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Victor Maccharoli- Bud Buttoms, founder of GOO.

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Locals remember oil spill like it was yesterday

By COLBY FRAZIER — Jan. 28, 2009

Forty years ago today, the crisp ocean waters around Union Oil’s Platform A boiled black with crude oil.

The spill, which spewed more than three million gallons of oil into the ocean, spread quickly, marring 35 miles of coastline between Isla Vista and Ventura.

Thousands of birds and other marine animals were killed. The damage to beaches, on the mainland and at the Channel Islands, would have been, and still is difficult to calculate.

While there was distaste for offshore oil drilling prior to Jan. 28, 1969, the spill fueled the flames of dissent.

Many believe the spill and its devastating impacts gave birth to the modern day environmental movement.

And indeed, organizations like Get Oil Out (GOO) were formed within days to protest all things oil.

Shortly thereafter, in late 1970, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was established. According to the EPA’s Web site, a string of environmental-related laws followed, including the Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972, Marine Protection Research and Sanctuary Act of 1972, Endangered Species Act of 1973, Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 and the Environmental Quality Impact Act of 1970. The list goes on.

But according to David Landecker, Executive Director of the Environmental Defense Center, laws can only go so far.

“Having laws is nice,” he said. “But if you don’t have lawyers who understand the law it doesn’t do you a lot of good.”

He said the EDC was formed in Santa Barbara in 1977 to help environmental groups navigate the complicated web of laws.

In the four decades since the Platform A blowout, Landecker said the fight has continued against those who “believe in their hearts that making money was more important than protecting the environment.”

And whether it’s the Florida Everglades, the Rocky Mountains and the rugged rivers that are born there, or the coastline of California, once they’re gone, they’re gone.

“Once the environment is ruined, it’s very difficult to bring it back,” Landecker said.

GOO

On the morning of Jan. 28, 1969, Bud Bottoms was an art director for a think tank in Santa Barbara.

Bottoms, now 81, recalled getting a phone call at work from his friend and then Santa Barbara News-Press reporter Dick Smith, who had been flying over Platform A and spotted oil bubbling to the surface.

“I remember I yelled out, ‘We've got to get oil out,’” Bottoms said, adding that a person in the office told him later he should name his effort Get Oil Out.

“So we called it GOO,” he said.

The day after the spill, Bottoms said the town was mobilized. A rally was held at De La Guerra Plaza.

“We had the whole town riled up,” he said.

The rally turned into a march, Bottoms said, which proceeded toward Stearns Wharf. At the time, he said the wharf was being used by oil companies to transport pipe and other materials to the oilrigs.

Once there, the marchers blocked entrance to the wharf, a scene Bottoms giddily describes to this day.

“We blocked it with our bodies and these big trucks tried to come aboard and they backed off,” he said. “Everybody felt like we’d done something.”

Today, at the foot of Stearns Wharf, the dolphin fountain (created by Bottoms) stands guard.

“That’s sort of symbolic to me,” he said.

In the weeks following the spill, Bottoms and other members of GOO gathered more than 250,000 signatures on a petition. He said the primary goal was simple: to get oil out.

During a recent interview with the Daily Sound, Bottoms flipped through countless newspaper clippings and other artifacts from the days after the spill. He came upon a story about his effort to deliver the signatures to President Richard Nixon’s beach home in San Clemente.

Bottoms and other GOO members set out from Santa Barbara in a small boat with a giant GOO flag attached to the mast, they were stopped short by the U.S. Coast Guard.

Bottoms’ stash of photographs from the cleanup effort shows hay strewn across the beach. He said the oil-soaked straw was picked up and taken to the county dump.

On a strip of 35 mm film, a woman in a white bikini sits on a rock at the beach. In another frame, the bottom of her bikini is black. Bottoms uses the photo to illustrate how high the oil reached.

In order to raise money, GOO sold stock certificates called “Un-Oil Stock.” Bottoms still has his certificate.

In order to get the attention of state lawmakers and pretty much everyone in Washington, Bottoms said vials of oil were put in the mail to every address they could track down.

Another relic from the past includes a postcard of a person standing on the beach, drilling rigs visible in the distance. Attached to the card, inside a small plastic baggie, is a piece of tar collected from a local beach.

The card urges anyone who wants to get a feel for life in Santa Barbara to heat up the GOO in the baggie, and rub it on one's feet.

“When you have such a beautiful environment, you’ve got to do all you can to protect it and it was going down the tubes fast with the oil company’s here,” Bottoms said. “I didn’t want my family growing up in an oil town. It’s too good a place.”

WHAT WENT WRONG?

According to the Santa Barbara County Energy Division Web site, the Platform A blowout was because well casings, which are used during drilling to prevent oil and gas from leaking into other areas, were not used.

