drilling up to 296 wells, which include oil/gas wells and cyclic steam injection, produced water re-injection, and fresh groundwater wells.
Brian Gregory with IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) Local 413 said that oil produced in Santa Barbara County would be cleaner than oil produced in other places.
“While this EIR considers the local impact, it should really consider the impact to our globe,” Gregory said. “Stopping this project will not prevent the consumption of a single drop of oil. … Oil produced here under the mitigation methods before you will be an offset.”
Members of the standing-room-only crowd occasionally shouted in protest against other speakers, such as Ed Hazard, the president of the state’s branch of the National Association of Royalty Owners.
“It is somewhat of an insult when people say, ‘Don’t produce oil here,’” Hazard said during his turn at the mic.
“Don’t produce oil here!” someone from the crowd interjected.
“This is California oil,” Hazard continued. “Produce local. Use local. Refine local.”
Others who spoke questioned the liability cost to locals who depended on groundwater as their sole source of drinking water and wondered why that information wasn’t included in the EIR. Chance English referred to the cost of the fires that PG&E is dealing with. The energy giant announced its intent to file for bankruptcy as the claims against the company from the Tubbs Fire that hit Santa Rosa in 2017 and the Camp Fire in Butte County in 2018 mount to $30 billion and counting.
“Even giants such as PG&E are unable to front the costs of their liabilities,” English said. “And this needs to be considered.”
The public comment period on the project’s draft EIR runs through Jan. 28.
This article appears in Jan 24-31, 2019.