Posted on 07/18/2008 3:09:38 PM PDT by Gene Lalor
SANTA BARBARA: THE HORROR, THE HORROR!
Published July 18th, 2008
“Santa Barbara is sometimes referred to as the American Riviera. Her beautiful beaches, majestic mountains and colorful culture make Santa Barbara a premier resort destination.” (Quoted from the City of Santa Barbara home page: http://www.santabarbaraca.gov/Visitor/)
Do note that the first feature mentioned is the town’s “beautiful beaches.” Not mentioned is the fact that some of the most expensive real estate on the planet is located in and around the area.
No, I’m not a Santa Barbara realtor. However, Santa Barbara’s beauty and prosperity put the lie to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s adamant position against offshore drilling for the life blood of American prosperity, oil. As for drilling in the waters off Santa Barbara, that would be tantamount to drilling under the Statue Of Liberty!
In 1969, Santa Barbara suffered from one of the worst oil spills to that date when a UNOCAL oil drilling platform six miles offshore had a “blowout” which resulted in an “environmental nightmare” and sent 200,000 gallons of oil goop toward the beaches. Dead seals and dolphins, choked by the goop, began to wash up. Seabirds of many a variety were covered in it and over 3600 succumbed. (http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/~jeff/sb_69oilspill/69oilspill_articles2.html) It seems to have been an horrendous event as seen in the photos on that UCSB website and the cleanup took almost 12 days.
The point of this retrospective? It took ...
(For the rest of this article, please see http://genelalor.com/)
(Excerpt) Read more at genelalor.com ...
Santa Barbara is where I first saw lumps of goo on the beach — no drilling in sight — and was told it was “natural seepage.”
Probably from a fish fry at Pelosi’s house.
Oil is lighter than water, lighter than sand, lighter than rock...so it naturally seaps up.
That’s why you have the La Brea Tar Pits in downtown Los Angeles. If you don’t drill to remove underground pressure, then you get natural oil seapage pollution, instead.
Then you weren’t looking very closely. We have oil platforms in the ocean. and have since the 1960s. I live in SB and have for 35 years. I STILL think we ought to drill here and drill now!
No one should build in San Francisco because of an environmental disaster in 1906, no ocean crossing ships either or has everyone forgotten the Titanic! Think of the oil that dumped in the pristine Atlantic.
So little time, so many things to ban.
You are correct about the goo. We used to stay at a Santa Barbara beach front hotel years ago. Whenever, we went into the water, we had to clean the oil off of our feet. The hotel kept bottles of tar remover on the beach along with old towels. It was really a mess to get off. It was also difficult to see it in the sand, as it was not in gobs, but rather pretty well integrated in the sand, like seams of gold in a gold mine.
This problem only existed along Santa Barbara area beaches, no place else in So Cal. The explanation was that it came up from seeps along the ocean bottom and not from any off-shore drilling rigs.
I stand corrected. It was a long time ago. I certainly don’t recall seeing much in the way of oil rigs out there. On the other hand, I do recall seeing battleship moored out by Golete somewhere for a week or so, and recall the mumblings of my jazz composition professor.
bweeed'n ba doo-bop shooooooo bwahd'n-doe.
Pelosi is no nuttier than her leftist compatriots, all of whom would rather see the United States become a Third World country rather than risk the demise of a dolphin or a cormorant. SHE can always go hide in her mansion.
Another link to your blog...oh joy.
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