A Starting Point on Oil

Orange County has entered the 1990s with a troubling reminder early on of how fragile this place in the sun really is. The oil that rolled ashore last week from the American Trader brought with it the painful awareness that protecting this environment came down to something as uncontrollable as the direction of the wind.

Only last year, the county celebrated its centennial, a benchmark in a long period of modernization and growth. Its relationship with the ocean has been crucial in the development of the area as a magnet for people from all over the country to live and work in harmony with land and sea. Yet in the past week and a half, it has become apparent what one of the challenges of the second century would be, namely, protecting the area’s vital natural resources. This, of course, would have been on anybody’s short list of musts, but this imperative washed up literally onto our beaches.

The fragile advantages offered by this place and climate really are just that--delicate, and subject to alteration in a way that may be irreversible under the wrong circumstances. At one point, the crisis manager for British Petroleum said that it was in the hands of Mother Nature whether the oil would go to sea or come ashore. The fate of the county’s shoreline was being cast to the winds. Last week, you could smell the stench of oil rustling in the breeze that caressed palm trees along the highway in Huntington Beach. It was as if the county’s precious coastline suddenly had assumed the atmosphere of a self-service gas station where the pumps had been left on so that the tanks overflowed onto the pavement.

The people of Orange County who came out to look beyond the makeshift fences that kept them from their ocean had the look of tourists whose pockets had been picked at an amusement park. What’s really at issue for them is whether they have any control over what happens to them, or whether they simply must stare out to sea, as the curious did in recent days.

After the spill, people rushed to the shoreline to lend assistance, only to be turned away for lack of training. Municipal officials, sworn to protect health, safety and welfare, found themselves watching somebody else’s cleanup crews attack a major problem with inadequate means. It was Orange County’s problem to live with.

It’s clear that problems that permitted such a spill will have to be solved somewhere else. But with thousands of ships off its shores, and with so much at stake for its environment, Orange County needs more of a say about the next spill that might be waiting to happen. It shouldn’t have to be quite so victimized from start to finish.

Here’s one good idea for those like Councilman Peter Green of Huntington Beach, who feels battered by forces beyond his control. He suggests that the matter be taken up by the Orange County League of Cities and by the California League of Cities to see what action local governments can take beyond mere expressions of concern.

Resolutions from concerned local officials like him may not plug up ships, but a chorus of voices, accountable to the public, is better for starters than casting a county’s fate to the wind.