To the editor: Few communities know the devastation that oil drilling can produce as a lot as Santa Barbara (“Under Trump, Texas firm pushes to restart Santa Barbara oil drilling. Is it skirting California laws?” April 6). We’ve got seen our seashores drenched in oil, our land despoiled and wildlife killed. Sable Offshore Corp. is stuffed with guarantees that its operations might be secure and safe. But its conceited actions to disregard cease-and-desist orders from the California Coastal Fee warn us that it can’t be trusted.
America produces extra oil and gasoline than every other nation on Earth. Do we have to danger despoiling a pristine coastal space to get extra? Regardless of the Trump administration’s “drill-baby-drill” insurance policies, accountable world leaders are phasing out fossil fuels and transitioning to cheaper, safer renewable power.
The town of Santa Barbara’s 2024 Local weather Motion Plan, “Collectively to Zero,” offers a street map aimed toward attaining carbon neutrality by 2035. There’s no place in that plan for extra oil and gasoline.
Robert Taylor, Santa Barbara
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To the editor: I used to be a younger mom in Santa Barbara on the time of the 1969 spill, a lawyer for Santa Barbara County on the time of the Exxon Alaska spill, when the county needed to think about “tankering” of oil from offshore platforms, and I used to be a public member of the Coastal Fee in 2015, when the Refugio spill — the one from the identical pipeline at challenge now — poured from onshore, into the ocean, damaging 100 miles of shoreline.
That is precisely why we now have a robust, statewide Coastal Act. Sable’s declare that it doesn’t want permits for repairs in environmentally delicate habitat is specious, and it has preemptively sued the fee. Now that Sable has acquired Exxon’s processing plant, in addition to the pipeline — 10 years after the Refugio spill — for the sake of all our kids, and grandchildren, all of the permits ought to be revoked or deemed deserted.
Jana Zimmer, Santa Barbara
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To the editor: The 1969 Santa Barbara catastrophe, the “environmental shot heard around the world,” helped result in the founding of America’s strongest coastal regulatory company, the California Coastal Fee. The company was singular for a lot of causes. Foremost, it was birthed by the folks in 1972’s Proposition 20 and codified 4 years later with passage of the California Coastal Act. Oil drilling off our storied coast was thereby regulated. Texas-based Sable is working to unravel the fee’s regulatory authority. We should struggle this effort. Contact Sacramento officers. Remind them that our treasured coast is the soul of California.
Tom Osborne, Laguna Seaside
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To the editor: In the identical April 6 version of The Occasions there’s an article a few Texas oil firm attempting to renew drilling off the coast of Santa Barbara after which a number of pages later one other article about an oil firm that has been discovered answerable for damaging coastal Louisiana (“Chevron ordered to pay more than $740 million to restore Louisiana coast in landmark trial,” April 6). What’s that definition of madness once more?
Larry Harmell, Granada Hills
