Frizzelle Gets It at Home for Votes Against Oil Spill Bill : Politics: Assemblyman defends position amid heavy fire from Huntington Beach officials and environmentalists. He insists law just wouldn’t be workable.

At odds with the sentiments of hometown officials, Assemblyman Nolan Frizzelle (R-Huntington Beach) has opposed major environmental legislation requiring oil companies to help pay for better response to disastrous tanker spills like the one that fouled beaches in his own district in February.

As a member of the Assembly’s Natural Resources Committee, Frizzelle last week voted against a bill by state Sen. Barry Keene (D-Benicia) that would make oil companies ante up $150 million to pay for improved cleanup efforts after a spill. Frizzelle was on the losing side of an 8-3 committee vote in favor of the measure, which gained urgency this year after the Huntington Beach spill.

Huntington Beach officials, who say they support the Keene bill, were unaware of Frizzelle’s vote and intend to ask him to reconsider. And Orange County environmentalists, some of whom worked to save imperiled birds after the Huntington Beach disaster, expressed shock that Frizzelle would oppose stronger controls.

“It strikes me as unbelievable that someone representing this district would not recognize the need to protect us from oil spills, which would likely happen here some day,” said Victor Leipzig, a college biology instructor and executive director of the Bolsa Chica Conservancy. “It obviously doesn’t make any sense at all.”

Frizzelle defended his vote, saying he supports tougher oil spill legislation but voted against Keene’s measure because of how it would assess fees against petroleum producers and leave cleanup crews open to potential lawsuits.

“I’m not going to vote for anything that’s not workable, no matter what Huntington Beach thinks, no matter what the environmentalists think and no matter what the oil companies think,” Frizzelle said. “This bill is not workable for them but they just don’t know it yet.”

Campaign reports show that Frizzelle has accepted $3,950 in campaign contributions from oil producers in the past two years.

According to LegiTech, a computer tracking firm in Sacramento, those contributing included large oil producers with plenty at stake in the current oil spill legislation: Texaco ($500); Shell Oil Co. ($1,000); Chevron Corp. ($500); Atlantic Richfield ($900); and the Independent Oil Producers Political Fund ($500).

Frizzelle’s objections are similar to those of Gov. George Deukmejian, who has written to Keene and threatened to veto what environmentalists are calling landmark legislation. Deukmejian wants the oil spill fund scaled down to $30 million and is also troubled by the liability issue.

After months of hardball negotiations among environmentalists, oil companies and legislators, the Keene bill has become one of the primary vehicles in the Legislature for bolstering the state’s oil spill plan. The bill gained immediate momentum after the ill-fated tanker American Trader settled on its own anchor and spilled 399,000 gallons of crude off the Orange County coast.

Keene’s complex measure establishes the office of an oil spill “czar,” responsible for directing on-site spill response by state, industry, private and volunteer cleanup crews. The czar would have power to assess fines against any oil producer that fails to have in writing a comprehensive emergency spill plan. The cost of recovery and cleanup after a spill would be billed to the responsible oil company, such as British Petroleum in the Huntington Beach incident.

In addition, the bill requires oil companies to pay a 25-cent tax for each barrel of oil they import to or produce in California. The money would stock a $150-million trust fund that would help underwrite quick response and pay for wildlife rehabilitation. The tax could be raised to $1 a barrel for any extraordinary expenses that require the temporary loan of state money.

One of the more controversial amendments, however, has to do with who would be subject to a lawsuit if cleanup efforts were found to damage private property. Originally, Keene made the oil company that spilled the crude liable for those kinds of cleanup mishaps.

But the amendment would protect the on-site workers for only 60 days--a crucial change that would leave professional cleanup crews open to lawsuits while working on spills that take longer than two months to mop up. The amendment exempts volunteers, but holds industry-backed response teams liable for damages they may cause while working “orphan” spills, or those mishaps committed by small petroleum companies with limited financial resources.

Deukmejian and other critics of the amendment say it is at cross purposes with the whole idea of ensuring a quick response, since worries of lawsuits will force cleanup crews to think twice before coming to the rescue.

Frizzelle agrees.

“There is nobody who would dare to move, without first checking with their attorney, without first checking the degree of liability,” he said. The additional legal costs, he added, would be picked up by oil companies and passed onto the consumer.

“I believe whenever we put chains on people who clean it (a spill) up, they simply are not going to do it or they are going to charge so much for the price of their services, the price of gasoline is going to bear a brunt of having to pay for it,” he said.

Aside from liability, Frizzelle said, he objects to how the Keene measure would raise the money for the $150-million spill trust fund. Instead of taking the money from oil companies up front, he wants the fees tacked on further along in the production process when the oil is sold out of refineries to retailers.

