SPECIAL REPORT: Oil on the Beach : Meditations and Comments--a Compendium

DR. ARNOLD O. BECKMAN: Scientist, philanthropist and founder of Beckman Instruments in Fullerton, lives in Corona del Mar.

I live on a bluff over the ocean in Corona del Mar just east of the Newport Harbor jetty. I looked down (Friday) morning and the oil hadn’t gotten there yet. I’m apprehensive we may have a period here in which our shoreline will be spoiled. It is just too bad.

We have to do some heavy thinking to anticipate these things. There was a lot of talk before Valdez about the necessity of requiring double-hulled tankers. Let’s not wait any more. This is something for Congress to address.

In the pharmaceutical industry, if a company develops a new drug, it has to apply to the Food and Drug Administration before it is marketed to see if the drug is effective at doing what it was designed for and if any side effects are harmful. We should apply that same two-sided test to everything that we do.

We should have a risk-benefit study of every major thing that we do, whether it is a proposal to build a nuclear power plant or another new highway through Orange County or hundreds of new low-cost housing units. We allow the vocal, single-issue people to dominate the scene. I am sitting in the office of the (Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center of) the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering in Irvine. It is devoted to encouraging study groups on major issues. And that is the way decisions should be made. I think we don’t make the extra effort to study all sides of an issue because, as a society, we have become too soft, too complacent. Life has become too comfortable.

ROBERT S. COHEN: Chairman of the drama department at the UC Irvine School of Fine Arts, author of eight books, lives in Laguna Beach.

Obviously, the tanker spill is a horror. I’ve been in Laguna Beach for 25 years, and this confirms our worst fears. We’ve been waiting for this to happen, just like the madwoman of Chaillot.

You know, the first great post-World War II play in France was “The Madwoman of Chaillot” by Jean Giraudoux. The “madwoman” of the title was an environmentalist. That’s why they called her mad, because she believed that art and beauty and nature should have a higher value than technological progress.

What an ironic forecast Giraudoux gave us. The play is a fantasy about some men who discover oil under Paris, and they are trying to destroy the city in order to get the oil. Giraudoux called these people “mecs,” which means pimps. At the end of the play, all the pimps are sent down to hell.

I guess we need a liberation from the technological pimps.

JAMES DOTI: Professor of economics at Chapman College, lives in Anaheim Hills but spends his summers in Newport Beach.

In any disaster, it’s easy to overreact, and some perspective is necessary. We live in a complex economy, and these things will occur, trying as they are. We use oil and refined petroleum products, and we tend to take them for granted, not realizing the complex process it takes to bring these things to market.

I would hate to see an overreaction, some kind of ban on oil shipping, or refining, or drilling off-shore. Anything that is done to limit the transit, entry or exit points of these products will affect the cost. People have to realize the trade-off between a marginal increase in safety and higher prices. Economically, our dependance on foreign oil has increased significantly and that’s a problem as well, though not as visible as an oil spill. When we go to fill up our tank we take it for granted and don’t realize the complexity of the process behind it, and any restriction on this process raises prices. A decision needs to be made as to whether people are willing to pay that price. We have to keep that in perspective.

MAXINE O’CALLAGHAN: A writer of seven mystery novels, has lived in Mission Viejo since 1972.

I’ve been reading about the spill in the paper. The pictures of the birds are just heartbreaking. You have to wonder, even if they are able to corral all the oil with their little boats, how many blobs of that stuff are going to remain loose and floating around to foul all the beaches here?

I’ve already written about the environment in Orange County in “Hit and Run,” my last Delilah West book. Only I used chemical spills, the midnight dumping of toxic chemicals, as a plot element in that one. I’m using county overdevelopment as an element in another book I’m writing now. This spill becomes one more fact of life that you bring up for your reader to show what’s happening here. It gives a picture of the county, and not a very nice picture, to balance the palm trees and the beautiful weather.

In terms of real life, the thing that occurs to me is this: What will this spill mean to us in the future? I wonder if it’s going to change the way we think about our beautiful beaches and our clean water, and whether we’re going to take them for granted any more. It would be nice to think that all this would add up to some good, that people will become a lot more militant about protecting the environment.

Is that going to happen? Or are we just going to forget this disaster as soon as the spill is cleaned up and the little dead birds are all carted off to the landfill? I don’t know.

T. JEFFERSON PARKER: Author of “Laguna Heat” and “Little Saigon,” lives in Laguna Beach.

I’m not that miffed by the thing. I think it’s a neat little mini-tragedy and everyone wants to rush down and book rooms in Huntington Beach and stare at the thing. But it doesn’t rate very high on my list of concerns right now. Now, if we were talking 5 million gallons, I’d be singing a different tune, but it hasn’t bludgeoned its way into my consciousness the way other things have. It strikes me as a lot of hoopla.

It’s so easy as we consume our billions and billions of tons of fossil fuel to scream, shout and holler when something like this happens. As Philip Levine, the poet, said, “To enter the fire is to burn.” If we’re going to pump and refine oil to run our cars and our city and state, we’re bound to spill some of it once in a while. It doesn’t seem like a huge amount of negligence (was involved in the spill) to me. Accidents happen. I think I’m pretty environmentally conscious, contrary as that may sound to what I’ve said. I think one of the risks you run when you refine and transport that amount of crude is that things like that are going to happen. It’s a sorry sight, with all the birds getting stuck together and dying and the seal out at the end of Newport Pier. I love this environment and I hate to see it tainted, but at the same time I wouldn’t want to overreact to this in a kind of knee-jerk way.

