Is there a debate that stinks quite like the one over oil? Each side already has heels snugly dug in, and they talk past each other by miles. And in Santa Barbara County, those miles span the difference between North and South.
North County representatives tend to lean Republican and pro oil, whereas the more liberal South Coast and Santa Ynez Valley elects Democrats to county and state seats. The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors often votes 3-2 on oil, like they did on Jan. 30 for a declaration opposing new offshore leases in the county after President Donald Trump‘s administration released a proposal to expand offshore leases.
The North County supes, Peter Adam and Steve Lavagnino, made their cases for oil. Adam’s argument is that oil is mostly safe, and that the oil industry provides valuable revenue to the county. Lavagnino made the energy independence argument, pointing to the atrocities of Saudia Arabia, which the U.S. imports plenty of oil from.
Both are right, but they can also be wrong. Adam is right about the revenue. On the other hand, it’s easy to see oil as safe and clean in North County, where most of the oil wells are tucked away in Cat Canyon and the Orcutt hills, where spills are out of sight and mind. But the South County supes and residents are reminded of the oil industry every day when they take a look at their ocean skyline. And the spills they’ve endured are much more jarring to the local wildlife, economy, and everyone’s collective memory of the county’s oil industry.
To Lavagnino’s point, the U.S. gets nearly 40 percent of its oil from domestic extraction already, and the county is a part of that percentage. The proposal that Das Williams, Janet Wolf, and Joan Hartmann approved doesn’t end oil in the county, just voices a commitment to stop it off the coast. You can’t blame the constituents and representatives on the coast from feeling that way. You kinda have to give supes like Williams and Hartmann credit—they both drive electric cars. They’re walking the walk when it comes to oil, but they’re also in favor of allowing Plains All American Pipeline to rebuild the pipeline that caused the Refugio spill in 2015.
It’s not like these divisions are cut and dry. Of course there are anti-oil Democrats and progressive activists in North County, and there are pro-oil Republicans in Santa Barbara. I mean, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke‘s wife, Lolita “Lola” Zinke, is from Santa Barbara—they have a house there. Zinke is the one who issued the proposal, but I wonder if he had the Santa Barbara Channel in mind when he issued it. The Zinkes are being investigated for billing private flights to their homes in Montana and Santa Barbara to the government last year—I wonder if they took time to look at the row of oil derricks while they flew in on our tax dollars.
The activists in North County are vocal as well. Groups like the Environmental Defense Center and Food and Water Watch usually have speakers at meetings to spar against COLAB’s Andy Caldwell over oil. It’s part of why the expansion of oil wells on the Orcutt Oil Field by the Pacific Coast Energy Company was voted down by South County supes in 2016, even though the project was in the pro-oil Adam’s district.
That decision still sticks in Adam’s mustache, but as they say, “Majority rules.”
The Canary lost a lot of bird buddies in the last oil spill. Send your thoughts to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Feb 1-8, 2018.