Locals Outraged as Oil Company Wins Approval For Oil-Based Theme Park at Avila Beach
BY NEWT IMES
Instead of digging up Avila Beach, Unocal has secretly received state approval to build a $327 million theme park to be known as OilWorld USA.
Unocal officials have confirmed the plan and hailed it as "another example of how Unocal is working every day to make the Central Coast better."
The move has outraged area environmentalists and government officials as well.
The theme park will make use of the 300,000 gallons of oil products that now sit beneath downtown Avila Beach, treating the oil in a state-of-the-art process known as defelchifying to render it nontoxic.
The resulting product, dubbed Go-Goo by Unocal, will be used as a superslick surface for a 60-foot-tall system of tubes and slides, similar to waterslides, that will be built on what used to be Front Street in Avila.
"We've taken an environmental disaster and turned it into a one-of-a-kind theme park that will help the local economy far more than any cleanup project," said Dennis Lamb, the former Project Avila director who is being brought out of retirement by Unocal to head up OilWorld.
The company used an obscure legal maneuver to win approval for the development, which is expected to rival Magic Mountain and the recently opened Legoland in terms of size and attendance.
The project was approved by the little-known California Pollution Reuse Commission, which has the authority to approve development projects statewide that put environmental pollutants to beneficial uses.
The body was created by Gov. Pete Wilson just before he left office in December.
The project drew criticism from county Supervisor Mike Ryan. "As a former Coastal Commissioner, I cannot accept and will not allow such an attack on our sensitive coastal resources," he said.
But it doesn’t appear that SLO County will have a say. The county filed a lawsuit Tuesday challenging the project, but Judge Barry LaBarbera yesterday denied an injunction to stop construction, which is scheduled to begin as soon as this weekend.
OilWorld will also have a large OilSkating rink. OilSkating is similar to ice skating, although it can be done with normal street shoes.
Lamb said Unocal is currently in negotiations with Exxon to have the infamous Valdez oil tanker brought to Avila Beach and turn the tanker's deck into the OilSkating rink. Ten years ago this week, the Exxon Valdez ran aground and spilled 11 million gallons of oil off the Alaskan coast.
Other OilWorld attractions will include:
• The Oil Derrick Shoot – Feel the rush of being shot out of an oil derrick atop a flow of Go-Goo. Riders will land in the ocean and be shuttled back to shore inside a small scale replica of an oil tanker.
• OilWrassling – Unocal has teamed up with Spearmint Rhino Adult Cabarets to bring the good not-so-clean fun of oil wrestling to OilWorld. The Go-Goo girls will perform "family" shows at 1, 3, and 5 p.m. Nude "adults only" shows will occur daily at 7, 9, and 11 p.m.
"You see, the potential for this place is incredible," Lamb said. "I think once people get past the initial shock and get used to the idea, they will really embrace OilWorld. This is environmentalism that can actually turn a profit."
The OilWorld project is being made possible by Unocal's purchase of most of the property along Front Street over the last two years.
Those purchases were ostensibly done to facilitate the cleanup effort, although it now appears Unocal may have had an ulterior motive for buying up such vast stretches of Avila's waterfront.
"We've been tricked," declared Pat Veesart, executive director of the Environmental Center of San Luis Obispo County (ECOSLO). "We didn't make them dig up this pollution so we could play in it."
Veesart demanded that the company give local environmentalists an opportunity to buy the land and return it to its natural state: a funky beach town.
A new group, Don’t Rape Avila Beach, has formed to hold meetings and protests and write rambling letters to the editor about the sins of development.
Meanwhile, Lamb has furnished New Times with independent studies from three noted national laboratories which seem to show that Unocal has managed to extract all toxic and cancer-causing compounds from the oil.
"This is a revolutionary substance," Lamb declared.
One ride down an OilWorld slide will coat visitors in oily, black Go-Goo, but Lamb said that's part of the fun, because everybody likes to get dirty. And on cold days at the beach, a coating of Go-Goo will help keep visitors warm.
Lamb noted the massive oil diluent spill beneath Guadalupe Dunes can also be defelchified into Go-Goo.
So as part of the OilWorld project, Unocal will construct a pipeline along the coastline from Guadalupe Dunes to Avila Beach, where the defelchifying process will take place. Lamb dismissed concerns that a new pipeline running under the town of Pismo Beach could leak.
"What are the chances that we would contaminate another SLO County beach town?" Lamb said. "You've got to give us a little more credit than that. You bastards at New Times are always trying to make us look bad."
This marks the second major theme park to be announced for SLO County in the 1990s, but the first, Cuesta Caverns, turned out to be an immature practical joke perpetuated by local radio stations.
OilWorld attractions planned for later phases of construction include:
• RefineryWorld – A Go-Goo fun house where young visitors can battle with oil cannons, play with dials and knobs to avert a boiler tank "explosion," and lend their labors to the actual process of turning oil into Go-Goo. All OilWorld visitors will be required to spend at least an hour of their day in RefineryWorld.
• The Land of the Oil Kids – Play with real tar balls, ride on pumping unit see-saws, and get crazy on the oil-based Slip-n-Slide.
• The OilWorld Interpretive Museum – An animatronic figure of oil well firefighter Red Adair will greet visitors and take them through an educational center designed to highlight the true glory of the Oil Age, unhindered by environmentalist historical revisionists.
Lamb said Unocal is also looking into the possibility of marketing a full line of beauty care products using Go-Goo. "We know it makes a great hair gel, but we also think it has potential as a moisturizer, a tan accelerator, a conditioner, and maybe even a perfume."
With more than 10 million gallons of oil pollution in San Luis Obispo County alone, Unocal appears to have found a way to revitalize the company, whose stock prices have soared 35 points since the OilWorld announcement.
"We're back!" Lamb proclaimed with a wide grin.
Newt Imes’s newest book, "Burger Meisters: A Gastronomic History of Scrubby and Lloyd’s," will be out in May.