Van de Kamp Sues to Stop Offshore Drilling

Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp challenged a federal five-year plan for oil and gas exploration and drilling off the California coast Friday, describing it as a “sellout” for the benefit of private oil companies.

The state’s chief legal officer chose colorful Santa Monica Pier and the picturesque Cliff House in San Francisco for press conferences to announce the filing of a lawsuit aimed at blocking Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel’s plan, which went into effect last month.

The suit, brought on behalf of the people of California and the State Lands Commission and Coastal Commission, calls on the the U.S. District Court of Appeals in Washington to review, then reject Hodel’s Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program.

“This plan is a sellout,” Van de Kamp said, “a sellout of the interests of the California population for the benefit of private oil companies.

“There is not even a pretense of balance in this particular program. Those portions of the coast exempted from oil exploration are mostly areas the oil companies simply did not want. Virtually every legitimate concern raised by the people of California to protect the coast has simply been ignored.”

Van de Kamp charged that the plan to consider 1,120 nine-acre tracts off California for leasing is based upon an “inadequate environmental impact statement” and “fails to consider reasonable alternatives” to meet the nation’s energy needs while preserving the coast.

Besides, he maintained, “California is already the nation’s second-largest producer of offshore oil. And projects already approved will expand production by some 500% over the next 10 years.”

Hodel’s plan, the latest blueprint in a long-running dispute over the competing demands of U.S. energy security and environmental safeguards, would open up 13% of offshore areas that previously had been excluded from development by Congress. At the same time, it would exclude certain environmentally sensitive areas, such as Santa Monica Bay and the Channel Island Marine Sanctuary. The first lease sales would be delayed until 1989.

Van de Kamp was joined in his Santa Monica press conference by James Thornton, an attorney for the National Resources Defense Council, which also filed suit in Washington on Thursday on behalf of several conservation groups, including the Sierra Club.

“The reason we are suing is very simple: This five-year plan is grossly deficient in terms of protecting our coastal resources and is simply incoherent,” Thornton told reporters. “It embodies a drain-America-first plan.”

Van de Kamp noted that besides California other lawsuits challenging Hodel’s plan have been filed by Florida, Massachusetts, Oregon and Washington.

Reached in Eureka on a swing around the state, U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson said California’s suit confirmed his earlier prediction that the “inadequacy” of Hodel’s proposal would result in legal action to block its implementation. The plan is “insensitive” to widespread concerns about air and visual pollution, he said.

“I think this plan is a threat to virtually all of Southern California, including the Santa Monica Bay area and Orange County and San Diego,” Wilson said.

In Washington, however, Robert K. Walker, spokesman for Hodel, defended what he called the interior secretary’s “extraordinary effort” over more than two years to meet concerns over his plan.

“It would be wrong to assume that the areas not deferred will actually be offered for lease. A lot of decisions they want us to make at this stage in the program are the sort that you make when you look at the specific leases,” Walker said.

Hodel’s plan is a long-range program for oil leases, which will not start producing until after the year 2000, he said.

“If he (Van de Kamp) knows what the needs of the country are going to be then, he knows more than we do,” Walker said. “California won’t even be producing enough to meet all of its needs.”

Standing on the Santa Monica Pier and pointing behind him, Van de Kamp said that at a time when the world is “literally awash in oil” and prices are falling, Hodel is threatening beaches used by millions in a “headlong rush to line the pockets of big oil.”

If Hodel has his way, Van de Kamp contended, Southern Californians who stand on the historic pier will soon be looking at oil derricks and smelling the polluting fumes of offshore oil.

Staff writer David Lauter in Washington contributed to this article.