Oil on Troubled Waters

The oil that tarred the Santa Barbara beaches last year is largely gone, but the memory still galls the residents. Last week they commemorated the first anniversary of the blowout with speeches and demonstrations attended by ecologists, conservationists and politicians like Democratic Gubernatorial Candidate Jesse Unruh. Santa Barbara is convinced that another accident may be as close as the drilling platforms six miles offshore.

The earthquake-prone floor of the Santa Barbara Channel is such a geologically unstable morass of cracks and fissures that it may be difficult to prevent future oil-well blowouts. Moreover, Interior Secretary Walter J. Hickel recently approved a resumption of drilling in the channel. Reason: a special presidential panel recommended further drilling to relieve the pressure that pushed the oil to the surface. While some critics dispute this approach, a consortium of four oil companies (Union, Gulf, Mobil, Texaco), soon to be joined by Sun Oil, continues to pump 30,000 barrels of oil a day from the waters off Santa Barbara.

$1.3 Billion Lawsuit. Last week the California state assembly voted unanimously to request the Federal Government to halt all drilling in the channel. The state senate is expected to follow suit. Maine's U.S. Senator Edmund Muskie has also introduced a bill in Congress that would permit the Federal Government to buy back the channel oil leases. Other pending bills would transfer the offshore leases to federal oil reserves elsewhere. Skeptics question whether the Government would give up such a rich source of revenue: the oil companies have already paid $603 million for drilling rights off Santa Barbara.

Several suits to halt further drilling have been filed. In addition, residents have brought a class-action suit that seeks $1.3 billion in damages. So far, the only injunction granted has given the oil companies immunity against state prosecution. Ignoring that order, Santa Barbara District Attorney David Minier recently filed criminal charges against the companies for 343 violations of a law prohibiting pollution of state waters.

Last summer a preliminary survey by a team of University of California researchers suggested that early predictions of wholesale plant and animal destruction in the waters off Santa Barbara may well have been exaggerated (TIME, June 13). Their findings may be confirmed later this month when a wildlife census will be made. Some ecological changes have already been detected. An aerial survey along a 30-mile stretch of beach recently counted only 200 grebe, compared with the past population of 4,000 to 7,000. Divers have discovered large patches of sunken oil that lie in gooey ribbons up to six feet thick along the edges of the reefs. Gray whales migrating from the Bering Sea to Baja California are avoiding the Santa Barbara Channel, once their main route south.

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