Background (continued)

Another event occurs early in 1969 that truly galvanizes the American public and Congress to action. On January 29, 1969, a 200,000-gallon oil spill takes place in Santa Barbara, California. A Union Oil Company platform six miles off the coast of Summerland suffers a blowout that requires 11 days to cap (Figure 40). The 200,000-gallon oil slick spreads 800 square miles. Incoming tides bring the thick tar-like oil to beaches, marring 35 miles of coastline.

Figure 40: Santa Barbara Oil Spill (Santa Barbara Wildlife Care Network)

The ecological impacts are devastating:

Animals that depended on the sea were hard hit. Incoming tides brought the corpses of dead seals and dolphins. Oil had clogged the blowholes of the dolphins, causing massive lung hemorrhages. Animals that ingested the oil were poisoned...The oil took its toll on the seabird population...diving birds which must get their nourishment from the waters themselves became soaked with tar...In all 3686 birds were estimated to have died because of the contact with oil. Aerial surveys a year later found only 200 grebes in an area that had previously drawn 4000 to 7000 (Clarke 2002).

Despite these impacts, the president of Union Oil Company says, “I don’t like to call it a disaster, because there has been no loss of human life. I am amazed at the publicity for the loss of a few birds” (Clarke 2001).

Overall, however, the Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969 has a profound impact on the psyche of the American Public:

The federal government had largely ignored the need to protect commercial, recreational, aesthetic, and ecological values of the area (White House Council on Environmental Quality, 1996). With the damage caused by the oil spill the threshold had been crossed, and never again would environmental costs be seen in the same light (Clarke 2001).

President Nixon expresses the changes he sees because of this oil spill:

It is sad that it was necessary that Santa Barbara should be the example that had to bring it to the attention of the American people. What is involved is the use of our resources of the sea and of the land in a more effective way and with more concern for preserving the beauty and the natural resources that are to important to any kind of society that we want for the future. The Santa Barbara incident has frankly touched the conscience of the American people (Clarke 2001)