Huntington Oil Spill Prompts Calls for S.D. Emergency Plan : Environment: Two supervisors propose evaluating the cleanup of the Orange County spill to learn about measures San Diego may one day need.

Describing the tanker accident that left an oil slick oozing off the coast of Huntington Beach as “too close to home,” San Diego’s elected officials agreed Thursday that the county needs an oil spill emergency response plan. One day after a tanker apparently hit its own anchor and gouged a hole in its hull that spilled 6,000 barrels of crude oil into the Pacific, County Supervisors Susan Golding and John MacDonald drafted a proposal directing the county staff to evaluate measures used by the cleanup crews.

The intent, supervisors said, is to find the most effective methods of combating a spill that one day could be used to protect San Diego’s coastline. The Board of Supervisors is tentatively scheduled to vote on the proposal Tuesday.

With both the Huntington Beach episode and the Exxon Valdez disaster that blackened Alaska’s pristine coastline along Prince William Sound still fresh in the memories of elected officials, San Diego’s county leaders, local state Assembly members and Congressional representatives repeated their demands that tankers be built with double hulls.

Officials unanimously threw their support behind a pending House bill that would require any tanker or barge that calls upon U.S. ports to be double-hulled and double-bottomed.

Although officials decribed the Huntington Beach accident as an “unfortunate tragedy,” they said the incident strengthens their case for safer tankers and reignites their ongoing effort to get a permanent ban against offshore drilling.

“It’s unfortunate that this had to happen, but paradoxically, this strengthens our position,” said Rep. Bill Lowery (R-San Diego), the only Californian on the Appropriations Committee’s interior subcommittee, which controls the purse strings of the Department of the Interior. The department regulates offshore oil drilling policies.

“We’ve continued to fight so hard to get a permanent ban on offshore oil drilling,” Lowery said, “because, unlike tankers that are just passing through, they’re sitting out there 365 days a year, and that’s just asking for trouble.”

Whether a spill occurs because of an oil rig accident or a tanker leak, MacDonald said the county must have a means to react instantaneously and prevent the spill from reaching shore. Such action is necessary to protect not only the environment but tourism along the coast, one of the region’s major industries, he said.

“This is just another example of how our coastline is in such a precarious position,” MacDonald said. Golding and MacDonald have led efforts to protect the county from oil disasters. The two authored a county ordinance that banned onshore facilities that support offshore drilling in the county’s unincorporated areas.

“Just like we have earthquake disaster plans we need to have oil spill disaster plans,” MacDonald said.

“When the whistle blows, we should have somebody ready to go into action,” he said. “We can’t have people sit around and jaw-bone about it trying to blame somebody. That’s what happened after the Exxon Valdez and look what happened up there.”

Golding and MacDonald’s proposal also directs the board’s subcommittee on offshore oil drilling to continue lobbying against oil exploration off the coast of San Diego County and to intensify efforts to gain a permanent moratorium against such operations.

The call to establish an emergency oil spill plan was backed by Assemblyman Robert Frazee (R-Carlsbad), who serves on the Select Committee on Oil Spill Prevention and Response Preparedness, which was established following the Valdez disaster.

“My greatest concern is that, to the best of my knowledge, there is no cleanup operation facilities south of Los Angeles or Long Beach,” Frazee said.

Frazee and other elected officials, however, made clear that they felt it was not the public sector’s responsibility to finance an emergency response team.

Instead, they expressed interest in oil spill cooperatives--financed by oil companies--that are “on-call” to respond to emergencies. Such an oil spill cooperative is Clean Seas, operated by companies that transport oil between Santa Barbara and Point Dume. It dispatched a special 130-foot vessel to the damaged tanker off Huntington Beach.

Golding also insisted that the oil companies pay to clean up the mess they make.

“Obviously the county doesn’t have that kind of funding,” Golding said. “This is the oil that belongs to the oil companies. It’s bad for the oil companies when oil spills and harms beaches, people and animals. I think it’s in their best interest that they make sure that there is no area that they can’t get to in time to solve the problem.”

Although interested in having cleanup capability, Golding said the best way to fight the problem is to prevent it from occuring in the first place.

“There’s no reason why we should have to accept a tanker at our ports unless we are assured that its physical structure is sound,” said Golding, who along with MacDonald has traveled to Washington, D.C., to lobby for double-hulled tankers.

The House bill that calls for double hulls is also supported by Rep. Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad).

The bill requires any tanker or barge that carries oil or hazardous substances and calls on U.S. ports to be double-hulled and double-bottomed. It also requires the retrofitting of tankers and barges.

The Senate version of the bill directs the Transportation Department to study whether double hulls actually enhance tanker safety. If the study favors the use of double hulls, then the bill directs the department to establish regulations that would require newly constructed tankers and barges to be built with such safety standards. The Senate version does not have a retrofitting requirement.

A final version of the bill is expected in the next 30 days, after a joint Senate-House conference committee amends it.

On Wednesday, the House chose its conference members and overwhelmingly passed a motion, by a vote of 376-37, instructing them to insist upon keeping the double-hull provision while negotiating with Senate representatives.

David DuBose, Packard’s press secretary, said Congress is hoping to approve the bill and have it ready for President Bush to sign by March 24--the one-year anniversary of the Exxon Valdez disaster.