NATURAL RESOURCE DAMAGE Public Issues Group October 27, 1990 10:00 AM

NATURAL RESOURCE DAMAGE

Public Issues Group

October 27, 1990 10:00 AM

RM: As you can see, my name is Robert, and this is Stanley, and I'm going to conduct the focus group today, and Stanley's going to help me out. My full name is Robert Mitchell and I teach at

Clark University in Worster, Massachusetts. I and Stanley and a group of other social scientists are conducting a study for the state of California on what kind of priorities people place on oil spills, aspects of oil spills, what the state should do about oil spills. This is the topic of the group. So now you know. The suspense is over. Now this is a topic that you need now have any special knowledge about. You've been chosen because you're representative of ordinary people, and that's exactly who we want to talk to. So if you feel you don't have a lot of knowledge about oil spills or whatever, terrific. I just want your frank opinions. In the things that we talk about, there are no right or wrong answers, and so I hope you'll feel free to speak frankly. The discussion will be tape recorded, so I can listen to it later and kind of think about it and see where I could have asked better questions, and things like that. Your full names will not be associated in any way with the material that's discussed here, and your anonymity is guaranteed. Because we're tape recording, it's important that only one person speak at a time, because if you've ever listened to a group discussion, people get excited and they all start talking and it's really difficult to hear. So if you would keep that in mind, or if you see me waving my arms, just try and calm down and we'll give everybody a chance to talk as they wish. The final thing is

I'm going to have you write things down periodically during the group, and it would be very helpful if on each thing that you write that you would put an I.D. number I'm going to give you on the page, and perhaps we could begin by just putting a number on the right hand corner of that page, and we'll start with Lynn. Lynn will be number 1, Frank will be number 2, Elsa will be 3, Bud 4, Judy 5, Ken 6,

Carol 7, Sebastian 8, Renee 9, and David 10. All right. I'd like to begin by having you write down a list of all the oil spills, if any, that you can remember that occurred in California. And leave a space like that between it, if you can think of more than one, leave a space like that between, and kind of give whatever description of the oil spill, if you remember the name or where it happened, or the ship that was involved, or anything like that, and if you can't remember any oil spills in California, then that's the

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way it is. Okay, now for each of the spills that you happened to think about, under that spill, write down what you can remember, if anything, about the consequences of the spill. What did the spill cause if anything, if you can remember.

MAN: Can I ask a question? I'm not sure just where the spill was. I know it was on the beach, but I don't think it was Long Beach, but I think it was one beach down below Long Beach, and

I can't remember the name of it.

RM: So why don't you put "spill near Long Beach." And then I'll know that's the best information you have, and then if you could indicate what you remember if anything about the consequences of that spill.

MAN: So we don't have know the ship or the oil thing.

RM: Whatever you remember that would help to identify the spill. (Pause) Then if you'd go back to each of the spills you've listed, and describe as best as you can what the source of the spill was.

Was it a tanker that leaked, was it a pipe that broke by a refinery, was it an oil platform out in the ocean that had a problem, if you remember or have any idea, just write down your best memory about that particular spill. And the last thing, if you have more than one spill, if you would rank them in the order of how serious they were. Put a one by the spill you think that was most serious, and a two by the one you think was the next most serious, etc. (Pause) Okay. How does California fare amongst the other parts of the country in terms of oil spills. Do you think they are worse here, better here, do you have any idea how serious they care compared with other parts?

KEN: Well, what I've seen of them, we seem to have a better handle on keeping an eye on the oil companies than some other (inaudible), so as a result I think they're watched a lot closer, so I don't think we get as bad as we did back in the 70's.

RM: Other people agree or disagree?

WOMAN: Agree.

RM: Why?

WOMAN: Because I think they do watch them.

RM: What other spills have you heard about in other parts of the country?


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WOMAN: First the one in Alaska.

WOMAN: Galveston, the two in Galveston.

WOMAN: Californian's are so conscious of their precious beach area that they really do keep a closer eye on things and having been born and raised in southern California, I feel really silly that I can remember Alaska. You know, ask me about the Exxon and Prince William Sound and all of that business, but specific about California, it just fades in and out of consciousness - luckily. I think if something happened bad enough in California, it would stick out in my mind, but I think we've kept an eye on things pretty closely.

RM: So you really haven't experienced a bad spill.

MAN: I wouldn't say that. Santa Barbara was really bad.

WOMAN: How long ago was that?

MAN: It's got to have been 20 years, 25 years.

WOMAN: That's why I don't remember that.

RM: I think that one was in 1969.

MAN: But that was an example of not being prepared for it. I think since that there was an acute awareness that came about because of that spill, and I don't think it's still subsided in Santa

Barbara. I used to live up there.

RM: Oh really.

MAN: I know that people still hate Union 76 up there. I know that it lingers a long time.

RM: Bud, what was the spill that you ... tell us about the spill that you ...

BUD: The one that I was thinking about was the one that they had up around L.A. and the tanker was ruptured somehow. I think it was when it was dumping the oil into one of the coast hookups where they pump the oil into the area, and fortunate, they didn't spill that much, and the clean-up was pretty good. In fact, she said the people are conscious of their beaches and all the people in that area were out on their own cleaning up the beach and everything else. I mean it was like a really, just everybody pitched in, like they did in San Francisco when they had the earthquake.

RM: How many of you have ... how long ago was that, Bud?


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BUD: I don't know.

WOMAN: Was it in Huntington Beach?

BUD: I couldn't remember, but it was in that area up there. That whole area is nothing but oil wells on the beach there, not right on the beach, but ... they just go all the way up the coast, all the way up to Santa Barbara. That whole coast is covered with oil wells.

RENEE: I think it doesn't have a lot to do with that we're safer here, I think people don't care unless it's something bid. Because I remember when we were little, I was raised in L.A. too and I remember when we were young and we would go to the beach, and you would walk on the sand at the beaches there and you would get oil on your feet. Patches of oil in the sand, and that's as far as I could remember, and nobody ever said, oh this is an oil spill, but apparently it was thinking back now that why was there was oil on the beach in the sand. If it's not something major that is news worthy, how much oil has leaked into the oceans now like that on the sand and getting oil on your feet from walking in the sand. I think it's a problem and no matter what size of the problem, hopefully we never have here in San Diego a Santa Barbara or a Huntington Beach, but it is there. You walk on the beaches here and a lot of times there's oil in the sand.

MAN: Of course, it's a natural occurrence too.

MAN: Sure, it seeps.

MAN: It seeps from the ocean floor.

RM: Sebastian, did you hear about Huntington Beach spill.

SEBASTIAN: Yeah, it's the same one I wrote down.

FRANK: Yeah, the Santa Barbara. That doesn't seem it was so long ago. I kind of mixed that one with the Huntington Beach one. I remember T.V. and so forth, and kind of lumped them together, yeah, very much so.

RM: And what were the effects -- as you know, I'm not from California, so I can kind of plead ignorance -- what were the effects of the Huntington Beach spill. David, is that one you heard of too.

DAVID: Yeah. Well, mostly the one that you'd obviously would see would be just the seagulls and the dead fish, washing up. But the things you don't see is killing the kelp beds. Down in


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Huntington Beach, there's some nice diving parks there. You've got Balboa Coast which is really nice for diving, so of course, that's the things you don't see, but some of the obvious stuff of course what washes up on the beach.

RM: Other effects that you've heard about?

WOMAN: Beaches closed.

RM: How long were the beaches closed?

WOMAN: Probably about a couple weeks.

KEN: I just thought the thing that was so impressive about that specific tanker that went aground was the reaction on the shore. I mean they were hiring people that day to set up shop, were issuing people containers and clean up gear and uniforms. It was like it had been a planned attack by the military the way they moved in on the thing. It turned out to not be as bad a spill as they'd originally thought, but the action plan was excellent. In fact I was really impressed. We did have off San Diego.

It was about 50 miles out with the Exxon Valdez when it started seeping.

WOMAN: I saw the pictures of that and I just blocked it out.

RM: Let me shift gears a little bit and pick out something that Ken talked about because as you're aware, this state has regulations that govern tankers and the movement of oil, and it has plans to take action after a spill happens, and Ken was mentioning that at the Huntington Beach situation, but it is also possible for the state to take actions that would prevent damage from a spill from happening.

After the fact, of course, the spills are cleaned up and the state makes the parties responsible for the spill to pay for the clean-up however it is and restoring the natural resources, the beaches, and so forth.

But it would be possible a type of program that would prevent the impact from spills or reduce the impact from spills, and this program would involve stockpiling spill control equipment, such as boons.

Are you familiar with boons? These are kind of balloon like things with a trailing edge that goes into the water, and they're floated in the water, and the oil is prevented from spreading by the boon, and there are skimmers which devices that in such vacuum up the oil from the water and then shoot it by a hose into a storage ship that takes it and separates the oil from the oil and then the oil is recovered. But this prevents the oil from washing up on shore or sitting in the water and killing birds and things like that.


