Overview:
The overflow crowd heard not only from environmental activists, but a Chumash tribal representatives and commercial fishing industry leader as well
The prospect of reopening the Santa Barbara Channel to new oil drilling was blasted Friday night by actor Ted Danson, Rep. Salud Carbajal, D-Santa Barbara, other elected officials and environmentalists as a dangerous and reckless action.
“Oil and water. It never works, It just doesn’t,” said Danson, the “Cheers” and “The Good Place” TV star who spoke at the packed CEC Hub downtown, and urged the crowd to contact their elected officials.
He asked everyone to back the efforts of elected officials and environmental groups to oppose the administration plan to open the West Coast, along with the Gulf of Mexico, to new oil exploration and extraction.
Give those elected officials opposed to the plan a “big hug and let them know you’re behind them,” Danson added.
The theme that resounded through the session was that Santa Barbara’s experience with oil spills underscores the dangers at a time when the administration is turning its back on renewable alternatives like wind and solar.
First came the massive oil spill in 1969, then the 2015 pipeline break off Refugio State Beach that gushed thousands of gallons of crude into pristine waters and again washed ashore.
“We have learned these lessons before and we should not have to return to learn them again,” said Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara). He called the administration’s move “deeply troubling ” and “reckless,” prioritizing the oil industry over the community.
Gregg Hart, 37th District Assemblyman, (D-Santa Barbara) said he witnessed the destruction of the 1969 oil spill first hand when he parents took him down to the shore. He recalled watching workers using pitchforks try to soak up oil with hay. That memory led him to believe “we are facing the past in a really stupid way.”
Announced in November, the Interior Department’s plan would allow new oil and gas leases on the West Coast for the first time in four decades. It also comes as a Houston-based oil producer, Sable Offshore Corp., has sought to reopen a pipeline from offshore operations.
There are already 19 oil platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel, Maggie Hall, deputy chief counsel for the Environmental Defense Center told the crowd.
“There is no safe way to drill for oil,” Hall said.
The event was organized by the Environmental Defense Center, Surfrider Foundation, Oceana, Santa Barbara Channelkeeper, Sierra Club, Fearless Grandmothers and UC Santa Barbara’s Environmental Affairs Board.
The groups were joined by a local fishing industry leader and Chumash tribal representatives on a long list of speakers at the event.
“Fishermen love the ocean,” said Chris Voss, president of the Commercial Fishermen of Santa Barbara. But they “push back” when it comes oil.
“Without a healthy ocean, we put our own existence at risk,” he said. Even though trawlers are powered by diesel engines, he said he’d be anxious to embrace electric power if it came to boats.
Veronica Mendoza, who was introduced as a Chumash lineal descendant, said the ocean is sacred and needs to be protected. When the 1969 spill occurred, it focused the entire country’s attention on the environmental damage. Yet by contemplating new oil tract leases, “we keep repeating the same pattern.”
The environment, she said, “is not a concept, not scenery. It’s a living system,” she said.