The idea would not only relieve oil companies of paying the tax directly, Frizzelle said, it would also save consumers money at the pumps. There is great temptation for producers and refiners to take an extra cut of the new tax as it is passed along the line, he said.

“Every time it changes hands, there is an uppage, over and above the cost of the fees, so by the time it translates to the consumer, you almost double the cap for the fees,” Frizzelle said.

During committee deliberations on Wednesday, Frizzelle also voted against language in the Keene bill calling for the state to give first consideration to protecting the coast during spill preparation and response. Frizzelle wanted those environmental considerations balanced against how much the efforts would cost oil companies for new technology.

Frizzelle said he fought the stronger environmental language because it was vague.

“Environmentalists love this kind of thing because they can change this in midstream,” he said. “A major corporation has to have something predictable. They have to have something that is definable, that they know they have to measure up to. They’re willing to do it, they’re happy to do it and they want to do it.”

Those kind of ambiguities and questions over liability, Frizzelle says, has created a “bureaucratic monster” and a “boondoggle” that will cost consumers disproportionately at the gas pump for the protection it will provide.

Informed of Frizzelle’s votes last week, Huntington Beach Mayor Thomas J. Mays said he, most council members and other city officials have been working for passage of tougher oil spill legislation. They’ve sent the fire chief to Washington and talked to some Sacramento legislators, but not Frizzelle.

“I think we just need to do a little more intense lobbying of local legislators,” said Mays, himself a candidate for Assembly in November.

“Unless the legislators hear from their constituents, they don’t know,” said Mays, who added that he will call Frizzelle to discuss the votes. “They go on their gut feel. It’s as much our responsibilities as a community to let our legislators know how we feel on certain issues.”

Leipzig, who teaches biology at Cypress College, said supporting strong oil spill legislation would reap economic benefits for coastal cities such as Huntington Beach.

“You don’t have to be an environmentalist to recognize that an oil spill is damaging to our community,” he said. “We suffered environmental damage, but we suffered just as much economic damage. Our community is, in part, strongly dependent on our tourist industry, which was completely shut down in the month of February, not to mention the costs incurred by the city.”

Lorraine Faber, past president of the environmental group Amigos de Bolsa Chica, said Frizzelle “should have to explain himself to the electorate” for last week’s votes.

“This appears to be another case of the Orange County cavemen,” Faber said, referring to the term Democratic legislators in Sacramento use to describe their conservative colleagues from Orange County. “I guess maybe a soft way of putting it is misrepresenting their constituents’ interests. He’s failed in his responsibility to those who care about our coastline.”

THE OIL SPILL FALLOUT

About 6 1/2 months after the county’s shoreline was blackened with crude oil, few effects are evident. Biologists are still studying marine life, lawyers are still collecting evidence--and more tankers than ever are using the Huntington Beach terminal, although they are observing new precautions and carrying smaller loads. ENVIRONMENTAL: Orange County’s wetlands were spared, but tiny marine creatures that lived in the Huntington Beach sand were killed, as were thousands of grunion and millions of their eggs and also at least 700 birds. State biologists say the grunion already are spawning safely again and that the shrimp, clam and other tiny sand-dwelling species will be at their normal populations within five years. The long-term effects on birds have not been determined.

ECONOMIC: The city of Huntington Beach says it spent about $528,000 on the cleanup, including overtime for police and firefighters and use of sand graders and other equipment and materials. The city has received a partial payment of $250,000 from American Trading Transportation, owner of the tanker that spilled the oil, and the city plans to seek more money in a lawsuit filed by the state. City officials said tourism this summer has not suffered, although they worry the city’s image has been permanently tarnished.

PROSECUTION: The state attorney general’s office is still gathering evidence in preparation for prosecuting one or all of the parties involved: British Petroleum, American Trading Transportation and Golden West Refining. The attorneys plan to seek at least $8 million in connection with violations of state water-pollution laws, and they also hope to collect an unidentified extra amount in damages and for reimbursement of costs to the city, county and state. The prosecutor has refused comment on the investigation.

POLITICAL: Most political observers believe that the spill galvanized once laid-back Huntington Beach into becoming militant about protecting its environment. Residents have vehemently opposed malathion spraying, and an initiative to restrict sales and leases of beach and parkland qualified for the ballot. Slow-growth forces in the city hope to tap that environmental sentiment into City Council victories in the November election.

TANKER TRAFFIC: About 12 tankers have used the mooring since the spill. Ships have been restricted to smaller drafts because they must maintain a 6-foot cushion between anchor and ocean floor. That means the largest tanker has a draft of about 37 feet, depending on the sea conditions; the American Trader, by contrast, had a 43-foot draft when it ran aground. Because each ship must carry less cargo, more tankers than in the past are using the terminal--about three a month, contrasted with about two before.