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Then, of course, you need crews to maintain the equipment, to manage the equipment, to be full time on call, so they could go to the site of the spill very quickly and keep it from spreading, and once it begins to spread, then it really gets out of hand and then you have the damages. Obviously this would not be a cheap enterprise, and what I'm interested in is the types of spills or the types of harms that, if any, that you think would be important enough that the state should spend money to prevent them from happening, even though after they happen, they can usually be cleaned up and taken care of. Ken?

KEN: I don't think that's the state's responsibility. I think the state should oversee oil companies doing it themselves. I think that's what the Exxon Valdez in Alaska pointed out.

RM: But the state, of course, already requires and Congress has passed a law that tankers will have to have double bottoms and...

KEN: But they haven't proved that that solves anything yet either.

WOMAN: They haven't passed a law about the emergency clean up crew yet. It seems to me just a matter of necessary insurance. I have to have insurance to drive my car. They have to have insurance in case they have a spill.

WOMAN: I think they should pay for having a crew ready at all times, or have a crew with them at all times and they should pay for it instead of the state. If there is going to be a spill, then they could pick it up as soon as it happens and no one would be affected.

RM: Yeah, but if that kind of plan were put into place, it would be a charge to the oil companies that they don't have to face anywhere else, and ...

WOMAN: That's something ... we wouldn't have this problem if it wasn't for the oil companies, and we're not going to take the oil companies from doing what they're doing, so they should be solely responsible for any accident, whether it be in the ocean or ...

RM: They are now.

WOMAN: Yeah, they are now, but you're asking people to say well the state should have more responsibility for them?

RM: See the oil companies have to clean up whatever happens, so that there's no question of they're ... and the state's really all geared up and the lawyers are all there and the regulations are all


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there, so as far as the effects go, from the oil companies' point of view, (a) they say they're abiding by the regulations without any kind of spill, but (b) if they do have a spill, then everything is taken care of.

So the issue is, is it worth something to the people of California to prevent that damage from happening, even though the damage would be cleaned up. It's kind of a different angle to it.

WOMAN: If they're in business, an oil business, they're in business and they should take care of the resources. They're trying to commute from one area to another, and if they really don't want to have an oil spill, because all these millions of dollars and what got lost, why shouldn't they spend that money to keep a crew always available with them, to travel with them at all times.

MAN: Like they do for oil well fires.

RM: Well, as you say, they are responsible for it. They do have to pay, and they take a lot of precautions not to have it happen. I mean, spills are relatively rare. So...

WOMAN: It doesn't sound like it.

MAN: Not lately.

RM: Not all over the country, but I think as you say in California, you're kind of hard pressed.

Even though there's a lot of coast, it's kind of hard pressed to come up with the number of spills we've been seeing.

MAN: You turn around, there's so many things you bump into off our coast...

RM: But I understand your reaction ...

WOMAN: What are you asking -- whether or not they should provide or we should help fund it?

RM: No, what I want to talk about is what kind of spills would be really important to prevent the damage from.

WOMAN: All of them.

MAN: I've got a question there, because you keep saying prevent. If you're going to prevent an oil spill, there should be a stopping of oil across the water, but as a contingency plan, in the event of a spill, is what you seem to be talking about. Right?

RM: That's right.


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MAN: That's not really a prevention.

RM: It's to prevent the damage from the spill. So a spill occurs, but then you put the boomer out and you suck the stuff up. It's to clean it up before it sits around in the water or before it hits the beaches or it causes other things. And really to prevent any kind of damages, just to switch from oil to something else, but as a country... although the recent increase in prices will ...

WOMAN: I was going to say, it's a bad time to elicit spending for whatever their predicament may be.

RM: But what the state's interested in is, there are many different kinds of spills and spills cause all different kinds of damage, and the more you cover ... you prevent damage from the full range of spills, the more expensive it is. On the other hand, some spills cause more damage than others, and they cause different types of damage, so the question is, what are people really concerned about. What types of damage would be really important to prevent, even if it costs money.

KEN: I think what all the recent oil spills have pointed out is the lack of machinery available in any specific point. For example, let's say in Los Angeles to have a central point where they have all the fire fighting equipment and all the booms and all the rest of the material that can get to either end of the state quickly. Because I think in Alaska, it took two and a half weeks for them to get the materials up there to do anything about it. Same thing in Galveston, they had to bring in a fire boat around from up north somewhere to put the fire out, so the stupid tankers leaking oil the entire time that they can't get fire fighting equipment. So I think that having centralized ability to handle a major spill, because most of these spills are minor with the exception of Santa Barbara, and Santa Barbara they were totally unprepared. In fact that was almost the hallmark for clean-up.

RM: What I'm not concerned about it is the mechanics of it, because ...

KEN: Well, that comes under what can be destroyed. You can destroy the entire marine environment. I mean, where do you draw the line.

RM: What I'm interested in is your distinction between major and minor.

KEN: I would say a major spill is one you can't control. Something to the extent to the Exxon

Valdez. I think the Huntington Beach or Long Beach tanker aground was an excellent example of


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being ready, but now we don't know how major a spill that might have been. Was that adequate? It was adequate for that spill, but was it adequate for something that say two tankers collide trying to get into Long Beach harbor, and both of them are leaking fuel. Is that enough to ... are we prepared to handle that? I'd say that that would be considered a major spill. An offshore rig blowing up would be a major spill.

RM: I see what you mean. See, you're thinking of volume of oil whereas in fact with

Huntington Beach, a system could have been set up that would have prevented that oil from hitting that shore.

KEN: The navigator of the boat could have learned to read a chart too, and he wouldn't have gone aground.

RM: After the fact, we can always ...

KEN: Ran over his own anchor on top of it.

RM: Oh, sure. And in Alaska, the captain was ... and on you go. But unfortunately, these things do tend to happen even when companies have enormous financial incentives not to have them happen, so this is kind of a contingency plan, even though you put as much pressure as you can to prevent them from happening, to prevent the oil from causing the kind of damage that occurred at

Huntington Beach or wherever it would cause. Let's see if we can focus on damage or harm or consequences of a spill. What kind of categories of harm did you come up with when you listed what the consequences of your spills were?

LYNN: Just closing the beach, and then California beaches are big tourist attractions, and then economically that's a big disadvantage as well as people not being able to enjoy the beach environment.

But then you've always got the wildlife, which is totally other category.

RM: What kind of wildlife?

LYNN: Birds.

WOMAN: Fish in the ocean. The seals. Everything.

MAN: Sea mammals.

RM: Any other categories?


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WOMAN: And how do you know what a small amount of oil would damage plants in the ocean or animals.

RM: Okay, but let's keep our eyes on damage if you can, the harm caused by spills.

Sometimes you can dump a lot of this stuff. But it depends on where you dump it, the time of year, what the breeding cycle of the birds are, which direction the currents are going, things like that. A lot of oil and not so much damage. Sometimes you can have a little oil and for some reason it causes you know much more damage. And you really want to prevent that damage. That would be, if you prevent any damage, that would be important.

CAROL: To me it all revolves around the animal life, the ecosystem that gets interrupted when you wipe out all those shiny black fish or those shiny black otters and birds, interrupting the chain of life.

It just, to me, that's more major because of the full impact of it that we never see.

RM: So, I don't think I quite understand. What do you mean the full impact that we don't see.

CAROL: How the chain of life is interrupted and we see the effects of what washes up on the shore for a short time, but then we don't see the ones who got away and somehow ... or didn't get away and it affects animal life elsewhere.

RM: Judy, what kinds of impacts of spills did you write down?

JUDY: I came up with what basically what has already been said, the animal damage, the marine life, tourism, how it affects...

RM: Which animals?

JUDY: Marine life, birds, plant life, all of those. And I think that all of those are important enough to us that California as a whole should have some kind of preventative system. I know that the debate who's going to pay for it -- I think that we have enough unnecessary things going out there, and this is a necessary item. I think that sooner or later it can be charged back. Yeah, it's a long process.

MAN: We're going to pay for it anyway, even if the oil companies...

JUDY: Well, you know, I think that the environment, and our future, and our children's future is important enough to pay for it.

RM: Let me read you a brief description of a particular spill that happened recently that


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probably wasn't in the newspapers down here, but that'll just give us a little more specific profile of the impact that a spill could have. This particular spill occurred in the summer in the Monterey peninsula, where some oil washed up on a rocky shore in a state park. Two birds who were recovered that were killed by the oil and biologists undertook a search to determine were there any other birds that had been killed by the oil, and the best that they could be determined, there were no other birds that were killed. And within a week after the spill, the oil had been cleaned up and all the damages to the natural resources had been restored. In other words, there was no harm from the spill that lasted more than a week in this particular case. Obviously, you can see this is a minimal kind of impact. And so, the question is what priority should the state place on preventing this type of damage. How big a concern is this particular type of spill?

WOMAN: When you say restored, do you mean restored 100% to the way it was before, like you could go there and never know that it even happened. That it didn't affect it at all.

RM: Yeah, you can get the oil off the rocks and clean up in-between the rocks and basically after a week, you wouldn't have known that the spill had occurred.

