Santa Barbara oil spill

On January 28, 1969, a Union Oil Company oil drilling platform 6 mi (10 km) off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, suffered a blowout, leading to a tremendous ecological disaster. Before it could be stopped, 3 million gal (11.4 million l) of crude oil gushed into the Pacific Ocean, killing thousands of birds, fish, sea lions , and other marine life. For weeks after the spill, the nightly television news programs showed footage of the effects of the giant black slick, including oil–soaked birds on the shore dead or dying.

Many people viewed the disaster as an event that gave the modern environmental movement—which began with the publication of Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring in 1962—a new impetus in the United States. "The blowout was the spark that brought the environmental issue to the nation's attention," Arent Schuyler, an environmental studies lecturer at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB), said in a 1989 interview with the Los Angeles Times. "People could see very vividly that their communities could bear the brunt of industrial accidents. They began forming environmental groups to protect their communities and started fighting for legislation to protect the environment," Schuyler explained.

The background

The spill began when oil platform workers were pulling a drilling tube out of one of the wells to replace a drill bit. The pressure differential created by removing the tube was not adequately compensated for by pumping mud back down into the 3,500-ft-deep well (about 1,067 m). This action caused a drastic buildup of pressure, resulting in a blowout; natural gas , oil, and mud shot up the well and into the ocean. The pressure also caused breaks in the ocean floor surrounding the well, from which more gas and oil escaped.

Cleanup and environmental impact

It took workers 11 days to cap the well with cement. Several weeks later, a leak in the well occurred, and for months, the well continued to spew more oil. On the surface of the ocean, an 800-mi²-long (about 1,278 km²) oil slick formed. Incoming tides carried the thick tar-like oil onto 35 mi (56 km) of scenic California beaches—from Rincon Point to Goleta. The spill also reached the off-shore islands of Anacapa, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and San Miguel.

The Santa Barbara area is known to have some "natural" petroleum seepages, thus allowing for some degree of adaptability in the local marine plants and animals. However, the impact of the oil spill on sea life was disastrous. Dozens of sea lions and dolphins were believed killed, and many were washed ashore. The oil clogged the blowholes of the dolphins, causing massive bleeding in the lungs, and suffocation. It has been estimated that approximately 9,000 birds died as the oil stripped their feathers of the natural waterproofing that kept them afloat. Multitudes of fish are believed to have been killed, and many others fled the area, causing economic harm to the region's fishermen. A great number of whales migrating from the Gulf of Alaska to Baja, Mexico, were forced to take a sweeping detour around the polluted water.

Although hundred of volunteers, many of them UCSB students, worked on-shore catching and cleaning birds and mammals, an army of workers used skimmers to scoop up oil from the ocean surface. Airplanes were used to drop detergents on the oil slick to try to break it up. The cleanup effort took months to complete and cost millions of dollars. It also had a detrimental effect on tourism in the Santa Barbara area for many months. The excessively toxic dispersants and detergents used in these sensitive habitats also caused great ecological damage to the area. In later years, chemicals used to control petroleum spills were far less toxic.

Legal impact

Environmentalists claimed the spill could have been prevented and blamed both Union Oil and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). By approving the drilling permit, USGS officials were waiving current federal safety regulations for the oil company's benefit. Federal and state investigations also determined that if additional steel-pipe sheeting had been placed inside the drilling hole, the blowout would have been prevented. This type of sheeting was required under the regulations waived by the USGS.

In the years following the oil spill, the state and federal governments enacted many environmental protection laws, including the California Environmental Quality Act and the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969. The state also banned offshore oil drilling for 16 years, established the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the California Coastal Commission, and created the nation'first environmental studies program at UCSB.

[Ken R. Wells ]

RESOURCES

BOOKS

Jurcik, Liz. Black Tide: The Santa Barbara Oil Spill and Its Consequences. New York: Delacorte Press, 1972.

PERIODICALS

Corwin, Miles. "The Oil Spill Heard 'Round the Country!" Los Angeles Times (January 28, 1989): A1.

Cowan, Edward. "Mankind's Fouled Nest." The Nation (March 10, 1969): 304.

"Grotesque Beauty of a Sea Shimmering With Oil." Life (February 21, 1969): 58–62.

"Runaway Oil Well: Will It Mean New Rules in Offshore Drilling?" U.S. News & World Report (February 17, 1969): 14.

ORGANIZATIONS

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC USA 20460 (202) 260-2090, Email: [email protected], <http://www.epa.gov>

Santa Barbara Wildlife Care Network, P.O. Box 6594, Santa Barbara, CA USA 93160 (805) 966-9005, Email: [email protected], <http://www.silcom.com/~sbwcn/spill.htm>