More than 50 years ago, a catastrophic oil spill along
#Santa #Barbara’s coastline
served to galvanize the modern environmental movement
and also helped to usher in one of the state’s strongest conservation laws:
the California Coastal Act.
Now, as the Trump administration seeks to encourage oil and gas production within federal lands and waters,
that watershed conservation law is being tested along the same stretch of coastline
— and in a way it never has before.
For months, a Texas-based oil company has rebuffed the authority of the California Coastal Commission
— the body tasked with enforcing the act
— and has instead pushed forward with controversial plans to revive oil production off the #Gaviota #Coast.
Ten years after another spill brought oil production here to a halt,
#Sable #Offshore #Corp. has begun repairing and upgrading the network of oil pipelines responsible for that 2015 spill, 
without Coastal Commission approval and ignoring the commission’s repeated demands to stop its work, officials say.
“This is the first time in the agency’s history that we’ve had a party blatantly ignore a cease and desist order like this and refuse to submit a permit application,”
Cassidy Teufel, deputy director of the California Coastal Commission, told a packed town hall recently.