MAN: The soap bubbles washed away too. I don't believe that's possible.

WOMAN: I don't either.

MAN: You can't have something like that...

WOMAN: Visually...

MAN: Yeah, it'll look fine. But there's no way that they could have gotten every particle of oil out of the water, and it never happened.

WOMAN; It would have seeped into the ground, and who's to say that's not going to come back up years later. I just don't believe that you can go 100% like it never happened.

RM: So how long do you believe there would be a discernable impact from that.

WOMAN: Do we know? Will our children know?

WOMAN: I said, who else is a rocket scientist on Saturday morning.

WOMAN: What about our children's children. What about 100 years from now, and they all go, well look at these pools, look at what they did to our planet.


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WOMAN: And who is saying that we restored this place to how it used to be -- the oil companies, the state?

RM: These are state scientists.

WOMAN: That have an interest or some kind of ...

RM: Their job is to assess the impact the spills because then after assessing the impact the state uses the information to make the company pay, so there's every incentive on the part of the scientist to identify as much damage as possible so the state can stick it to the oil company.

WOMAN: I wonder if they do that. I wonder if they just go and they look, and like we say at the surface, and say oh yeah that looks like it did last week.

RM: They take as thorough search as can stand up in court. So a scientist can say, by my professional analysis, there's this, this and this damage and was caused by.

WOMAN: But we really don't know though ... but we couldn't say or they honestly couldn't say what affect that would have years and years on down the road. Maybe some fish aren't going to come back, or something that was there before won't came back because of that.

RM: Maybe the sun won't come up.

MAN: How do you know there was only two birds?

RM: Because they've made that assessment and they know where the birds would be likely to turn up. Could be like what they experienced with other spills and other situations.

MAN: Could be like Alaska, that over a year later there's 200 birds that were killed just last month thanks to the scientists, shooting and dipping of the oil, throwing it in the water. That's a lot more serious than the one off Monterey Bay. I don't know how you prevent that.

WOMAN: I think it should be very, very important that they check into that because you have to start. And it would be better to start there, at real minor incidents.

RM: Yes, now if you control the minor incidents, you would have an enormously expensive state program because you'd have to station all this equipment and crews in many, many different places. Whereas for larger spills, there are certain areas and with larger kinds of impacts, you know where the ships come. And this particular area was kind of a fluke that this oil got released. Normally,


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there simply isn't tanker traffic in that area.

MAN: Don't I understand that the Coast Guard has that responsibility, for protection of the shores, that they have clean-up capability and that's federal.

RM: Yes, but the federal government, I think as you know, is not going to expand its program...

MAN: Yeah, but they're the unit of first response. That's why I'm wondering where the state comes in after that.

RM: Oh, the state can undertake this program, no problem. The feds would be delighted to have the state... If the state wants to do it, then fine. But for some reason...

MAN: But in every instance, so when an oil spill first occurs, the first people on the scene are always the Coast Guard. RM: Yeah. But this plan would ...

MAN: You're talking about having people stationed all up and down the state, what I'm saying is that they're already there.

RM: Well, there are some Coast Guard people there, but they're not stationed in this kind of area. Just as the people you saw cleaning up at Huntington Beach weren't Coast Guard people, they were state employees.

MAN: But the people who put the boom around the tanker were...

RM: This would be coordinated with the Coast Guard. Judy, you were going to say something?

JUDY: I was going to say that I wouldn't want to gamble my planet and my environment on some idiotic fluke. I mean, weren't they all idiotic flukes. All these oil spills.

RM: Oh, sure. It's a probability thing.

JUDY: And I also wouldn't want to gamble on some educated guess of the scientists, and that's basically what they are. Educated guesses as to what the long term effects... and when I say the long term effects, 100 or 200 years from now. Those are things that they cannot determine. They are just guesses.

RM: So, as far as you're concerned then, the state should not make any distinction among size


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of impacts.

JUDY: No I don't think they should make any distinction at all. And I know that there's always going to be the controversy of who pays for it. But... who's going to pay for it in the long run.

Is that something that we can gamble on? Our future is going to pay for it.

WOMAN: And at the same time, by saying who can afford to take chances, we would also come off as ... I'm hearing the other side going they're a bunch of bleeding heart liberals that ... you know, you can't do everything at the same time, and that worries me too. Because there's always people on the other side of the fence that are going to say, let's take the chance it won't happen. And it will.

RM: Okay. Some oil spills occur and the oil floats out in the water, and the impact from those spills are birds that get killed, but basically it doesn't affect the beaches at all. And in devising some kind of ... let me say this, it is impossible for the state to protect the whole area, so the discussion isn't really very helpful if we can't make distinctions. If I'm going to back and tell the state, well you've got to prevent any kind of damage from any spill and the bill would be several billion dollars. Well, would you folks pay a large increase in your taxes for that? Is it that important to you?

MAN: No, but how can you prevent something that is 10,000 miles long and you can't prevent accidents from happening. But you have to have is response.

RM: Oh, exactly. And the question is where do you locate the response and how do you design the response, to how large a spill do you target your response to intercept.

WOMAN: They can be there within hours, then just put sections throughout the coast that they would cover a certain perimeter for hours instead of days.

RM: But hours is too late for some kinds of impacts.

WOMAN: But you're saying in some cases that it's a minor thing, or in some areas it won't have any impact.

RM: What I'm saying is the impacts vary. They vary in terms of beaches being hit or not.

They vary in terms of the amount of birds that get hurt or don't get hurt. They vary in terms of the particular type of natural system that gets hurt or doesn't, and then the tanker traffic is heavy in some


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areas, and not in other areas. Some areas are industrial; some aren't industrial. Some remote areas there would be very little chance of a spill, but it could happen. Should we protect those, even though the spill would be relatively small in those kinds of areas. So it's all kinds of decisions to make, and while I understand your desire to protect everything, it's difficult to get a sense of what's really important if you're saying everything's important. Cause if everything's important, nothing's important, because this can't be done.

MAN: Well, it's got to be the beaches long term. I mean, that's really what it comes down to.

The beaches take the hit the worst.

RM: Which beaches?

MAN: The swimming beaches, I guess. The beaches directly opposite the spill. Santa

Barbara took two years to clean up the beaches. The birds quit dying in about 3 months. So the long term affect was considerably stronger on the beaches. But you can't prevent that. You can't prevent the spill from happening. So all you can do is respond to it, and there's disaster preparedness plans throughout California for everything else. Surely there must be one for oil spills where they can come from a central point.

RM: The oil spill responses are totally inadequate to really prevent the kinds of damages that we saw from Huntington Beach. The issue is, is it important to do better than the state has done.

MAN: The only way to prevent it is to change the tide, so that the tides are always going out when the spill happens.

RM: The way to prevent it is to have response equipment to help as quickly as possible. The quicker it comes, the quicker you get the booms out, the quicker you get the skimmers out, and they take quite a while to come out as it stands now. Then you suck up the oil, and you don't have the impacts. That's a very expensive process. It can be done. The question is should it be done. Or should we continue as we have or should it be done to prevent really large impacts. And it's possible to determine where the large impacts are likely to occur, and to position the equipment for that, or should it be spread more generally to cover other kinds of events. Does it matter to do spills off the coast that only affect birds but not beaches, does that matter. How important is that relative to the beaches. So


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Ken's saying that the beaches are the top priority. If we're going to prevent oil from having an effect, we should place the greatest emphasis on the beaches. Would the rest of you agree with that?

BUD: Well, in the sense yes, but what about all the marine life. So the spill doesn't get to the beaches, but it still kills all the marine life. That's part of what we live and breathe, as well as the beaches.

KEN: But you can't keep the birds from landing ...

BUD: That's true, I understand that, but I'm saying it's like more or less, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. It's like a catch 22.

RM: Well, the quicker it's cleaned up...

BUD: I understand that, but I sit here and listen to everybody, and I still say, we're not working at the cause. We're doing an effect thing. The cause is the oil companies don't keep their ships in proper working order, and they're too damn big for what they're doing. You know, the size of those things now are 10 times what they used to be, and you can't turn them and you can't stop them, and they don't navigate good, with all their good navigation, they still have problems with them.

RM: And as I say, they have problems and then they pay for the clean up. So the question is, is it worth it to prevent damage from these accidents -- that's the question.

BUD: Well, you've got to prevent it. Do you whatever you...

MAN: Minimize it.... we haven't done it for a long time.

RM: You know the state has a lot of other things to do with its money, so the question is, are there certain kinds of impacts that would really be important to prevent, like the spill that I mentioned.

In spill terms, this is small potatoes. Let me tell you about another spill that happened. This particular one, and this is an actual spill. It happened 6 or 7 years ago. A refinery in the northern part of San

Francisco Bay had a leak. The oil spread to a marsh adjacent to the refinery, and then eventually before they could contain it, the oil spread from the marsh into San Francisco Bay to a certain area.

100 acres of marsh land were covered by the oil, and it took the marshlands 3-5 years before it was back to its normal kind of productivity. 500 birds were oiled; 300 birds were cleaned; and 200 birds died in the effort after the fact to handle the effect of the spill. How much priority should this kind of


16

spill get in any kind of scheme. Is this something that should receive particularly high priority.

