Hostile Environment

The crafty senator from Louisiana pulled the old bait-and-switch game on the rubes from California this week. Sen. J. Bennett Johnston (D-La.) may have gotten away with it for a day or so, but Congress should put a quick end to the deception, for it potentially exposes all of the U.S. coastline to environmental peril in the interest of a quick buck.

Johnston first slipped an amendment into the Interior Department’s appropriations bill to move up from January, 1990, to August, 1989, the proposed offshore oil Lease Sale No. 95 covering most of the Southern California coast. It deleted the secretary of the interior’s discretion for postponing or canceling the sale, thus barring the new Administration from reassessing the plan. And, worst of all, the amendment declared that no further environmental-impact studies need be conducted, since such studies were made for earlier lease sales--in effect nullifying the National Environmental Policy Act.

There was, of course, an uproar from California. If there is any issue that unites California interests, it is offshore oil--and particularly any attempt to allow oil exploration and production on the outer continental shelf without the most meticulous study and consideration of alternatives and mitigation measures. It brings together virtually every state, city and county official all up and down the coast, and inland, into an effective lobbying group.

The switch came on Wednesday, when Johnston agreed to drop his Lease Sale No. 95 amendment. What he did not tell the Californians, however, was that he substituted Lease Sale No. 92 on the fast track for No. 95. Lease Sale No. 92, in Alaska’s sensitive Bristol Bay, is just about as controversial as the Southern California sale is, even for Californians.

Environmentalists were outraged. Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy, the Democratic Senate candidate who had taken credit for Johnston’s sudden change in heart, was shocked and chagrined. The event quickly became an issue in McCarthy’s campaign against Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.), who has been an effective leader of California’s anti-drilling forces.

But this should not be allowed to deteriorate into a campaign issue. All California interests need to work together to undo the damage. One way is to persuade House members of the conference committee to oppose the Johnston amendment at all costs; a fallback position would be a proposed Wilson amendment to substitute a non-controversial Gulf of Mexico lease sale for Bristol Bay. Since Johnston’s primary interest ostensibly is to raise revenue in the next fiscal year, Gulf dollars would serve just as well as California or Alaska dollars.