San Clemente : Vote Slated on Joining Offshore Drilling Battle

The City Council will vote Wednesday on whether San Clemente will join Laguna Beach and other Orange County coastal cities in protesting a plan by the U.S. Interior Department to open portions of the coast off Newport Beach and Laguna Beach to possible oil exploration.

Under the proposal forwarded by City Manager Jim Hendrickson, the City Council would endorse the compromise worked out between the Interior Department and the California congressional delegation with the proviso that the moratorium on oil drilling on the six offshore tracts remain in place until the year 2000.

The council will also be asked to set aside money to help finance a publicity campaign being waged by Newport Beach, Huntington Beach, Laguna Beach, San Clemente and the county to rally opposition to the offshore drilling.

Although $500 is the amount originally proposed, Hendrickson said Monday that he will ask the council to increase its investment by an unspecified amount.

How the money will be spent is “not well-defined at this point,” Hendrickson said, but the funds may be used to help pay for a tour of the offshore tracts by Interior Secretary Donald Hodell and to hire a publicity firm to help the sites drum up opposition to the plan.