MAN: How much blood can you afford to lose. If you're bleeding, you stop it. I agree with what she said about it doesn't matter how big the spill is, it's still equally important. It's the response to the spill that's the problem.

WOMAN: Because a small spill, you're not going to use the dollars to clean up as you would a large spill, so I don't understand the difference. If it's a spill, it's a spill.

WOMAN: Dollar-wise, you're talking about dollars. It doesn't cost, I mean, how much did it cost them to clean up the Monterey one and how much did it cost to clean up Santa Barbara or

Huntington Beach or like that.

RM: The Monterey was, of course, much less to clean up than the San Francisco Bay one.

But the issue was to have the response equipment available and ready to come quickly enough to prevent the oil from coming ashore in Monterey or to handle the spill at this oil refinery, so it didn't seep into the marsh, is very costly. That's what we're talking about. Preventing this damage from happening, not recovering after the fact. One strategy, of course, would be to locate a large spill capability in areas where there are oil refineries and adjacent to marshes and places like that. And if the state had limited money, maybe that's the first priority that should be taken. Since you can't locate them everywhere.

MAN: Hasn't that happen already? Don't they have ...

RM: Sorry. Damaged 100 acres of marsh and it spread into the thing and it zapped 500 birds of which 200 died. That's what we talk to you about preventing.

MAN: Is that a question of money or is that a question of planning. I mean, if there's no plan, it doesn't have anything to do with bodies or materials.

RM: But planning costs money.

WOMAN: So you're asking us ...

RM: And to have the equipment available. See a plan involves figuring out the contingencies, what we want to protect, how can we best protect it, what equipment do we have to have, what response time should we have. Now you can have a response time of 10 minutes, then you have to have equipment every 50 yards along the shore. That's pretty intense. Or you can have a response


17

time of within an hour, maybe "x" number of birds or 5 acres of marsh (inaudible), but you could have a very great degree of assurance that you wouldn't affect more than 5 acres of marsh. But maybe no acre of marsh is enough, and then as I say, you have an infinite and the cost becomes infinite. So that the whole issue is how can you design the thing so that it protects what needs to be protected, what's worth to be protected, what are the highest priorities, and that's why I was asking about beach vs.

wildlife. If beach is a high priority, then the plan would be focused on a particular way. If wildlife is the highest priority, then another way. If there's some combination, if beyond a certain point, wildlife would be important, say a certain number of birds or rough quarter of magnitude, again the plan could be designed to do the vest best it could possibly can to prevent those kills or prevent that beach from being affected.

CAROL: It seems to me that you can put your contingency plans as well for the boats that are moving, and you've always got ... well, maybe it will happen here, but the refinery is stationery. It's inexcusable that that got as far as it did, that that damage got as far as it did. That refinery is there, they're handling that much oil, accidents will happen. Have a major clean up thing right there. Two to three years for recovery back to natural is inexcusable. That should have been just there ready to happen.

WOMAN: If it's just there, they should have prevented it. Why should the state put out money to clean up something that they could have prevented. Even if they knew that this spill is happening within minutes or at least within an hour, they could have stopped it.

MAN: Shut down the plant.

WOMAN: Yeah.

MAN: This sounds like the horse was already out of the barn before they ever made any attempt to do anything. They must have state inspectors that go around and check these ...

RM: If they didn't, you would see a lot more of this.

MAN: Right, but I'm saying, you know ...

WOMAN: Didn't they have a crew there?

RM: I don't these particular details. As I say, what interests me is not ... is in trying to


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understand what kinds of effects you think the state should pay the greatest emphasis.

JUDY: I don't think it makes any difference where the blame is after the damage has been done, and I think that a contingency plan can be built on several different levels. It's the same as, and this may sound really simplistic, but a forest fire. We want to save our forests. Oh, wow, that's a little mountain, we can let that burn. They have different degrees of equipment and manpower that they bring in depending on the type of damage or the type of emergency that's going on, and I believe that the clean-up for oil spills can be the same. I don't think to pick, well, which degree we're going to address because of the dollar amount, and I think the oil companies can be charged back for some of this expense. I think there are a lot of different ways that can be worked without the taxpayers taking the entire bulk of the problem in their money pocket.

MAN: I think Huntington Beach again was an example of a small crew of experts who evidently had a plan and knew exactly what they wanted, and hired people on the beach. I mean they didn't have to have 50,000 people ... the base of the people doing the work was already living there, and people were perfectly willing to do it, and they came in with a small group, organized it, and took off. I think that's a prime example of how that should work.

WOMAN: And no matter where you are, if you have beaches, you can be guaranteed that this is going to happen again. We can't go through going well ... it might happen, it might now. It's going to happen and it's going to happen to the beach areas all around the United States and the world. And maybe it should be more than just a state responsibility. Maybe there's some federal help there.

RM: We're talking about California here. Does it matter and since a beach can be cleaned up, as Ken said, and it's done very effectively, should the state spend money to and since beaches get hit every now and then but it's not every week or it's not ... you can get years go by before a particular area suffers from an effect, are you possibly saying that it's better just to leave it and let the company pay for the clean up and the beach is closed for awhile.

WOMAN: I think they should be responsible. I don't think the state should be responsible for having equipment or having a crew just in case something might happen. I know it has to be cleaned up and there's going to be damage, if in fact there ever is a major oil spill or any kind of oil spill, but I think


19

why is the state doing that. Why is the state trying to figure out a way when the state should tell the oil companies, look you have a refinery here and this much damage could possible be done like in San

Francisco. They should have a crew ready and able to move within hours or minutes, however much time it takes. But that should be their responsibility. Because they're the ones who are doing it. They are the ones who might have the accident. I don't believe the state should have to come up with an alternative program to take on a responsibility that the oil companies should have -- whether it be a big spill or a small spill. The oil companies should have that responsibility, and the state should tell them. I know they do tell them, but I think they should be more responsible for what they do, and that includes having a quick response time to whatever kind of spill they have. They should be solely responsible for that.

RM: Would everyone agree for the refinery case, that it doesn't make any sense for the state to develop its own program for preventing the damage from occurring, a quick response program, that this should be only the responsibility of the refinery.

MAN: Could you restate that...

RENEE: We can have our rules or regulations, but very strict regulations. I mean you can't just say, oh well, you can go ahead and damage 500 ... kill 500 birds or damage 500 acres of our beach here, but you're not going to get in trouble for that, but if you do anything over that, you're in real trouble. And to show that the fines that oil companies have had to pay, you just look at that ... what kind of fines is that. It costs more to clean that stuff up than they are charged in a fine.

RM: I think Renee, you're truly don't understand what I said before. In truth, the companies have to pay for all aspects of the clean up and it costs a lot of money, at least millions of dollars.

RENEE: I know they do.

RM: So if damage occurs, the companies pay. It's a lot of money, and yet accidents do happen. So somehow they pay it. Just like nuclear energy. What company would want to spend $2 billion of its own money if it has a nuclear accident, and yet in Pennsylvania with the 3-Mile Island accident, a company did it. So those things happen. It's a lot of money for a company and yet it's not enough. That doesn't prevent the damage.


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MAN: But we've got so many scientists here, can't somebody come up with a plan to say, okay if this oil well blows up, this is where the oil's going to go, this is how long it's going to take to get there, here's your plan. This is what we expect to have on that rig, and here's what we expect to have on shore from that refinery or from that oil company, and here's the plan, this is how you're going to do that, now train your people and do it. I can't see why the state has to run around with a bunch of fire fighters, that just doesn't make good sense.

MAN: Who were the people that cleaned up the thing in Huntington Beach. You were telling that there were just a few people that encompassed everybody around...

MAN: I think it was a professional clean-up company, if I remember right. It's their business, and it may have been headquartered there for all I know.

MAN: If that's the case, if it was a professional company, why wouldn't more of those be in the business.

RM: Well, you see those are companies that do the clean-up after the fact, and then the bill gets sent to the company ...

(END OF SIDE 1 - TAPE 1)

MAN: ... around the rig, and ...

MAN: But that just physically can't happen, because if you've got an oil drilling platform a half mile or mile off shore, the response time of a boat from shore from the time they're alerted, even if they're prepared and got everything packed on board, their response time is an hour. So you're already an hour dead just right off the bat, if the dang thing goes out and blows every boat in the harbor out on its way out to try and chase the thing, they can't catch it. Physical ability to move through the water isn't there. would ...

RM: Well, the oil spill in Alaska, for example, if the response time had been quick, the spill

MAN: But the spill in Alaska was not so much the speed, well it happened so close off shore, I mean there's no way to have stopped much of it, but the problem there was they didn't have any


21

materials to stop it. I mean they had a boon the equivalent to go around the boat which they were able to do. That was it. They had no protection for the shore, and they had to fly it, in as I recall, from

Seattle and every place else.

RM: The boon is around the ship, but the response comes quickly, which it didn't come. It took lots of hours for it to come, then the oil is contained, then the oil is cleaned up, then you don't have the damage. So the issue is preventing damage.

