About 200 community members’ voices—crying out either for climate change awareness and against the oil industry’s negative environmental impact, or for jobs needed in the community and in favor of the industry’s economic benefit—echoed in rapid-fire one-minute public comments on March 8.
Although the project up for discussion at the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors meeting may have been newish, the issue definitely wasn’t: oil extraction.
Supervisors voted 3-2 along South/North County lines to deny ExxonMobil’s permit application to truck crude oil along highways 101 and 166, from its Las Flores Canyon processing facility to the Santa Maria Pump Station in Santa Maria or to the Plains Pentland Terminal in Kern County.
South County supervisors cited unavoidable impacts of oil spills, fatal accidents, and fire hazards as reasons to reject the permit, while North County supervisors Bob Nelson (4th District) and Steve Lavagnino (5th District) said rejecting the project misses a major economic opportunity. According to county staff, the project would have provided 250 jobs and provided $4.5 million in revenue to the county.
“Oil aside, if you told me there was a project that would create 250 jobs and generate $4.5 million for county local schools, I think we’d all be lining up behind it,” Lavagnino said during the meeting. “Our No. 1 legislative priority in the county is to push for job growth and economic vitality, [and] we have a project in front of us that’s asking us if we would approve 250 jobs and $4.5 million a year.”
The proposal stated that trucking would occur seven days a week, 24 hours a day—with about 78 round trips per year, transporting roughly 11,200 barrels of oil per day, according to county documents. The project was designed to be a temporary solution as the Plains All American pipeline company works to complete reconstruction of the pipe that leaked oil onto the Gaviota Coast in 2015, according to the county.
Ensnared in the county’s permitting process since 2017, the trucking proposal would have enabled ExxonMobil to restart its three offshore platforms that have been shut down since the 2015 spill. During public comment on March 8, many environmental groups voiced their concern for the negative and lasting impacts this could have on climate change.
Supervisor Nelson said that he thought ExxonMobil did an excellent job of mitigating the risks and following the application process, and the project should be approved as a result.
“Exxon has come in and gone above and beyond in every place possible; what I’m hearing is there is no scenario where their project can be approved,” Nelson said. “I do support the project, the process was correct and legal. On the jobs part, the impacts are going to be felt on mine and Steve’s [Lavagnino] district. … The county’s been making statements on equity for a long time, and these are jobs that help generational equity [and] make a difference in this community.”
Dollars and sense
Oil’s had an economic impact on Santa Barbara County communities since 1896, but after the disastrous 1969 oil spill in the Santa Barbara Channel—which now ranks as the largest spill in California, according to NPR—the Golden State began heavily regulating oil extraction and processing to mitigate environmental risks, 2nd District County Supervisor Gregg Hart told the Sun.
“When we had the 1969 oil spill—which made international news—it led to the creation of the environmental movement and led to the Environmental Protection Agency and many regulations for offshore and onshore oil development,” Hart said. “It became more restrictive and protective of the environment to the point where we have the most regulations compared to most other countries.”
Hart was one of the supervisors who moved to reject the proposal because he doesn’t want to see the county move backward in oil transportation technology—from the safer pipelines to the more dangerous trucking—and didn’t want the county to face the possible negative outcomes, he said.
“Are we willing to go back to a less safe and less secure transportation system for oil to accommodate that resource to resume old operations?” he said. “Balance is the equation, and on this decision it was to be more concerned about the risks than the potential rewards.”
ExxonMobil officials told the Sun they disagreed with the county’s decision and are looking at their options to restart the offshore pumps. They said that ExxonMobil will continue to preserve and maintain the three offshore facilities until the Plains All American pipeline—which is under the environmental review process—is ready for use.
Santa Maria Valley Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Glenn Morris said this decision highlights the long-standing differences between the two halves of the county.
“I’m disappointed, but I’m not terribly surprised. I think the current makeup of the Board of Supervisors has been consistent in their decisions. The unfortunate part is they are consistently devaluing jobs and the community needs of working families in the county—particularly the North County,” Morris told the Sun.
North County communities—such as Santa Maria—rely heavily on oil-related jobs and tend to lean toward supporting oil; whereas South County communities highlight the oil industry’s negative impact on its large tourism economy, Morris said.
“Let’s do both; we can do both. In addition to having a wonderful tourism economy in Santa Barbara and Goleta, we can have the same level of economic activity in the North County that can come from a different industry. We should find a way to make those coexist,” he said.
“This is not a North or South County issue,” Morris continued. “We aren’t rising above it and trying to give everyone a little bit of a win. It appears that we have not found a way in this county to rise above those regional interests and find solutions that would represent a middle approach.”
Issue No. 1
There isn’t time to take a middle approach and keep relying on oil, according to Environmental Defense Center Chief Counsel Linda Krop.
“Now is the time to stop relying on fossil fuels and move to clean, renewable energy because we have an existing climate crisis. … We don’t have time to wait at this point,” Krop said.
For this particular project, researchers at the Environmental Defense Center looked at oil trucking impacts on communities and the surrounding wildlife, Krop said.
“We spent the last few years researching accident history of oil tanker trucks and had three different interns send Public Records Act requests to different safety and response agencies. What we found was that these accidents are quite frequent,” she said. “Our research showed just along the route alone, there had been eight accidents in the last 15 years along the 101 and six in the last six years along the 166, resulting in deaths, injuries, oil spills, and road closures.”
Krop said the Environmental Defense Center presented this research and information about the 2020 oil tanker truck accident on Highway 166—which spilled 4,500 gallons of crude oil into the Cuyama River, according to previous Sun reporting—to the Board of Supervisors.
“We’re grateful it was taken seriously by the decision makers, but the burden should not fall on the public to analyze the risks of a project like this,” she said.
Even though Krop said she’s thrilled by the supervisors’ recent decision, she added that the Environmental Defense Center’s work is not finished. ExxonMobil could appeal the project to the California Coastal Commission, she said, and the company is waiting for the new pipeline to start up its offshore oil extraction again.
“Pipelines are safer than trucking but clearly still have impacts, as we saw in 2015. We don’t want Exxon to restart the platforms at all,” Krop said. “We are concerned about restarting offshore oil platforms and the oil spills [that could happen].”
She added that as climate change grows into a larger concern around the world, she wants to see more of a focus on what the county can do to help advance renewable energy.
“There’s a lot we can do right here in the community, like more solar [panels] in public spaces, buildings, and parking lots. The time has come, and it’s happening fast,” she said. “We need to be focusing on the bigger picture.”
Staff Writer Taylor O’Connor can be reached at toconnor@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Mar 24-31, 2022.