Requests to vote down Exxon’s try so as to add security valves to its Line 901 — the pipeline that busted aside on Might 19, 2015, spilling crude oil onto Refugio Seaside and into the Pacific Ocean — got here earlier than the 5 Santa Barbara County supervisors from the same old suspects of anti-oil organizations, but additionally from surprising teams just like the Reside Oak Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Goleta, the Santa Maria–Lompoc department of the NAACP, and almost 300 Santa Barbara County residents, who’d emailed letters that have been largely boilerplate of their comparable language.
Maybe a dozen letters additionally got here from supporters of the challenge, emphasizing that the Board of Supervisors had an obligation to stay in step with the permits and regulatory processes that Exxon had already invested in, as a result of in any other case, what message did this ship to companies that additionally needed to obey county guidelines?
When Supervisor Joan Hartmann recused herself from the vote, explaining that the pipeline runs “adjoining to the northeast nook of my property,” 4 supervisors remained — two representing the traditionally oil-patch North County and two from South County, which had suffered each the 1969 and 2015 oil spills. A tie vote was anticipated and was, certainly, the end result. However not earlier than some vehement rhetoric was heard, not simply from the attorneys however from the numerous in attendance.
Everybody’s mode of transportation grew to become a speaking level after Supervisor Steve Lavagnino of Santa Maria challenged Barry Cappello, the lawyer representing 133 landowners in litigation over pipeline entry, to state how he received to the listening to right this moment. Cappello lastly admitted he had pushed a automobile, however most of the 40 audio system who adopted mentioned that they had arrived by electrical automobile or carpool or each.
The primary to make a presentation, nonetheless, was Jim Hosler with the Workplace of the State Hearth Marshal, which is the only real regulatory company with jurisdiction over the pipeline’s security and operation. With him was Josh Cleaver, an lawyer with the hearth marshal’s workplace. Each males mentioned they believed security valves have been vital. An utility didn’t assure success, they mentioned, nor had Exxon filed for a restart, and earlier than any restart, “the applicant should show they’ll function the pipeline safely to us,” mentioned Cleaver. Amongst these proofs was that the pipeline may maintain liquid and “meet and move further security measures … together with that the very best out there expertise has been utilized,” mentioned Hosler.
The time period “finest out there expertise” comes from Meeting Invoice 864, which Supervisor Das Williams wrote after the Refugio spill when he was an assemblymember in 2015. His presence chairing the assembly didn’t go unexploited by Exxon’s lawyer, Daybreak Sestito, who talked about a minimum of a half-dozen occasions that Willliams had written the very rule up on attraction right this moment — the requirement for security valves on pipelines in environmentally delicate coastal areas.
Sestito echoed Hosler’s statements that with or with out security valves, the pipeline operator — ExxonMobil — may apply to restart the pipeline underneath different standards that met the situations established in a settlement settlement. Exxon’s attraction additional argued that the query of security valves was for the state hearth marshal to determine, not the county; that the county couldn’t use Coastal Zone guidelines in inside areas the place the pipeline runs; that there have been few to no visible impacts; and {that a} new environmental report was not required as a result of the brand new valves spanned lower than eight miles, which is a CEQA exception.
[Click to enlarge] A map exhibiting the prevailing (yellow) and proposed (inexperienced) valves on the Las Flores Pipeline | Credit score: Courtesy
Whether or not situations had modified because the environmental report was authorized in 1985 was a pivotal challenge for each the Planning Fee and supervisors Williams and Laura Capps, who voted towards the challenge. Situations had certainly modified, speaker Larry Bishop indicated, who’d been a staffer on the county’s hazardous supplies workforce earlier than he retired. In truth, ExxonMobil knew within the Nineteen Seventies that burning fossil fuels would trigger worldwide local weather injury, Bishop mentioned. As has been well-documented, Exxon spent 27 years hiding the very fact.
Longtime local weather activist Katie Davis spoke, reminding the supervisors that the modifications included offshore platforms operating 25 years previous their shelf life. The county itself had argued throughout the Plains All American Pipeline felony trial that the road must be deserted and by no means restarted as a situation of parole, she mentioned, solely, the decide replied, there was no technique to jail a company and implement that provision.
“Exxon knew that pipeline was unsafe,” Davis asserted. “That’s why they utilized to truck the oil, construct a brand new pipeline, and have a brand new, different limited-liability blank-check firm to really run it … as a result of they understand it’s unsafe.”
As for the “clean examine” firm, Cappello had beforehand made the argument that Exxon totally supposed to promote the corporate at a $2 billion loss to Sable Offshore Company. As effectively, Plains had paid greater than a billion {dollars} to scrub up after the oil spill and $236 million to fishermen and property house owners for his or her losses, he acknowledged, however Exxon was solely guaranteeing the brand new operator — Pacific Pipeline Firm, an Exxon subsidiary — $100 million. “That feels like some huge cash,” Cappello mentioned, flapping a white sheet forwards and backwards. “However that is what it’s price: a bit of paper.”
Williams asserted it wasn’t a certainty that Exxon would obtain a restart allow by means of the State Hearth Marshal with out shutoff valves. Like many attending the listening to, Williams drives an electrical automobile, and he acknowledged that attaining the county’s emissions objective by including 100,000 electrical autos within the subsequent six years was “intimidating.” They have been clearly coping with “modified circumstances,” he believed. “I can not take away this determination from the context of the injury being made to the world — that’s as clear as the colour of the sky — nor the injury being made to our neighborhood.”
The two:2 tie is actually no motion, mentioned County Counsel Rachel Van Mullem on the finish of the listening to. The Planning Fee’s denial of the challenge stays in place, and the ball is again in Exxon’s court docket as the corporate is allowed to reapply for the security valves.