MAN: So you have to fly the materials in. I mean that's the only way that you can physically get it quickly.

RM: It depends on the area. Some areas, you know, boats can out grade coastal harbors, and other areas you might have to fly or develop plans to do it and have people on call, and so forth.

MAN: But the planning... if you ring a bell, and you've got a bunch of fisherman with boats or whoever, and you ring a bill, and you say, okay we've got an oil spill, quick jump in your boat and go.

I mean your response time's got to be 2 hours. I can't see any physical way to round the people up, get them on their boats, get them out, and get the thing down. And I can't see any way to do it in any less time, just physically impossible. If you've got the materials there. If you don't have the materials, then all you do and say is oh, my God, you know, what can we do. That's all you can do.

RM: Let me ask you about some types of areas to see if you had to rank them in some way, what you'd rank them in terms of the priority that you would place in protecting these areas. We've talked about sandy beaches, of course, and those are the ones that California uses for recreation. I'm going to list some other ones, just so you can have them in mind. These are the types of areas that biologists and others identify. One type is rocky coastline by Monterey and beyond, Big Sur and so forth. Another is tide pools, which occur and you're all familiar with tide pools, so I don't have to describe them. Then there's the offshore islands which is a different kind of area. Then there's coastal marshes. Then there's river mouths and estuaries, and there's certain areas that are designated as wildlife sanctuaries of various kinds or reserves. Then there's harbor areas that are industrialized, where there's docks and ports and so forth. Then there's marinas where people have pleasure boats and they dock and people can go on from there. Thinking about these areas, which kind of areas,


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Lynn, would you place a higher priority on than other areas to keep the oil from affecting them.

LYNN: Well, that's difficult, because they're all pretty... They're all important, every one of them.

WOMAN: The thing of it is, none of us are going to die if we don't get to go play in the water on the sand. The harbor areas, the industrialized areas are not necessarily conducive to wildlife there anyway.

RM: What was that Sebastian?

SEBASTIAN: They're already pretty bad.

RM: Oh, I see.

WOMAN: I would think the ... because of the ecosystem, the rocky areas, and the tide pools, and the marshes, that we don't normally spend that much time tippy toeing around anyway, so that is more conducive to the wildlife and I'd place more importance on those.

MAN: I'd be concerned about the rivers and estuaries, because it takes it from one place to another place, and I think could ... the flowing out. I'd want to control that. That would be my priority.

RM: Dave?

DAVE: Yeah, same. The wildlife, the marshes and estuaries. RM: You'd be especially concerned about areas that have a lot of wildlife.

DAVE: Yeah, especially for people who like the fishing areas. I've got a lot of friends that fish and think of all the areas for clam beds. That San Francisco spill, I think, it hit some commercial clam or muscles or oysters, something like that, that's going to wipe that out for a whole year. We can't even eat the muscles off California anymore.

MAN: Going 20 years on that.

RENEE: I think the marshlands. The rocky areas, also like he says the rivers that probably push it somewhere else.

RM: Judy?

JUDY: They're all neck in neck.

RM: They're all neck in neck. Why?


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JUDY: Because its going to affect animals and people and wildlife and plant life no matter where it is.

RM: Oh really.

JUDY: I believe so. Just to different degrees and I just couldn't sacrifice one for the other.

One life of anything, you know, it's all equally important to me.

RM: David was saying and Renee, I think, some of these areas, there's more wildlife than other areas, like the ...

JUDY: So you're asking to choose which one would I choose, if I had choose between saving one or the other.

RM: Protecting. Which would you protect first. I mean, obviously, you want to protect all of them, but which would have the highest priority.

WOMAN: Which child would you save?

JUDY: That's exactly how I feel. You know, well, let me see. One's a cripple, so he's not going to have a full life anyway, so well... I guess we'll let him go. The wildlife, the river mouth, I suppose if you had to choose.

MAN: I basically agree with Judy, I think they're all of equal importance, because it's going to spread from any of those points. I can't see that you can ... I can just see the tide pool response team.

I think that's kind of idiotic. Tide pools are tiny and if the oil gets in there, it's too late, so there's nothing you can do about that.

RM: It may be particularly important because it could be irreversible in the tide pools.

MAN: Very possible, I'm sure. I would say that it probably is, but I'm not a biologist, so I don't know the importance of the food chain of the tide pool. I think sea urchins and starfish are neat, but how big an impact do they have on our everyday life. That's what I don't know. I don't know that tide pools would be that high on my list, and they're small.

RM: Each one is obviously quite small. So what would be high on your list.

MAN: I think I would have to agree with the river mouths. But the rivers for the most part flow out, so I mean if the spill happens in a river, then do we contain it in the river or let it go out to sea?


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RM: I think here we're thinking more off shore and ... coming in, but as you say .... except insofar as the tidal part of the river would be affected.

MAN: In the immediate mouth of the river, and those are normally marshlands too, so I would think that would have a greater impact.

RM: And that would have higher priority than the swimming beaches?

MAN: Uh-huh.

RM: Elsa?

ELSA: I do believe that I agree with him, because the beach I grew with is in Imperial Beach and I think I've been on that beach a handful of times because it's always closed.

RM: Really, why?

ELSA: Sewage from Mexico seeps into the beaches and the marshlands there are absolutely dead in Imperial Beach. That is the border beach. Right on the Mexican border and the marshlands there are dead. At one time I remember it was just beautiful there, and since I've been growing up there, it's dead. It's absolutely dead.

RM: So you'd be particularly concerned about protecting marshlands elsewhere?

ELSA: Yes. Because there is an environmental problem with the marshlands dying, that there are mosquitoes that breed there. It's really bad and it smells, and you can't go in there. If you end up going in there and come out, you better go to the doctor. Because everything that can live that's bad for you lives there. Bacteria, just terrible stuff. You don't go in there.

RM: Let me pass out a sheet of paper that has the names of a whole bunch of birds on it, and these are birds that actually at one time or another have been affected by oil spills in California. I'll wait til you all get the list and look them over before I tell what I'd like you to do. And you may have heard of some of these types of birds or not. (Miscellaneous comments.) But I'd like you to identify the kinds of birds that you think should receive the most protection. Obviously they all should be protected, but

...

WOMAN: You should have brought pictures, (inaudible).

RM: But I want to go on your present knowledge, so if you don't know much about birds, you


25

may not be able to make a choice at all, and that's fine. But if these birds nest in different areas and protection programs would cover different areas depending on which types of birds aren't particularly important, and none of these birds are endangered. There are all large populations of them, fortunately.

MAN: Brown pelican too? Is that on comeback? It was on the endangered list for a long time. The least tern?

RM: They're not officially endangered at the moment. Why don't you just put a check by any that you're particularly concerned about.

WOMAN: These are not all necessarily ocean dwelling birds?

RM: Some are kind of shore birds, but all of them are coastal birds of one kind or another, either live on islands, off the coast, on the shore here, or they are kind of sea birds, that at some point in their life cycle are in some area of California. As I say, if you can't make any choices, that's fine. Don't feel that you have to. If you'd be sure to put your I.D. number on the page. (Pause) Okay, why don't you pass that sheet, and I'd like to give you a map which should look very familiar to you, this part of the country. And I'd like you to do the following thing. Look the map over, and if you would, identify those three or four particular areas on this coast that you would like to see the most protection. That you would like to have the state and the oil companies be absolutely sure that they don't ... that nothing affects those beaches or areas.

WOMAN: How many places do you want us find?

RM: Three or four.

WOMAN: With an "X" or shaded in?

RM: Just put an "X" by that part of the coast. And again, be sure to put your number on the map.

MAN: I was starting to say that is kind of hard to do.

RM: I'm sorry, how's that?

MAN: Well, everything from Oceanside all the way down is primarily beaches with (inaudible) and everything else.


26

RM: All right, so just put a line connecting, and then put an "X" so there's a stretch where it's essentially the same thing, just kind of indicate that area with an "X".

WOMAN: I'm not into sacrifice.

MAN: Imperial Beach is really, like she said, about sewage. When I first came out here, it wasn't bad. Sure wasn't.

WOMAN: That's what my parents told me.

MAN: Yeah, it was really nice down there.

WOMAN: Until they built that channel.

MAN: Put a big old circle right there. They can spill if they want.

WOMAN: Yeah, really. Take it all and bring it down there. Can't go on the beach anyway.

WOMAN: Oh, it smells all right.

RM: Okay, have you marked your 3 or 4 places. Okay, and then just put a "1" by your top priority. Just put a "1" and circle it.

WOMAN: Wow, we'd better save San Onofre.

RM: Think the oil is going to affect ...

MAN: We're gonna nuke the tanker.

MAN: They won't get in from all the waste from ...

RM: Okay. Where out of curiosity, Frank, what is your number one?

FRANK: There's a lot of people in San Diego County, and I'm sitting here in San Diego, and my number one was from Del Mar south to Imperial Beach.

RM: Okay. Lynn?

