County: Stand Up for Your Rights

I served as deputy director of the County Planning Department, managing the Energy Division in the mid-1980s. Though I no longer live in Santa Barbara, and generally stay out of the politics of another area, I urge the county to aggressively insert itself in the technical review and approval process for the inoperable crude oil pipeline now owned by Sable.

Pipeline transportation of locally produced crude oil was considered an essential alternative to proposed tanker ship transportation by County Policy. I personally managed the environmental impact report and statement for the All-American/Celeron pipeline (AAPL) and took the project before the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors for approval.

At that time each newly approved petroleum project, including AAPL, was subject to cooperative multi-agency system safety review process that included the company engineering team. Post discretionary review was an essential part of findings of approval that each project was mitigated to the maximum extent feasible. In part this allowed local first responders to develop integrated incident response plans. During construction these projects were all monitored by the Permit Compliance Program team.

During the system safety review, AAPL informed the county that they would need to import steel for the pipeline due to limitations in domestic supply. As the review moved forward, the county was not given data showing whether the steel to be used was an acceptable grade for transportation of corrosive crude oil. In addition, the county system safety team was not allowed to review welding records, cathodic protection, shutoff valve design, and other key engineering elements of the project because AAPL insisted the project was only subject to authority of the State Fire Marshal.

Litigation ensued; the county lost.

As a result, the county was only allowed to evaluate and condition aspects of pipeline construction that affected surface restoration (such as soil stability), essentially from the top of the pipe to ground surface. The county was assured that the State Fire Marshal Office would require AAPL to use industry standard design, appropriate materials, and implement industry standard monitoring and maintenance. Before I retired, I saw the project built and put into operation.

I was disappointed when I was called by the media to comment on the Gaviota oil spill. And I was upset to learn of the causes. At the time I stayed out of the public reaction and discussion. Now, however, I want to point out some obvious facts.

First and second: the steel wasn’t good enough and neither was the maintenance. Third and fourth: ExxonMobil valued the remaining crude oil reserves and existing production facilities good enough to propose restarting its existing production platforms but proposed replacing the pipeline. And now Sable owns the system and proposes to “repair” the pipeline, with no county oversight. Same crude, same steel, same resources at risk, substantially different factual basis.

There are huge oil reserves offshore. Two major production and processing facilities developed by Exxon and Chevron have substantial demonstrated capacity. These existing facilities, and the valuable resources they were intended to produce, argue that replacing the failed pipeline is feasible and could effectively mitigate the significant risks of employing elements of a failed system.

In the 1980s the State of California failed the citizens of Santa Barbara County and the citizens of the state by exercising sole oversight of engineering issues, shutting the county out of any system safety review of the proposed pipeline, and by allowing inadequate maintenance during operation of the pipeline and failed leak response during the pipeline spill. The state agreed to take responsibility and failed.

The people of Santa Barbara County and their representatives are told that they cannot review the critical engineering data that justifies start-up of a “common carrier” pipeline with a demonstrated record of failure. That is wrong. The pipeline extends under the Santa Ynez River, the Sisquoc River, and the Cuyama River. Together, these form the most important local water supplies in the county. Given the chemical makeup of crude oil from the Monterey and related formations, any leakage from the repaired pipeline, even below leak system detection limits, has the potential to foul the water supplies of Lompoc, Santa Maria, and huge areas of the region’s agriculture. This alone is a reasonably foreseeable significant impact given the pipeline’s history.

By shutting the county out of the review and decision process on potential future use of a failed pipeline, the state is denying Santa Barbara the California constitution’s right to exercise its police power to protect its citizens through land use actions.

Also shut out of the discussion are the many landowners that the Planning Commission and county staff worked with to route the pipeline in the least damaging way across their land. Were they compensated fairly during condemnation proceedings given what we now know about the condition of the pipeline and the proposed “repairs?”

I am frustrated to see the county make so little visible effort to stand up for its residents. A former president and county resident told us, “Trust but verify.” There is nothing to prevent Sable from volunteering to cooperatively review and improve the engineering of their pipeline with the county in the name of transparency and being a good corporate neighbor: Exxon did, Chevron did, Unocal did, Texaco (Getty) did. In my opinion the county should insist on direct involvement in the current review. Even if the law is unchanged, the facts are different.