‘Rigs to Reefs’ Plan Stirs Debate

Above the water’s surface, oil rigs are rusting, clanging, grease-streaked eyesores that mar our views of the blue Pacific.

Underwater, the view changes dramatically. Mussels, scallops and sea stars cling to the steel latticework, turning platform legs and crossbeams into a kaleidoscope of pink, green and orange sea life. Fish rarely found on natural reefs congregate in the shadows of these superstructures.

Oil companies have long pledged that California’s 27 offshore platforms will be removed after their wells run dry and they become obsolete.

Now, a movement to leave the submerged portions of abandoned rigs intact has won the support of the California Legislature and sparked a debate about the fate of the hulking steel structures that have become the adoptive home to an unforeseen abundance of sea life.

A bill awaiting the governor’s signature proposes that state officials consider each platform as it comes up for retirement. The platform “legs” could remain in place if the Department of Fish and Game concludes that leaving them would be more of a benefit than a detriment to the environment.

The tops of the platforms in every case would be removed, probably down to a depth of 85 feet. The legislation doesn’t specify. But the Coast Guard usually insists on an 85-foot clearance and also requires marking the reefs with buoys to avoid hazards to ship navigation. The governor has not indicated whether he will sign the bill.

If the program were to move forward, converting rigs to reefs would release companies from their commitments to restore the underwater areas to what they once looked like.

The industry could save as much as $660 million by avoiding the costly and technically tricky procedure of removing every bit of each massive frame, some nearly as tall as the Empire State Building. Under the legislation, up to $400 million of the savings would be returned to the state to finance various marine research and conservation programs.

Although the bill passed handily, debate continues to rage over an issue that has stirred emotions since the 1969 oil spill off Santa Barbara. Images of oiled birds floundering on the beach are still vivid in the minds of people passionately opposed to the rigs-to-reef bill.

“We call it rigs to grief, or rigs to rubbish,” said Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara). “It is the worst anti-environmental bill passed this year.”

Nineteen of the 27 offshore platforms are concentrated in the Santa Barbara Channel, fostering hard-core opposition by two dozen environmental groups that contend the bill is a giveaway to the oil industry and will turn the sea floor into a toxic junkyard.

“Some people have an emotional response to this bill,” said state Sen. Dede Alpert (D-Coronado), who sponsored the legislation. “They never wanted offshore oil drilling, they had a spill off their coast and they don’t want to do anything that would benefit an oil company.”

Alpert, an environmentalist, broke ranks with her friends on the issue. She is convinced it would be better to leave the artificial reefs as oases for fish. The reefs, at least initially, would remain off-limits to fishing.

Although California, up to now, has not allowed a single abandoned rig to remain as a reef, states bordering the Gulf of Mexico have allowed such conversions and collected tens of millions of dollars from the oil industry. More than 160 platforms have been left partially intact, with only surface structures removed, off the coast of Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

But the Gulf states have been friendlier to offshore oil development than California. The debate over offshore oil has complicated the issue here, making for strange political alliances.

Recreational fishermen, scuba dive clubs and other longtime critics of the offshore oil industry have linked arms with oil companies to favor preserving the underwater structures.

On the opponents’ side, major environmental groups have teamed up with the commercial fishing industry to challenge the legislation. One of those environmental groups, American Oceans Campaign, is waging a campaign against bottom trawling. Now, it finds itself aligned with the trawlers. American Oceans wants the rigs removed as part of a general ocean cleanup. The fishermen want the rigs pulled out so they won’t snag their trawling nets as they drag them along the sea floor.

Zeke Grader of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Assns. said the steel legs and crossbeams could pose a major hazard for trawlers and other commercial fishermen using heavy gear. “They could hang up on these things,” he said. “In some instances, it could result in the loss of life” of a fishing crew member. Opponents also raise questions about liability for accidents caused by the submerged structures. They believe the state could end up paying more to maintain navigational buoys marking the reefs than it would collect from the oil companies. Gulf states have not reported such problems, however.

In addition, opponents contend that some of the shell mounds at the feet of the platforms are contaminated by drilling muds and other toxic materials that could leach into the environment. “No other industry is allowed to leave its toxic mess for the state to manage and maintain at taxpayer expense,” said Linda Krop, chief council for the Santa Barbara-based Environmental Defense Center.

George Steinbach, decommissioning project manager for Chevron, said the sites are mischaracterized as toxic trash piles. “What they are labeling as trash is not appropriate,” he said. “It is a well-established marine habitat.”

The emotional debate has spilled into the halls of academia too, generating hard feelings and dueling science.

Milton Love, a UC Santa Barbara researcher who has been tracking the demise of rockfish, such as bocaccio, lingcod and cowcod, has found many times more of those overfished species near the platform legs than anywhere else.

But neither his studies nor others have settled a fundamental question: Do these artificial reefs increase fish populations or do they merely draw fish from rocky reefs?

We may never know the answer, Love said. Yet he knows what he has seen over the years tooling around in a tiny sub, surveying reefs, both natural and artificial, and counting fish.

“There is no question that in certain years at certain platforms, there are astronomical numbers of rockfish,” Love said. “During those years, the platforms act as nursery grounds.”

A panel of six marine scientists from UC Santa Barbara and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography this spring challenged Love’s conclusions, stating in a report that there is no “sound scientific evidence” to support that platforms enhance the abundance of fish.

Furthermore, the panel said that removing the top 85 feet of the legs closest to the surface, would diminish the mussels, algae and other organisms that provide food and shelter for young fish. Other marine scientists, who have avoided the fight, consider the sea life on the platforms to be an insignificant speck in the vast ocean.

Yet some of them are dismayed over the prospect of killing marine animals when platforms are removed--a process that begins with detonating explosives to loosen the legs from the sea floor. The process regularly kills thousands of fish in the vicinity.

When Chevron removed four platforms in 1996 off Carpinteria, it left 2,700 tons of mussels, scallops, sea stars, sponges and other creatures rotting on the docks in Long Beach. Ultimately, they were scraped off the platform and hauled to a dump.

It was the removal of those platforms that prompted United Anglers of Southern California, a consortium of recreational fishermen, to propose leaving the legs in place as artificial reefs.

“Our folks believe this is a unique way to turn lemons into lemonade,” said Barry Broad, United Anglers’ lobbyist in Sacramento. “It could never harm the ocean to leave them there. If you take them away, you kill everything that lives there.”