LYNN: Number one was off La Jolla and up through Del Mar. Actually the number 2 is Del

Mar, but all that stretch between there is important.

RM: Why is that more important than the area up here?

LYNN: Because there's a lot of people through here. There's a lot of popular beach, tourism, and wildlife.

RM: Elsa?


27

ELSA: Well, my biggest concern is Scripps Ranch, I mean the Scripps Institute which is in La

Jolla/Torrey Pines area and the least would be where Camp Pendleton is. I mean, they destroyed the beach anyway. I guess from Silver Strands all the way up to Del Mar where the marshes are up there as well.

RM: Okay, Bud, what did you have?

BUD: Well, I went from Oceanside all the way down to Imperial Beach, and the reason I did that was because ...

RM: That's a big area.

BUD: Well, it's still the most important area because not only do you have marshes, you have a river coming in, you have the tide pools all up along Del Mar and Solana Beach all through there, you have all kinds of sanctuaries in there. It's not, I mean, it's not just the people, the beaches, I don't go to the beach. So the beach doesn't bother me, but there's a lot more involved and not just for tourism or anything else. There's a lot to be ...

RM: Just out of curiosity, how many of you go to the beach? You've got to go to the beach, you've got a good tan. How many of you are kind of beach, you really like to go to the beach?

WOMAN: Well, I go to Dog's Beach because I have a dog, and where I live, I can't run my dog, so I have to take my dog to run freely and that's at the beach.

RM: But you're on the beach, but you're not sunbathing, you're doing other things, but that's fine. So, Frank and Bud are kind of the exception of this group. And then the rest of you folks are beach people, water people.

WOMAN: We take the kids to the tide pools in Chula Vista. There's a lot of tide pools there and we go there a lot with the kids. And that's real important. And to Scripps, we go to Scripps a lot.

So we go to the beach, but we do ...

RM: What does Scripps have ... Does it have tide pools and stuff too?

WOMAN: Aquarium...

MAN: Scripps Laboratory.

RM: Judy?


28

JUDY: La Jolla down. Well, actually just actually before Del Mar all the way down to

Imperial Beach.

RM: And why?

JUDY: Well because of the Scripps Institute which is really important and it's heavily populated and I live there.

KEN: Actually I picked Point Loma mainly because I think that that is in all probability the point of the most obvious point of a spill. There's a reef at the point. We've already had two ships go aground there, not tankers. But the Navy trucks all their fuel in through there, including their oil supplies, and I think if you're going to protect something, that's the spot to hit because that's the most highly probable port to come into with the tankers. We don't have any offshore drilling.

RM: So you made kind of a strategic decision in that respect. Carol?

CAROL: Same area basically from Del Mar down to the Strand, not necessarily because of the population, but because for me it's because of the geographical innies and outies of the land, and if the stuff spills and gets in there, it's going to be real tough to get it out.

RM: What kinds of things would be affected there?

WOMAN: Mission Bay would die.

CAROL: There's too many, I think, there is ... higher concentration of important wildlife here than up on the straighter coastline, more and more varied wildlife down there.

RM: Sebastian?

SEBASTIAN: Same as here, for the most part. Down past the 68 ...

WOMAN: Silver Strand.

SEBASTIAN: ... and also I think somewhere off Coronado there's another island by Mexico which is some really weird goof up in genes, I guess.

MAN: North and South Coronados.

RM: And that's particularly important to you?

SEBASTIAN: Yes.

RM: Why?


29

MAN: Fishing.

MAN: Fishing.

SEBASTIAN: Fishing. No, not fishing really, just it's a nice place and I live close to there sort of.

RM: Renee?

RENEE: From Del Mar down to Imperial Beach because of the wildlife and all the things like that, up around San Clemente and Dana Point up there. Point Loma over here. I think it's really important.

RM: Why?

RENEE: Because it's a lot of traffic there.

RM: Traffic?

RENEE: You know, Ken said. Ships coming and going.

RM: Oh, I see, yes.

RENEE: So I think that's real ... should be watched.

RM: David?

DAVID: I'd say from the Laquitos Lagoon up in Leucadia along to Dana Point.

RM: And why do you think this area is particularly important.

DAVID: You've got a lot of rivers, marshes, and the beaches there are state beaches. I would say, I wouldn't not concerned, but put at a lower priority the sand line along San Onofre, because if they ever had a spill there and tar hits the sand, you can go ahead and within a week, you know, birds are going to die, and the fish ... but actual environmental impact, and they've got ... you can overturn the sand like within a week. It's like almost gone. But anything like with rocks or state parks, you know, that's got to be watched.

RM: So they ... Ken?

KEN: Well, I had a thought, and if I'm not mistaken, the only place that crude oil is off loaded in San Diego County is off Encinitas. I had totally forgotten about that, but that's SDG&E's only off point. I think that's the only place where crude oil is pumped into the water or under the water and up


30

to land. So, you know, I would have to suddenly think that maybe is a real high priority area too.

RM: Okay. What about the rest of California? (Miscellaneous comments, laughing) I see.

Let me pitch out a California map, actually, and let's pursue this matter a little more.

WOMAN: Can we turn back our other maps?

RM: You got your numbers on them. Very good. Pop your numbers on the California map if you would.

MAN: Like in areas, you want to know one, two, three.

MAN: What's the circle for?

RM: We stole this map from something, and for some reason focused on that area. Then we wiped out all the other stuff. We needed a map of California. So not thinking about the area from San

Diego up to just below that circle, let's say, but taking from that circle above, would you indicate ...

which is easier to just get a sense of areas that you would place a lower priority on or areas that you would place a high priority on. Which would be easier for you to do?

MAN: Higher probably.

RM: If you picked 3 or 4 spots and you know more about the coastline and what its like and where people live and so forth, but if you'd do the same as you did for the first one. Pick out 3 or 4 spots and then pick out your high priority area. (Pause) Okay. You could not include San Diego. So don't include... add another area.

WOMAN: You knew San Diego'd be number one, right.

WOMAN: Cuz it is.

RM: Cuz it is, she says. Well, we'll accept that. We won't fight that, let's put it that way.

Okay. Sebastian, you all finished? What's your number one?

SEBASTIAN: I couldn't get San Diego, I had to go for the area right above.

RM: So the Los Angeles harbor area? Okay, how many of you said Los Angeles harbor as your top...

MAN: I included Santa Barbara too, because there's a lot there too, so all that oil ...

RM: Okay. Renee, what did you have?


31

RENEE: Monterey and Santa Barbara.

RM: Okay, why?

RENEE: Because there's a lot, a lot of wildlife, and kelp beds and stuff like that.

RM: So you had kind of the Big Sur area.

RENEE: Yeah.

RM: I see, David?

DAVID: I went with Monterey and then San Francisco.

RM: And why those two.

DAVID: Monterey because of the fishing, huge fishing industry up there. I'd want that to be the most protected and a lot of endangered species live up in that area. (inaudible) for California as a whole.

RM: Endangered species of fish?

DAVID: Yeah, and birds. Carmel level, right there to Santa Cruz, and San Francisco because any spill ever get in the San Francisco Bay, I think it would be really hard to ... I mean the impact because of all the marshlands. There's a lot of preserves up there.

RM: Okay, Carol?

CAROL: I picked San Francisco and Monterey basically for the same reasons as David.

RM: Ken?

KEN: I picked the Channel Islands area from Santa Barbara to Huntington Beach.

RM: Why the Channel Islands?

KEN: Because that's the bulk of the offshore drilling is in that area for one thing, and then refineries are all in there, and the probability is high. And as I'm listening to all this, I see two different approaches -- one is to protect the environmental area and the other is to stop the spill. And I'm more into stopping the spill, so I'm aiming it at the source rather than protecting wildlife.

RM: Judy?

JUDY: San Francisco/Monterey.

RM: Elsa?


32

ELSA: Same.

RM: Bud?

BUD: I'm with him.

RM: Frank?

FRANK: I was with these two guys mainly because that's where all the action is and that's where I'd want to put my money.

RM: The Channel Islands?

FRANK: Yes.

RM: Is there anything else with the Channel Islands that they haven't mentioned that's important to you?

FRANK: No.

RM: That's where ...

FRANK: Just when I think of all the activity, if something's going to happen, chances are in this part of the country, that's where it's going to happen, and that's where I'd want to have it.

RM: Okay, Lynn?

LYNN: L.A. area.

RM: Moved up the coast.

LYNN: Well, I had to. But L.A./Orange County, they have a lot of oil wells there, Long

Beach and all those areas like that, and there's a very good possibility of a spill there, and there's a lot of beach land and wildlife and all that to be concerned about down in that area.

RM: Even though it's kind of industrialized.

LYNN: That's okay.

RM: That's okay. You want to protect that.

WOMAN: That way it won't come to San Diego.

RM: Let's talk a little bit about birds. I have a tally now of your bird preferences, but before I tell you what the tally is, I'd just like a show of hands on the birds that you can kind of... that you've seen ... that you can kind of picture, and I know a lot of these birds I've never seen, so it's perfectly


33

understandable. So, how many of you have seen a gull? Terns? 6 okay. How about beers (sp.) ...

seen a photo of a beer (sp.) or something? And I guess, Auklands?

