OIL SPILL OFF SANTA BARBARA NOW NINE MILES WIDE

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By Miriam Raftery

Photo: "Refugio Oil Spill in Santa Barbara" by Zackmann08

Updated to include expanded size of spill, now five times earlier estimates

May 20, 2015 (Santa Barbara) – A ruptured pipeline has caused a nine-mile-wide oil spill in the ocean off the Santa Barbara coast.  The environmental disaster occurred 46 years after the catastrophic 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill.

While emergency crews work to try and clean up the estimated 110,000 gallon spill, campgrounds and beaches at Refugio State Beach have been evacuated due to severe air quality, water pollution and oil oozing onto the sand as Memorial Day weekend draws near.  Warnings have been issued for nearby El Capitan State Beach as the oil slick moves southward with the currents.

Wildlife experts have been called in to help search for birds and animals in need of rescue.

The leak has been repaired, according to the Coast Guard, but the extent of damage and cleanup needed is not yet known. Residue from an oil spill can linger for decades or more; globs of oil are still visible in places like Alaska from the Exxon Valdez spill decades ago.

The 1969 oil spill, caused by a blow-out of an oil drilling platform off the Santa Barbara coast, was the worst oil spill ever in the U.S. at the time, but today ranks third after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill off the Gulf Coast and the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill off Alaska.  The 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill dumped an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 barrels of crude oil, killing an estimated 3,500 sea birds as well as many marine mammals such as dolphins, elephant seals and sea lions. Some species, such as barnacles, suffered an estimated 90% mortality.

The disaster helped spark the environmental movement in the U.S.  and led to passage of many environmental laws, launch of Earth Day worldwide, and a ban on future offshore drilling along California’s coastline.

So it is particularly heart wrenching to area residents, 46 years later, to see a pipeline burst off their shoreline, pumping tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil into the waters off this ecologically minded community once again.


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