We sure did a lot of fighting this year! Maybe it was all that rain in January and March, filling up Northern Santa Barbara County’s streets with mud and debris, causing our reservoirs to spill over, and leaving us with repair needs—some of which have yet to be fixed.
It made us grumpy for the year ahead, maybe?
Ripe for a continued fight over the Plains All-American pipeline that still hasn’t had oil gurgling through it since the 2015 Refugio Beach oil spill. The pipeline now belongs to ExxonMobil, even after some county residents attempted to prevent the company from officially changing the pipeline’s ownership with the county this year—even though the oil giant had already purchased the pipeline. I’m not 100 percent sure what the purpose of that “resistance” was other than to be difficult, to make Santa Barbara County a hard place for Big Oil to do business.
Even though a superior court judge ruled against ExxonMobil in its lawsuit against the county’s decision denying its plan to truck oil on Highways 101 and 166, I think the oil company is still battling to win the war. Environmentalists successfully lobbied the county to vote against the company’s proposal to update the valves on the pipeline it now owns over concerns that it was trying to restart the pipeline—which, duh!
After all that, ExxonMobil took its battleship out of Santa Barbara County’s jurisdiction. But the company isn’t going home. Instead, it’s decided to take a chance on the state and federal systems. The county’s planning process has been one bomb after another thanks to environmentalists, so the company believes it might have better success non-locally.
Nice work, everyone! After all that, Santa Barbara County might not get a say in whether the pipeline starts pumping oil and what the pipeline needs to do to get back up to snuff. Fighting is for the birds—birds that still need to go to the hospital in an ambulance during a medical emergency.
Who will be providing that transportation throughout the county next year? Good question! American Medical Response (AMR)? Santa Barbara County Fire Department? Both?
After at least a year of fighting off AMR from renewing its contract with the county, the Board of Supervisors finally found a way to award three ambulance services contracts to County Fire. Why? I’m honestly still not sure, but the county got sued over the decision.
In a big middle finger to the county’s topsy-turvy decision-making process, AMR sued the county in September, saying it had violated state law. And a judge recently agreed with the ambulance company.
Although AMR was set to step back from serving the county in March 2024 after four decades of providing medical transport to local residents, a judge granted AMR a stay through July. I guess County Fire will have to wait until after the lawsuit’s trial to see if it will get the opportunity to light up its ambulance sirens.
Will the Santa Ynez Valley light up its anti-LGBTQ torches once again in 2024? I guess we’ll have to wait a few months to find out. But if 2023 is any indication of what will come in 2024, the bigots will be out in full force as Pride month approaches.
The Canary is beak-sharpening in anticipation. Send tips to canary@santamarisun.com.
This article appears in Dec 28, 2023 – Jan 7, 2024.