LYNN: I think it's just a (inaudible).

RM: Puffins? Anyone seen a puffin. Loons? Okay. Grebes? Okay 3. Scooters? Zero.

Kittiwakes?. Shearwaters? Ducks? All right. Phalaropes? Albatross, seen a photo of an albatross?

Brown pelicans? Okay. How about cormorants? It's spelled wrong? How many cormorants? Four.

Storm petrels (sp.) Okay. The one mentioned ... actually there were two mentioned the most as being the greatest concern -- one was the loons and the other were the brown pelicans. And those two in addition to ducks and gulls, of course, were the ones that everybody had some idea of what they looked like. Why loons?

WOMAN: On Golden Pond?

RM: Oh, yeah. How many of you saw the movie? You guys really go to the movies. Okay, you get it where you can. But you've also seen gulls and ducks, so why are loons more desirable to protect than ...

MAN: You see more ducks and gulls...

RM: So it's sort of a... there aren't so many loons, so it would be good to protect them. And then the brown pelicans were mentioned as being scarce, possibly endangered. Ducks were pretty heavy hitters, six chose ducks and five chose terns on the others. And the albatross got a five. Well, why not. What about priorities for protecting the following: seabirds, which we've kind of listed there, mammals, fish and shellfish, plants, some of you mentioned kelp and yield grass, wading birds, these little guys up around the beach, fish that are fished by sports fishermen, what are the major fish that people take boats out and get.

WOMAN: Tuna.

MAN: Kelp beds.

MAN: Yellowtail.

RM: Anyhow, those kind of fish, and then game birds, like ducks that hunters.

WOMAN: I don't think they do that here.


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WOMAN: Not legally.

MAN: Northern California.

RM: Yeah, right, elsewhere. And commercial fish.

WOMAN: What's the question on this again?

RM: I've listed these various types of wildlife, some of them are used by commercial fisherman, some sport fishermen. Focus on it so forth, and just what would be your top priority among sea birds, mammals, like sea lions and seals. Fish and shellfish, plants, wading birds.

WOMAN: I think you have to start with the plants, because if you screw those up, the fish and the birds are going to follow suit.

RM: Actually not all these depend on the plants...

WOMAN: But then again, the ones that are not necessarily dependent on the plants may be dependent on another critter that is dependent on the plants.

MAN: The food chain...

RM: So you would emphasize what you see as the bottom of the food chain. Okay. Bud, where would you set your priority?

BUD: I think I agree with the plant life. I think that's... because that's actually the start of everything, without that there's not much.

RM: So you would place more of a priority on spills that would come into areas that ...

stopping it from happening rather than the open sea where birds going to come down and they'd get it if they land in this slick, and they can't tell it's there, that kind of thing. Elsa?

ELSA: Same thing. Fish can reproduce hopefully if the damage isn't that much. They have to feed off of something else, so I'd have to say sport fishing I've done, and that's okay, but it has to start at the beginning then.

RM: So that would be a hard priority then protecting say sea mammals.

ELSA: Well, they do eat shellfish which also ... go for the plants... that would be definitely ...

RM: Frank?

FRANK: Yeah, the ecosystems because it's something that people could do something about.


35

The sport fishing, the commercial, that concerns me too, because people were adversely affected by ...

but you can control (inaudible) in which you fish, whereas the other things you can't. Only people can control the ecosystem.

RM: I don't quite understand.

FRANK: What I'm saying is, that birds and plant life, if we don't take care of that, it's not going to happen by itself, is what I'm trying to say. You can control that, everything should follow in line. I can choose not to eat scallops or shrimp or something like this that might be contaminated, but if you don't control the ecosystem, who's going to control that. Union 76 is not going to do that.

Somebody's got to do that.

RM: Other comments on ... on this kind of choices, other argues?

MAN: We have a consensus.

MAN: I agree with the others, start at the bottom of the food chain.

RM: Okay. This is very helpful, and it's not obvious I think that people would emphasize this particular resource.

WOMAN: People don't normally play in kelp beds, but you've had us thinking for nearly two hours about ... now we're all zeroed in and ready to focus and we're almost done.

RM: So if I gave you a list at the beginning, and asked you to set priorities, you might have set different priorities. So one person raises the idea of the food chain, then it kind of connects what you might not have thought about...

WOMAN: In the very beginning, I would have said save the otter first, because he's so cute, but having a chance to talk about it, and think about it...

MAN: Elsa's reasoning was good too with the fish can reproduce, and birds can reproduce, so can mammals, but if you destroy the kelp beds or the feeding grounds, and you've lost it all.

RM: Do the other people feel that they couldn't come back, there couldn't be a way to restore them once you clean the oil up and...

MAN: She brought the point up, how do you know it's clean. We won't know for centuries.

WOMAN: I mean, even if you bring it up, it could be poisoned and something's feeding off of


36

it, and maybe it's not poisoned, but it reproduces and that will be poisoned or there's a generic mishap and something's going to go wrong eventually. So you don't know if it's poisoned or it's breeding, but under a microscope it is, and we don't know that.

RM: And it's kind of scary, cause it's uncertain.

MAN: We see it in San Diego bay right now. In San Diego bay we've got high pollutants,

PCB's and ...

MAN: Sewage and everything else...

MAN: Yeah, you name it, and now we're seeing it in the fish, and it's been going on for 40-50 years, and now the fish are born with this toxin.

RM: You were going to say something.

MAN: Also, of course, the fishing areas ought to be taken a look at too, because there's a lot of San Diego's good on just the fishing industry itself, plus we're a tuna run, and you're gonna have all sorts of other fish running too.

RM: So you place a high priority on sport fisheries.

MAN: No, commercial.

RM: Sorry, commercial fisheries.

MAN: They're too far from shore.

MAN: That's what I was thinking too. I'd put plants and shellfish definitely as one and two.

Plants, shellfish, mammals.

RM: Stan, did you have a question? Why don't we pass out that sheet. There's another...

Pass these back, and there's just one other sheet that we'll just talk about for a minute or so, and we'll close up time, and keep you under the wire here. Okay, please read the instructions first. None of these things are easy to do, but it's really helpful for us to get a sense of how you would put your priorities and there are four sets of trade-offs as we call them. There's two alternatives, and the first one is in a sense birds vs. beaches. And as it says, you can control the effects of an oil slick in two ways. You can contain it off shore or you can contain the oil slick on the beach. And what we'd like you to do is to allocate 10 points between these two alternatives -- one is contain the slick off shore,


37

but protect the beach with a bird kill of 5,000 birds or to contain the oil slick on the beach that would close the beach for two months but it would vastly reduce the kill to the birds. If you think that they're both equal, then you decide 5 points to each. If you think protecting the beach should have the highest priority overall, then put 10 for B and 0 for the other. If you allocate it some other way, then you're kind of weighing it in a different manner. Then each of the other three trade-offs should be fairly clear.

MAN: Do we believe this to be fact or is this hypothesis?

RM: No, it's a hypothetical situation. If this were the trade-off, so if you would, just for this brief several minutes, suspend your ... The message has come through, but if you had to choose between these alternatives, what would your own particular preference be. And be sure to put your number on the thing. (Pause) Okay, and you all put your numbers on the side. Which was the hardest one to ...

MAN: Number four.

WOMAN: Number four.

RM: Number four - why?

WOMAN: Because they can both be cleaned. And I can't see now helping an otter first and helping a pelican even the pelicans reproduce a little bit faster than the sea otter, but the sea otter can't clean itself or feed off of anything else when it's full of oil, so I had to go with both.

RM: So you put 5-5.

MAN: Number 3 is about the same as that too. I mean, you're saying we're going to worry about the lower part of our state more than we are the upper part of our state. You got to clean the whole thing. I mean, you know.

WOMAN: Oh, no this is most important, this is where we live.

MAN: What if the oil spill is up there and it drifts down here to us. I mean, you know.

WOMAN: You have to remember that a lot of the animals live in the upper state and will affect us eventually in the lower state.

RM: And two, was that easier.

WOMAN: No. Actually I did go ... I prefer the wetlands before the beaches. If I don't go to


38

the beach ...

MAN: It's a trick question.

RM: Now why don't you pass in these, and there's one little last thing that gets some background info about you. As I say, everything is anonymous, but be sure to put your I.D. number on it, if you would. (Pause) And then, first let me thank you all very much on a beautiful Saturday morning to join our discussion. And I really appreciate your opinion. If any of you have any ideas about, and now you can kind of see the kinds of issues that I'm interested in, and clearly you've found the idea, the way that I introduced it as very difficult or is not a helpful ...

WOMAN: We didn't cut you any slack at all.

RM: You resisted very much the idea of talking about these trade-offs in the first part, and I understand why you would feel that way, and if you have any ideas about what a better way of approaching a group to get them to think about it without ...

WOMAN: What you have to do is clean-cut. It's going to be this way or that way, because it's going to be resentful.

RM: Sure.

