Anybody know how to fight the oil companies? Central Coasters pay attention to this.
DUer emsimons33 and I just discovered that Phillips 66 are laying an oil pipeline through our neighborhood that is from Arroyo Grande to the oil field in Price Canyon in Pismo Beach. Nobody knew about it except for a throwaway remark in an email we got from an activists organizing grass roots action against Union Pacific bringing oil bomb trains through the area with combustible and volatile Alberta tar sands in them. It mentioned the oil pipeline already permitted and work started. I have talked to people in the neighborhood and NOBODY KNEW ANYTHING! It seems they only had to notify anyone having property within 300 feet of the planned pipeline.
I took a ride down Old Oak Park Road that ends on Ormonde Road which connects to Price Canyon. I was stopped halfway there by road crews on Thursday who told me they were working on the pipeline. Friday evening after the crews had gone home emsimons33 and I went down the whole road to see what they were up to. Quite a bit of work has been done already. Also, since it's pretty much of a rural and wilderness area so there aren't that many private homes, which are ranches, there. I didn't count them but maybe less that fifteen families got a notice. We also saw that many of these ranches had For Sale signs up.
This is an important part of the watershed in south San Luis Obispo county and the aquifer provides water to the ranchers and residents up here. Considering the oil spill in Santa Barbara that happened from the same type of pipeline, all a spill has to do is reach one of the creeks and it's on it's way to the ocean less than a few miles away. It seems the area is riddled with these pipelines in various stages of disrepair and not inspected frequently enough due to state agencies not having enough inspectors to do the job. I think we need to get rid of these oil companies altogether and keep the oil for our own use. Also bringing bulldozers in an area that has some 100 year old oak trees, which might have to be destroyed seems like an environmental crime to me.
Information is really sparse. We don't know which government agency approved the Planning Department issuance of the permit and frankly how many palms were greased as there was very little reported on it in the local press. Yeah, and don't say I shouldn't make those accusations. It's been the way the oil companies have done business here in Southern California for more than a hundred years. Upton Sinclair writes about it in his fictionalized novel, "Oil" which is about the Doheny and other oil families who started the oil industry here from Los Angeles, through Bakersfield and over here to San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara and they did it by bribing the local officials from bottom to top. I can't see that things haven't changed.
We have had opportunities to question local politicians like Board of Supervisors, State Senators and Assembly people about various problems and we always get the same answer, it can't be done because the lobby is too powerful and many variations on the same theme that there is some hidden factor out there that makes changes people want not possible. So if anyone has any ideas on how two mature women take on the Oil Beast, we are all eyes.
X-post to GD.