Tanker Incident Likely to Fuel Environmental Protest

Ever since the Exxon Valdez disaster blackened Alaska’s Prince William Sound last March, state and federal officials have warned that California’s coastline could not be protected from an oil spill even one-tenth the size.

At the same time, the United States warned last year that there was a 94% chance of a major oil spill off the Southern California coast during the next 30 years.

Wednesday night’s large spill from a tanker off Huntington Beach marked the second major incident off California since the disastrous 1969 blowout of a platform off the Santa Barbara coast that spilled 77,000 barrels.

In 1984, an estimated 24,000 barrels of oil spilled from the tanker Puerto Rican when it caught fire and blew up off San Francisco.

None of the incidents approaches the 462,000-barrel Alaskan disaster.

But Wednesday’s spill (6,000 barrels, or about 250,000 gallons) still is classified as a “major spill” by industry and state officials.

“That’s a big deal. As we understand it the slick is 1.5 miles long and 300 yards wide,” said Robert C. Hight, chief of the State Lands Commission’s legal division.

Whatever the Huntington Beach spill’s final size, the political consequences may exceed its environmental impact.

It appears certain to spark new protests against offshore drilling at a time when President Bush is under pressure to ban all oil and gas exploration off the California coast.

The spill is also likely to add momentum to a sweeping environmental initiative proposed for the November ballot. It would prohibit any new oil drilling in state waters unless there was a national emergency, and impose a 25-cent-a-barrel tax to establish a $500-million spill-prevention and cleanup fund.

Even as attempts were being made to contain Wednesday’s spill, two leading opponents of offshore drilling--Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy and state Controller Gray Davis--were on their way to the scene, declaring that the incident proved the case for tough new fines on oil spillers and bans on new drilling.

McCarthy and Davis, both Democrats, are members of the State Lands Commission, which has banned any new drilling in state waters. They have also pushed the legislation to establish the spill-prevention and cleanup fund.

“I think this spill helps us get our legislation, which the oil industry is in the process of trying to weaken, passed in Sacramento,” McCarthy said minutes before he left for Huntington Beach. “If we had that legislation in the statutes right now, British Petroleum (operators of the tanker) would probably have to pay a $25-million fine.”

Davis called the spill “a terrible tragedy with potentially tremendous environmental and economic consequences.”

Since the Exxon Valdez accident, the oil industry has admitted that it had “neither the equipment nor the personnel” to handle a catastrophic spill like the Exxon Valdez.

Industry and government regulators say most emphasis has to be placed on prevention, not cleanup. That is because oil spill cleanup technology--which essentially means the use of floating booms to contain the oil, skimmers to pick it up and chemical dispersants to break it up before it reaches shore--have proven ineffective in even moderate wind and sea conditions.

Even though California appears better prepared than many coastal states, cleanup containment technology may not do the job.

“There’s a lot of luck involved, a lot of skill and a lot of preparation. But you can’t fight Mother Nature,” Skip Onstead, manager of an oil spill cooperative, told The Times last year.

While most of Southern California is covered by well-trained oil spill response teams--including one cooperative that responded to Wednesday’s incident--there are large sections of the California coast, including San Diego and the North Coast, that do not have any oil spill response capability that could reach even a minor spill.