WOMAN: And at first that's what it sounded like. You're asking me to pick between one thing or the other, and the same thing about the state paying it or the other people. Well, I don't want to give them more taxes, so I'll definitely say I'll go the other way.

MAN: And oil prices would go up.

RM: Why don't we finish the group. Let me just tell you a little more about what we're doing and if anyone needs to go, that's fine, because you've really put in your two hours, but here's the deeper kind of game. What we're trying to do is develop a way to place a value on the resources that get injured by oil spills so the state can assert a claim in court that the company should pay the state for damaging these aspects of the natural environment. Now since, of course, all of us feel that the oil company should pay, given that situation, if I asked you well how much should the oil company pay for a spill that kills 10,000 birds, you're going to come up with a really big number, because you don't have to pay it. You're not going to strain by it. The oil companies are bad and evil, we all know that. There


39

we are. What I have to work with is a situation in which I can't pose the real question to people, because it's a situation in which you're going to stick it to the oil companies and not differentiate among what's more valuable to you or less valuable to you. The ideal way of doing this would be to ask you how much you would be willing to pay to protect these different resources, and I think in the discussion we went into that if it was a situation, and of course, you would resist willing to pay because the oil companies should pay, and of course, we'll all pay in the end, and it gets very complex. But one of the things that came up in the group, I think, is the idea that marshes, kelp beds, river mouths, these areas that are very productive in terms of wildlife or are particularly important to you, and that if it was a situation where you had to pay, some of you might be willing to pay money to protect those areas if that as a meaningful thing to do. And it's very important to learn, for example, ideally we would have some example of how much difference it makes to kill 300 birds vs. 1,000 birds or 1,000 birds vs. 10,000 birds. Is it the same kind of value to you to protect -- like those two little birds that were killed in the

Monterey spill.

WOMAN: Yes, but were they grebes or auklands?

RM: That's what I'd like to know. Now if they're brown pelicans, I think, that would ... you would place a higher value on brown pelicans because they do seem to be scarce or endangered than seagulls. I gather, right?

WOMAN: (inaudible) seagulls would be fine.

RM: So this is the kind of thing, and we're just beginning this project, so I'm just trying to figure out ways of doing it. But the whole thing is screwed up by the fact that, of course, everybody thinks the oil companies should pay, but the issue is how much should they pay. What is the real value to these things, and they have value, even though they're not bought and sold in the marketplace.

MAN; What's a Rembrandt worth? That's what you're....

RM: There's a market for Rembrandts, no problem. But I can tell you ...

MAN; But it changes.

RM: Of course, it changes, but that's fine too. Rembrandts have gone up in value.

MAN: But if you destroy one, then it has no physical value.


40

RM: But if I buy one and stick it in my closet, nobody can see it.

MAN: Nobody cares about that. Catch a gull and put it in your backyard.

RM: What would be of interest is if I buy one and put it in my closet, how much would you be willing to pay to entice me to get it out of my closet, and that ... so it could be seen, let's say. Or how much would you pay to have me keep it in the closet and not destroy it. Here I say I'm going to destroy my Rembrandt. You'll never see, but it'll be in the closet. But I won't destroy it. So how much would you pay to make sure that it's there. And so, this project involves trying to find ways in which we can get citizens to express a value for these different entities.

MAN: Bottom line, you wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the oil companies. That's where I'm cutting it.

RM: For the oil companies, no...

MAN: What would we be talking about if they weren't out there.

RM: Sure, because there wouldn't be spills and we wouldn't have to worry about the whole thing.

MAN: Then they still own the problem. That's where I'm coming from. Would there be ...

everything we talked about here in the last two hours, would we be here if they were not taking some of the natural resources which California has off the shore to exploit, to have oil, we all need this, and we happen to live in California, so we own a piece of the action.

RM: Yeah?

MAN: You see what I'm trying to say?

RM: Not quite, no.

MAN: There would not be any endangered species or threat to the ecosystem if the oil companies weren't out there doing their thing. That's what I'm saying.

MAN: That's right. That's the source of the whole thing. The oil ...

MAN: ... that's the whole thing why we're here. And no matter how you cut it, no matter how you cover it, it still stinks from oil.

WOMAN: So how do we charge them...


41

RM: Oh, yeah, it stinks from oil...

MAN: What I'm saying is they own the problem. See. The way I saw it, that you were talking about they pay when they cause a problem. I think they should pay to prevent the problem too. They should be involved in a preventive maintenance, not the taxpayers of the state of California. I've been trying to say that for two hours. Who does Stanley represent? You know, Stanley, I don't know he's from the oil company or he's from the state or he's from research.

RM: Oh, we're all from the state. We're part of the state team.

STANLEY: The issue is you're right, but as you all know, there'll always be an accident. Now the question is, there'll be an accident, how much should the penalty be for that accident. Well the court's going to say, well it depends on the magnitude of the damages that were done, and what we're trying to find out from you is someway to begin to put dollar values on this and what kinds of research...

damage. Should they pay more for it. (inaudible) marshlands vs. sandy beaches and that's what we're trying to find out, what you value, what kinds of natural resources you value more than others.

WOMAN: When in the future might we hear results of this or see in the courts or hear ...

RM: Oh, a couple of years. Truthfully, in a couple of years. It's a very hard thing to do.

MAN: I think the penalty should be severe enough to keep them from letting that happen in the first place. We ought to be talking about one grebe is worth $10 million and two grebes is worth $50 million and let it escalate in that area.

WOMAN: And if it means them having to triple hull their ships, it's a billion bucks there, but it's going to cost them 2 or 3 billion just to clean up a mess.

MAN: They should not be able to pay to get out of this.

RM: The courts don't think that way. The courts require the state to justify the economic value of the resource and of course this involves how quickly it's cleaned up, how much is restored, how many birds are affected. Is the resource worth twice as much if 10,000 birds die then 5,000. And then you have to justify this number and you have to show that this number is independent of how the people feel about the oil companies. That they're just not telling. That we're not getting these numbers because people want to stick it to the oil companies or want to accomplish other purposes which the court ...


42

which doesn't figure in the court's situation. So you can see we're in a ...

MAN: How are you going to get people within a reasonable thinking not to want to stick it to the oil companies, because let's be realistic, the oil companies are always sticking it to us. You know, this is like in '73 we didn't have any oil, except they had storage tanks with more oil than they could ship over in 2 or 3 years. I mean, you know, let's be realistic, those people are gaugers. What you do is you treat them in kind.

STANLEY: Is this still on tape?

RM: I hope so.

MAN: It doesn't matter...

(END OF SIDE 2 - TAPE 1)

MAN: I'm perfectly willing to state that.

RM: Well, anyhow I did want to give you an idea what the rationale for this because it may have seemed strange to you, and to see if you ...

WOMAN: I couldn't comprehend how you put a price tag on something like that. So how do you put a price tag on marshlands. Or how do you put a price tag on killing half the kelp beds up in

Monterey.

RM: The way to put a price tag on marshlands. I mean, California does it all the time. People vote in referenda to spend money to protect marshlands, for water pollution control. We're always making choices of these kinds. The question is how much are people willing to pay and often the politicians don't think people are willing to pay very much. And the truth is, when they do studies, people are willing to pay more than the politicians think and often in referenda, they demonstrate that by voting to tax themselves to do that. So it's easy when we don't have the oil companies involved, but it's a decision of the state to protect something, but in that context, it's very meaningful to people to say, well gee, I've got a lot of things to do, but yeah, I'd pay this much. If it would actually do this, I'd do this much for it.

WOMAN: Is there any way that you're going to be giving them, the oil companies, a little bit of our voice, and tell them, hey look, this is what they're really prefer you to do. Yeah, they want to stick


43

you for everything you destroy, but instead of sticking you first, why don't you fix your boats, outrig, yeah, make them look like new, whatever it takes, and carry yourself a crew with you all the time that's going to be there for any emergency.

RM: Well, let me put it this way...

WOMAN: Are you going to voicing that as well, or are you just going to be working for the ...

RM: We can't do that. But let me say, if we can solve this research problem and put a price on these things so it would stand up in court, there would be a very definite message, more powerful than anyone before to the oil companies. But we can't do, if people always say, well everything is worth ... you can see why it's frustrating, because you've been telling me everything's worth an infinite amount of money, and the oil companies should protect it, then I'm helpless. I can't place these values.

The oil companies are never going to be asked to pay for it, because it can't be justified in court.

They'll just pay for the clean, with no regard to preventing the deaths of these birds, well they'll come back, but I can't put a dollar value on them. That's the dilemma.

MAN: What's the dollar value of recreational features in the State of California.

RM: That's very straightforward.

MAN: There's one that you can pin down and start ...

RM: But I'm not worried ... I'm worried about birds, I'm worried about animals, I'm worried about marshes.

MAN: And the death penalty, I suppose, is too severe.

RM: Okay, well thank you very, very much. And we appreciate your input.

MAN: Good luck on your research.

RM: Okay.


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NATURAL RESOURCE DAMAGE Public Issues Group October 27, 1990 10:00 AM

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