Last year, on the first day of spring, an oil tanker truck crashed on Highway 166 east of Santa Maria, spilling 6,700 gallons of crude oil and fuel into the Cuyama River. The driver was speeding and is finally being prosecuted by the Santa Barbara County district attorney.
ExxonMobil recently revived plans to send 70 such trucks daily on the 101 from its Gaviota facility to the Nipomo refinery. If that doesn’t work out, it will then send the trucks barreling down the 166 to its Kern County pipeline. Those 70 trucks would then return to pick up the next day’s load.
Will the county and the state sanction this major pollution process and oil spills waiting to happen? For 30 years, this oil was piped north in substandard and neglected pipelines until the Refugio Beach oil spill shut down the pipeline.
Do the citizens and environment of Santa Barbara County need to bear the pollution and accident risk of this oil trucking so ExxonMobil can avoid the consequences of the Refugio spill and make a short-term profit?
Please contact your county supervisor and state Assembly and Senate members, and tell them to stop this dangerous and climate-killing project!
Larry Bishop
Buellton
