Laguna Beach Councilman Urges Foes of Offshore Drilling to Seek Ocean Park

Laguna Beach City Councilman Robert F. Gentry suggested Saturday that foes of offshore oil drilling should ask Congress to declare the ocean between Orange County and Catalina Island a national park.

Speaking at an anti-oil drilling rally in Newport Beach, Gentry told about 100 people that the plan would be cheap because the federal government already owns the area, and there would be relatively little maintenance. It would, he said, be “a lot cheaper than the cost of maintaining Yosemite or just about any other park.”

Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), the featured speaker at the rally in Galaxy View Park overlooking Upper Newport Bay, said he had never heard of an ocean park, but added that he found the idea “very attractive.”

However, he said: “I don’t know what it means. It sounds good but I really don’t know what it means. I’ll have to give it some study.”

Although the idea is new, Gentry said, it could work if someone would introduce a bill in Congress. “I think it’s extremely realistic,” he said. “The first step is to talk about it, get people thinking about it, get the senator and other elected officials thinking about it.”

Gentry said he was “tired of being on the defensive on this issue. I think we need to take the offensive, frankly.”

He conceded that the Interior Department probably would oppose the bill, since Secretary Donald P. Hodel has been the champion of a compromise plan that would allow about 150 acres of ocean tracts to be leased to oil firms.

Congress is scheduled to vote in June on whether to impose a temporary moratorium while that compromise plan is worked out.

While he will study the issue, Cranston said his first priority is to try to persuade fellow senators to enact a moratorium on offshore drilling.

Drilling will never be compatible in areas such as Orange County’s coast, where it “conflicts with tourism, fishing and recreation,” he said.

A rise in the world’s oil supply and dissension within OPEC countries mean the United States is in no dire need of oil exploration and should concentrate on alternative energy sources, he said.