The State - News from Dec. 28, 1987

The first environmental report on a proposed 1.1-million-acre federal offshore oil and gas lease sale in Northern California shows a significant risk of an oil spill, a coalition of coastal communities asserted in San Francisco. However, the Interior Department, which prepared the 1,214-page report, disagreed, saying that charts showing the chances of oil spills reaching various coastal areas are hypothetical and do not indicate a real hazard. The lease sale, still more than a year away, is the first of several planned off California and involves 223 tracts in the Outer Continental Shelf along the Humboldt and Mendocino county coasts.