Eureka To Oppose Offshore Oil Drilling, Ban Its Support Facilities

Matt Simmons of the Environmental Protection Information Center

The Eureka City Council’s quest to ban “offshore oil support facilities” will begin with a resolution opposing offshore oil drilling and continue with changes to the city’s coastal zoning.

A simpler means – passing an ordinance enacting the ban – was deemed to be bureaucratically undoable when it was discussed at the May 5 council meeting.

City Manager Miles Slattery said a sample ordinance from Stanford Law School offered to municipalities as a “template” for such bans won’t work in Eureka.

He told councilmemnbers “trying to use that as a way of preventing onshore support facilities for offshore drilling” would be “an onerous project.”

That’s because the city’s Local Coastal Plan (LCP) allows coastal-dependent industrial facilities by right and that will have to be modified for the ban to be doable.

The LCP change is the preferred alternative to an ordinance and there was also support for it during a public comment period.

A mantra of the Trump administration is “drill, baby, drill” and federal waters off California’s coast are being eyed for it, a development noted by Matt Simmons, the climate attorney at the Environmental Protection Information Center.

“The fact that there’s this big federal push now to restart offshore oil drilling off the coast of California, starting south of us but including northern California, is truly terrifying,” he said.

Resolutions opposing offshore drilling, including those passed by the county and Arcata, are part of an opposition movement and Simmons said “part of the strategy here is to have communities up and down the entire state and into Oregon and Washington all say together jointly that the entire West Coast doesn’t want this.”

Jen Kalt of Humboldt Waterkeeper

Jen Kalt of Humboldt Waterkeeper said her group “recently learned there’s a deposit off our coast that is one of the only ones in the lower 48 and the USGS (the federal U.S. Geological Survey) recently did a survey out there so it is really a concern.”

She added, “We as voters can’t control what happens in the federal offshore lease areas but what you do have control over is those onshore support facilities within the city of Eureka.”

Acknowledging his focus on “the other end of the oil supply chain and the need to reduce our dependence on fossil fuel transportation,” Colin Fiske of the Coalition for Responsible Transportation Priorities said doing so is “important because the entire supply chain is dirty and harmful [to] health and the climate.”

Councilmembers are on board with the effort to resist federal moves on California’s offshore areas.

“If there are other ways we can be proactive, let’s continue to think about them,” said Councilmember Leslie Castellano. “We definitely want to make sure that we are at the head of this potential threat.”

Councilmember Kati Moulton described a Jan. 18 town hall meeting convened by Congressman Jared Huffman that drew a “standing room only” audience showing “widespread opposition to offshore drilling in general and especially here on our pristine north coast.”

Moulton related that she once lived on “the Gulf Coast side of Houston, Texas, where there are offshore drilling rigs dotting the horizon, everywhere you can look” and “the pollution that they produce makes the beaches there gross.”

As recommended by staff, the council directed the support facilities ban be part of the LCP update, which will include review by the city’s Planning Commission.

The ban will become law when the LCP is certified by the state’s Coastal Commission.

Also included in the council’s direction to staff is development of a resolution expressing the city’s opposition to onshore support facilities.