F. SHERWOOD ROWLAND: Atmospheric chemist whose 1974 discovery of the depletion of the Earth’s ozone shield led to a ban of chlorofluorocarbons, teaches at UC Irvine and lives in Corona del Mar.

That which evaporates is going to blow off in a few days, so whatever level of hydrocarbons that exists doesn’t pose a long-term effect. It’s the heavy hydrocarbons, the oily, gunky part (that may have long-term effects). The ones that do boil off become an air-quality problem, but only for a few days. The heavier ones that stay in the water or on the land if they wash ashore are going to last much longer.

I think it’s almost inevitable in any form of transportation that it’s not always going to work, so I guess that is to be expected. Airplanes crash, oil tankers spill. Any time you’re operating tankers close to the shore, you’ve got a recipe for trouble. You don’t know when, but you can count on the fact that it will happen.

I don’t think we ought to be offshore drilling off Huntington Beach and the California shore. Too many people are using the beach, and it’s such an important aspect of life here that the offshore drilling doesn’t belong. It’s just a question that sometime you’re going to have the equivalent of this spill from the drilling.

The question of how much damage has been done remains to be seen. The only conclusion you really draw is that there are bound to be accidents in any kind of operation.

MARGIE M. SHACKELFORD: Director of development at the Newport Harbor Art Museum since October, 1984, lives in Dana Point.

I came to California from Texas--I lived (inland) in San Antonio, but all my life I went to Texas beaches. I took my children there and watched as the beaches became worse and worse over the years. The beaches in Texas were almost destroyed because cars were allowed to drive on the sand and a tremendous amount of tar accumulated. They are working to clean up the waters, but things got very, very bad before they did that. We have all seen places we love disappear because of (pollution).

I think California is the most beautiful area of the United States, and one of the reasons I’m here is the beauty of the place and Californians’ concern for the environment. I give money to various groups to support the environment, but because I have very limited time, I’m not active in these groups. If I knew something specific I could do to help in this situation, I surely would. I hope those of us in the neighborhood can find out soon how we can help.

I hope it will call enough attention to this problem that our legislators will act accordingly. Most of all, I wish we had an alternative energy source that didn’t require that we use all this oil. I would like to see alternative sources of energy that do not pollute our environment become practical enough for us to use. And I say that as I prepare to get in my car and drive home--by myself.

KEM NUNN: Author of “Tapping the Source,” set in Huntington Beach, has lived in Huntington Beach for five years, in the county for nearly 15.

It’s terrible. I was down there Friday and it’s amazing how strong the fumes are just coming in off the ocean. This is a very dramatic thing, so it calls a lot of attention to itself. Apparently there’s some legislation going on, trying to get these tankers to be double-hulled, so if the hoopla being raised helps in that regard, good.

The thing you have to keep in mind, you have to put this in perspective and realize that the ocean is being polluted every day and stuff is washing up on the beach every day and a lot of the time it is stuff you can’t taste or see or smell, but that doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous. This spill is something that’s very obvious and draws a lot of attention, but I happen to be one of those people who thinks the threat to our environment is the most serious threat we face.

I know some people have a visceral sort of reaction to this. I don’t know that I can claim any such reaction, other than (to say) I used to surf in the ocean every day and, within the past couple years, I’ve started getting a lot of ear infections, sinus infections; I’ve started having second thoughts about spending a lot of time in the ocean every day in some of the heavily populated areas where it simply is not as clean as it was 20 years ago. So I look at something like this and say, what’s happening is bad, but I also see it as a part of a much larger problem.

RHODA MARTYN: Huntington Beach resident and a founding member of Amigos de Bolsa Chica, the activist group that has fought since the mid-1970s for preservation and restoration of the Bolsa Chica wetlands.

I guess we’ve been somewhat fortunate that the oil hasn’t really gotten in to the Bolsa Chica. It would be a real travesty if it ever came down the Bolsa Chica after all the work we’ve done.

There has been such concern over this spill. The beauty parlor operator Friday was just so concerned and upset that she couldn’t leave work and go down and volunteer at the beach. And she was feeling so personally about it. And here’s this apolitical person. It’s so neat that people are doing something about their environment. While it’s a horrible thing, maybe some good will come of it. Maybe we’ll get some legislation calling for double hulls on tankers. There was a similar push in 1973 after an Alaskan spill.

I think you are seeing a tremendous concern with the environment more and more. And it’s really nice. I’m gathering that they are having lots of volunteers (along the shore and to help oil-covered birds). But it is distressing to have an accident occur like this.

MITSUYE YAMADA: Retired English professor at Cypress College and now active in Amnesty International, has published three books of poetry and is editing a fourth, lives in Irvine.

I’m really appalled by the lack of foresight that would create something like this. I understand we do have the technology to clean it up immediately, because they notified people immediately, unlike the one involving the Exxon Valdez, where they waited three hours, apparently, before letting anyone know. I think it’s really criminal that something was not done immediately before oil had spread the way it seems to be doing.

I’m not actively involved in any environmental activism; I’m in human rights work, but I am concerned about the environment. As a citizen, I think we all need to be concerned about it. It’s really too bad we don’t do something. We kind of leave it up to experts to take care of these things for us, and we all have other concerns, and I haven’t paid that much attention to the prevention of these kind of things. Perhaps more of us should to maintain a quality of life that’s important here. And quality meaning more than being able to surf on the beach.

I’m in human rights work, I’m concerned about human life, but I’m also concerned about the lack of concern we have toward things that we think are lesser or less important than human life. I think we should be concerned about things like that--wildlife and plants and the land. All these things are connected.