Sacramento just cancelled the last argument of sanctuary opponents
By Andrew Christie, Chapter Director
Many thanks to Jason Scorse and Judith Kildow for taking critics of the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary to school in the Sept. 4 Tribune. Their defense of their study of the economic impacts of a marine sanctuary righted many wrongs and banished a lot of ignorance.
Last year, Scorse and Kildow found that designation of a sanctuary would likely result in millions of dollars pumped into the local economy and create up to 600 new jobs. They point out that opponents who have been disputing their findings are basically making up arguments in opposition. (More rebuttals will doubtless be attempted. Let us know when you see one from somebody with a PhD in economics who heads the equivalent of the Center for the Blue Economy at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, as Dr. Scorse does, or has something on their resume similar to founding the National Ocean Economics Program at the aforementioned Center for the Blue Economy, as Dr. Kildow does.)
Just a week before Scorse and Kildow knocked down the economic nay-sayers, sanctuary opponents lost another of their favorite arguments.
In June, because they could, the Port San Luis Harbor Commission announced its formal opposition to the designation of a Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary. In the discussion leading up to the vote, the commissioners offered a host of reasons in support of their position, including (I am not making this up) whales come here even though it’s not a marine sanctuary, our ocean doesn’t need to be healthier, and the local economy doesn’t need any boosting.
Perhaps their most arresting reason was their idea that we don’t need a national marine sanctuary because we can depend on our elected representatives in Sacramento to do what’s best for our coastal waters.
Two months after the Harbor Commission voiced that sentiment, Sacramento let them know, in the most specific terms imaginable, how wrong they were.
On August 27, Senate Bill 788, the California Coastal Protection Act of 2015, died in the Assembly Appropriations committee. It would have closed a loophole that permits new oil drilling in state waters if the same oil field is being drained by a rig in adjacent federal waters. It would have protected California’s $40 billion coastal economy from new drilling and the heightened risk of oil spills.
The bill was jointly authored by Senators Mike McGuire and Hannah-Beth Jackson and co-authored by Senators Mark Leno, Ben Allen, Loni Hancock, Bill Monning, Lois Wolk and Assemblymembers Bill Dodd, Marc Levine, Mark Stone, Jim Wood and Das Williams. More than 15,000 people signed petitions endorsing SB 788, and the legislation was supported by a broad coalition of the state’s leading environmental organizations and businesses including the Sierra Club, Patagonia, REI, Audubon California, California League of Conservation Voters, the Center for Climate Protection, the Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, fisherman’s organizations, lodging and restaurant associations, tribal groups, and clean water advocates.
The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations wrote, “sustainable seafood production and the family fishing way of life are threatened by the presence of offshore oil facilities in California’s coastal waters. Unfortunately, that destruction lasts long after removal of surface oil [from an oil spill]. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently stated that the effects of the [Deepwater Horizon] spill are likely to last ‘generations.’ PCFFA stands vigorously opposed to any infrastructure projects that could literally suck the ocean’s wealth into a few corporate coffers at the expense of marine life, productive fisheries, and our cultural heritage.”
Opposing the bill: Big Oil.
And they killed it.
“How many more oil spills do we have to see off the California coast before we stand up to the Big Oil lobby and take action?” Senator McGuire asked after the vote.
How many indeed?
That’s how it went in the latest failed attempt by our elected officials in Sacramento to get a bill through the state legislature – the place where, according to the Port San Luis Harbor Commission, we can depend on our elected representatives to do what’s best for our coastal waters, so we don’t need a national marine sanctuary.
Worthy of note: At the height of “drill baby drill,” with a Congress saturated in oil money, in multiple legislative attempts to spread offshore drilling the length and breadth of the East, West and Gulf Coasts, each one of those attempts had one exception written in: National marine sanctuaries. Everywhere but there. Those were off limits.
Sanctuary now!