The Web site says four wells had been successfully drilled at Platform A, but for the fifth, Union Oil officials asked regulators to wave well casing requirements. The request was granted by the U.S. Geological Survey, which oversaw regulations on offshore drilling operations at the time.

At 10:45 a.m. on Jan. 28, oil burst from the well. The Web site says workers managed to stop the flow of oil from the well, but this apparently increased pressure below the sea floor, causing oil to burst from five gashes.

Landecker said the spill could have easily been avoided had “some pretty easy safety precautions” been taken.

While the spill itself was the biggest factor, the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of the response to the spill, is another important element.

Ken Wilson, an environmental scientist for the California Department of Fish and Game’s Office of Spill Prevention and Response, said had the spill occurred today, it likely would have been far less severe.

“In general, things were very primitive in those days,” he said. “We weren’t prepared. There was no Office of Spill Prevention and Response.”

Today, Wilson, who works as a diver for the Department of Fish and Game, said emergency response to spills has vastly improved.

He cited the formation of cleanup organizations like Clean Seas, which promptly dispatches to any marine oil spill with boats, booms and manpower.

“I really think that we’ve made great progress,” he said.

Steve Edinger, an administrator with the Office of Spill Prevention and Response, shares Wilson’s feelings.

Edinger said the biggest difference between now and 1969 is the ability to respond and quickly get a handle on the magnitude of a spill.

“A lot has changed in the last 40 years,” he said. “The biggest thing is we have a system now for responding to oil spills.”

Edinger said laws have been passed to make the polluter pay, not only for cleanup costs, but also for the cost to wildlife and the environment.

He said his office conducts a “natural resource damage assessment.” Edinger declined to guess how much Union Oil Co. would have had to pay had there been such a system in place in 1969.

“The reality is we recognize even with all the prevention systems out there, there are still going to be failures,” he said. “We are ready to protect California wildlife and habitats should [spills] occur.”

TODAY'S FORECAST

The orange lights of oil wells continue to glow off the coast of Santa Barbara. Platform A is still there, exactly 5.8 miles away from the lights of Summerland.

While Landecker says much progress has been made since the 1969 spill, he believes the Bush administration managed to snuff plenty of it out.

He cited the expiration last year of a federal moratorium on offshore oil drilling. And in his final days in the White House, President George W. Bush announced a five-year plan to open up oil exploration in waters from the East Coast to California. This plan could be scaled back, or scrapped altogether by the Obama administration, according to media reports.

Even in Santa Barbara County, where an anti-oil reputation has been firmly held since the 1969 spill, things have changed.

As the price of gas hit record highs last summer, the Board of Supervisors, led by former Third District Supervisor Brooks Firestone, voted 3-2 to send a letter to Gov. Schwarzenegger, informing him the county was open to, and welcomed further offshore oil drilling.

The vote garnered national media attention, and drew the ire of local environmentalists.

But perhaps more imminent than the letter, which appeared to have little impact on the governor’s decision to oppose further offshore drilling, is a proposal by Plains Exploration and Production Company PXP, to tap into an oil-rich area known as the Tranquillon Ridge off the coast of Lompoc.

Last April, officials from the Environmental Defense Center and GOO announced their endorsement of the PXP project. In return for the environmental groups’ blessing, PXP officials said they would decommission four other offshore operations after a certain number of years, and would donate more than a 1,000 acres of land to the public.

The State Lands Commission is set to discuss what has become known as the Tranquillon Ridge Project at noon tomorrow at the Hotel Mar Monte, and Landecker hopes it gets approved.

“In this case, we’ve decided it makes sense to allow drilling for a relatively short period of time in exchange for getting rid of the platforms,” he said. “We feel like we’ve negotiated a really good deal for the environment and the community.”

But that deal may well be thwarted by the mantra GOO and the EDC has touted for decades: no more drilling.

Assemblymember Pedro Nava announced yesterday he co-authored a bill called Joint Resolution 3, which if approved, would inform congress and President Obama that California wants the federal moratorium reinstated. The resolution specifically opposes any expansion to offshore drilling.

Landecker said the sentiment of no drilling appears to be “gaining some traction,” and he admitted that in a sense, that’s good since “that’s been our mantra for a long time.”

But in this case of the Tranquillon Ridge, Landecker said the possibility of removing four drilling platforms from the ocean is worth expanded operations at Platform Irene, where drilling is already occurring.

But Bottoms, who hasn’t been an active part of GOO for some time, isn’t so sure he agrees.

The image of black beaches and dead birds is fresh on his mind, and he doesn’t want to see it happen again.

“I understand what they’re doing,” Bottoms said of GOO and the EDC’s decision to back the project. “As far as they’re concerned, that’s their way to get around Goliath… [But they’re] bowing to them. You’re not saying we don’t want this stuff anymore.”

