One of the Sun’s reporters recently took an evening trip down Highway 101 to see for himself what the hubbub over this oil spill thing was all about. The smell was the first thing he noticed. It was unmistakable—the effervescent essence of freshly laid blacktop mixed with that familiar scent of gasoline straight out of the pump.
While that scent—which may be what notified officials and Plains All American employees that something was going wrong at Refugio State Beach on May 19—is no longer hanging in the air, the contents of a ruptured crude oil pipeline will be unearthed, washed ashore, and discovered in new places for months and years to come.
Let’s be honest: No matter what side of that unmoving environmental ideals line in the sand you land on, oil spills are awful, awful things, a slap in the face that substances like oil are hard to control, no matter what safeguards, legislation, or technology are in place. And in this case, it feels like another terrible thing stacked against the non-local bureaucracy tasked with regulating an industry that—as long as we’re being honest—is based off consumer demand and therefore, like any industry, driven by money.
You know: Save a little here; pinch a little there; kick up the price; no strict, local oversight; whoopsy daisy, oil spill.
The California agencies tasked with protecting aquifers from oil industry contaminants are the same agencies (the Department of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources and the Environmental Protection Agency) that forgot, or didn’t have the manpower, to make sure the state’s potential drinking water aquifers didn’t get injected with contaminants. And remember those rigs in federal waters releasing fracking fluid, etc., into the Pacific Ocean off the Central Coast’s shoreline? Those are regulated by federal agencies.
Well, the pipeline that spilled upwards of 100,000 gallons of oil down a hillside, onto Refugio Beach, and into the Santa Barbara Channel, is apparently the only pipeline running oil through the county that’s not regulated by the county. It’s regulated by the feds.
Regardless of who regulates it, though, a spill happened, and now everyone—the environmental advocates, whether they admit it or not, are positively gleaming because they have something real to shove in the oil industry’s face—is fighting to take advantage of the situation.
Hey, the national news cameras lining the shore, recording images of volunteers in hazmat suits scraping oil off the wildlife aren’t doing it because everyone in the world needs to hear about; they’re doing it because there’s ratings and money to be made off the situation.
And every environmental nonprofit within 100 miles sent out a press release, wagging their collective fingers saying, “See, we told you. Oil is bad. The industry is full of evil-doers who just want to destroy the planet.” I can almost guarantee you, that’s simply not true. This is a PR nightmare for Plains, one where “We apologize for the damage … we’re very sorry for the disruption,” doesn’t cut it.
And if the Sun gets another emailed statement from a politician calling the spill a “wake-up call,” a “tragic reminder” of the “serious risks to our environment … that come from drilling for oil” (1st District Supervisor Salud Carbajal, who’s running for Congress; state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson; and U.S. Rep. Lois Capps, respectively), I swear I’m going to start molting yellow feathers all over the office. Those responses are so friggin’ predictable.
Hey politicians, don’t you guys fly and drive all over for your job? That’s not saving precious resources or making an example of how people can change their lives to be less dependent on oil. And you also said you would “closely monitor” the spill and its aftermath. What does that mean exactly? We’re all closely monitoring the spill. What are you going to do to make sure these federal and state agencies are doing their jobs?
Quite honestly, oil spills are the cost of doing business. Unfortunately, that’s the way it has to be. We drive; we buy plastic products: We use Band-Aids, buy DVDs, burn candles, wash our clothes with detergents. We do a lot of things—other than put gas and oil in our car—that utilize the crude stuff that just destroyed the environment, once again, of a beach and the ocean near it. And, I’m sick of hearing the same tired arguments from everyone who cares to shake a stick at the spill. Yes, we need to look for alternative forms of energy. Yes, we need to prevent these in the future.
But all of that is going to take a collective effort, not a fragmented one: You know, “All for one and one for all.”
The Sun had several commentaries submitted on the oil spill this week. The one we ran, “Déjà vu, all over again,” makes a point about how environmental legislation passed in the 1970s, after the big 1968 oil spill in the Santa Barbara Channel, wouldn’t have a chance today. I agree. There’s too much political discussion happening based around those same hardline sides of the environmental ideals argument.
There’s not enough work done on either side to create something everyone—industry, consumer, environment, economy, future—can live with. There’s too much finger pointing and soapbox singing taking up space where compromise should. I’m not saying I know where that line of compromise is, I’m just saying nothing will change in the future without a little give-and-take.
But what do I know, I’m just a bird.
The canary is glad she can sing this week without oil in her mouth. Send comments to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in May 28 – Jun 4, 2015.