Mays Savors Ban on Offshore Oil Drilling : Environment: The prohibition will affect a 3-county area. Only an energy emergency could override the new law.

Last Feb. 7, on the first anniversary of Huntington Beach’s disastrous oil spill, Assemblyman Tom Mays (R-Huntington Beach) stood on the strand there and announced that he would seek a state law to forbid any more oil drilling off the Orange County coast.

On Monday, Mays said his mission had been achieved.

“The governor signed my bill into law Friday night, and the law becomes effective in January,” Mays said. “It was a long, hard fight. This is a piece of legislation that people opposed to more oil drilling along the coast have been seeking for 10 years.”

The new law bans future offshore drilling not only off Orange County, but also off Los Angeles and Santa Barbara counties. The ban stretches 3 miles out to sea--the boundary of state-owned tidelands.

The State Lands Commission, a three-member agency, has placed an administrative moratorium on oil drilling in state waters off the three counties. But Mays noted that the moratorium could be changed by a vote of the commission.

“With this new law, it would take an act of the Legislature to overturn the prohibition on more drilling, unless there is a national emergency,” Mays said. The law has an “escape valve” that would allow new drilling in case of a national emergency such as a cutoff of oil from the Middle East.

Oil industry lobbyists had opposed the legislation, saying it limited drilling options at a time when California’s production of oil is declining.

But Terry Dolton, president of Amigos de Bolsa Chica, an environmental group based in Huntington Beach, praised passage of the new law.

“The law puts into perspective what many cities and counties have been saying all along: that we not jeopardize the environment of our heavily urbanized coast, and also not jeopardize the tourist economy,” Dolton said.

Mays, 37, was mayor of Huntington Beach on Feb. 7, 1990, when the oil tanker American Trader ruptured on its own anchor and spewed about 400,000 gallons of crude oil into the waters off the city. Mays helped direct emergency response and cleanup efforts, and the resulting favorable publicity helped him win an Assembly seat, some observers say.

Assemblyman Jack O’Connell (D-Carpinteria) co-sponsored the bill with Mays. Mays said that environmentalists in the three-county area have applauded putting a firmer lid on state drilling offshore.

“This legislation also is important to our area because of the multibillion-dollar tourist industry along the coast,” Mays said. “The tourist industry brings in more revenue than oil does. And oil drilling and oil wells have an impact on tourists.”

The federal government, which controls tideland waters beyond the 3-mile limit, still may allow more oil drilling offshore. Mays said he supports environmental efforts in Congress to ban more drilling in the offshore federal waters.

Mays said he is also working with the State Lands Commission to try to find a way to end the offshore oil-unloading mooring at Huntington Beach. The mooring was the site of the American Trader spill.

“Because a long-term lease is involved” with the Huntington Beach mooring, there are many legal problems, but I would like to see this mooring transferred to Long Beach, and I’m still working on this,” Mays said.