While Bottoms remains concerned about the impact of spills, he’s just as conscious of global warming, which he says will only worsen so long as the world is reliant on oil.

“Why kill ourselves?” he asked. “I’m totally against the use of oil. The worst thing we ever did was discover oil.”

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GET OIL OUT of the ground! : 1/28/2009

“I’m totally against the use of oil. The worst thing we ever did was discover oil.” Meanwhile I'm sure old Bud takes full advantage of the comforts and conveniences it brings.

Aaron Shaw

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GOO gone! : 1/28/2009

It's much better to have THEM drill oil for us, dependence on foreign oil is always a plus.

Poster Child

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PXP Tranquillon ridge Project : 1/28/2009

We can no longer afford the luxury of absolutes. The Tranqillon Ridge drilling deal with PXP is as good a deal as we are going to get. It will result in the earliest possible removal of several oil wells in the channel and the highest level of environmental safeguards to date. Surfrider Foundation is endorsing this project knowing full well that there are potential problems but we feel that the advantages outway the risks in this particular case due to the excellent work done by EDC.

Ken Palley, Executive Committee Surfrider Foundation Santa Barbara

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Lawyers who don't understand the law : 1/28/2009

All I have to say to that is "AMEN"

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1969 Oil Spill : 1/29/2009

I will never forget the Oil Spill of 1969. The image I saw when walking out onto my back patio of rippling colored oil on the water and the stench of OIL! is imbedded in my memory. We lived on the Mesa, only two blocks from the Sea. Even before the Spill, whenever we went to the beach our family would return with black blobs on our feet which could only be removed with turpentine. The destruction of the environment, dead fish, birds, and black oily boats in the harbor - all the beaches covered with straw quickly turning black from oil being tended by convicts from the prison. What kind of deal is worth risking this again? Were you there to experience this? If you were then you certainly would not allow driling in any form for any period. No deal ! Just get rid of the Platforms - once they start - you will not be able to stop them until another horror happens. Terri Melloway

How well I remember !

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1969 Union Oil Spill Lawsuit : 1/29/2009

I appreciate all the work that GOO has and will do, and also the organizations that that have similar goals. At the time of the oil spill by Union Oil, the first place to get damage was Carpinteria, where I, at the time was the first Carpinteria City Attorney. It took a couple of days until the wind changed and the oil flow moved to Santa Barbara. When it did reach the Santa Barbara Marina, the public became aware of how destructive this oil spill was. Up until the 1969 Union Oil Spill, Oil Companies had little interest or concern in protecting the environment. Actually, the lawsuit that was filed by myself and a law consortium for Carpinteria and Santa Barbara, the County of Santa Barbara and the State of California, was the FIRST major judgment against Environmental Oil Damage. The suit was filled in the Federal Courts and Union Oil did buckle under and settle at the last hour for $9.7 million, which was a tremendous recovery in those days. Later on, a legal action was taken for Environmental Damages in France that relied upon the Union Oil lawsuit. Environmental Damage Incidents have significantly increased in recent years, including the Valdez Alaska Incident. The original Union Oil lawsuit served as a template for these newer incidents. Unfortunately, the only thing that seems to concern the large oil companies is their cost of production. The Oil Companies are still not strictly liable for their actions, if they were made strictly liable, they would change. One of the worst situations exists in Nigeria, where hundreds of civilian people have lost their lives, and countless animals have perished directly due to the Oil Production. Thank you again for your reporting on this Anniversay of the 1969 Union Oil Spill, and hopefully I have provided some additional information that can be used as you follow up on this (from one who was there). Sincerely, James R. Christiansen

JRChristiansen

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History Does Repeat itself : 5/20/2010

Will we have to wait for the 2010 oil leak to emty its full contents into the ocean? It should be capped.

BP Broken Promises to the environment

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: 8/31/2010

"I’m totally against the use of oil." --Bud Bottoms
"Meanwhile I'm sure old Bud takes full advantage of the comforts and conveniences it brings."
Exactly. What a fraud. Only while thoroughly enveloped and pampered within the world of comfort and convenience afford Bottoms because of oil does he have the luxury to denounce the single largest factor responsible for the high quality of life and standard of living I'm sure he enjoys. What a fool.
'The worst thing we ever did was discover oil.'--Bud Bottoms
What an ignorant statement! We'll be sure to send a bicycle to his house instead of a gas powered ambulance when he gets sick. And stick him in the broom closet when he gets there, because all the medicine, plastic health care equipment, sterilants and drugs and the electricity that makes it all work and powers the lights so you can see it; it's all based on oil.
"It's much better to have THEM drill oil for us, dependence on foreign oil is always a plus."
Yep. That's Bud's brilliant plan. Import oil from foreign nations with lax environmental laws.

ScummyD

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