Not
your padres' forest
In the middle of pending legislation and renewed public outcry, the
Forest Service prepares to release its study of oil drilling in the Los
Padres National Forest
BY ABRAHAM HYATT
PHOTOS BY CHRISTOPHER GARDNER
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FOREST PUMP |
The Central Coast's relationship with oil doesn't end where the ocean hits the land. Offshore rigs might be the area's most visible - and famous - contributions to the nation's oil debate, but crude oil fills areas of inland ground like money in a banker's till.
For the last nine years, the USDA Forest Service has studied which areas of San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties' national forest land are suitable for oil drilling. Within the next few months, the agency plans to release the results of that inquiry.
And then it will decide whether or not to allow oil drilling in the Los Padres National Forest.
Unsurprisingly, before that study was even half finished, opponents mounted a counter attack.
Tri-County residents and organizations formed the Coalition to Save Los Padres. Activists decried an oil-hungry administration. National legislators have even introduced legislation that would block any drilling at all.
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The Los Padres National Forest covers the mountainous backbone of San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties - a 220-mile blob of land that stretches from the southern coast of Monterey County to the western edge of Los Angeles County.
According to Al Hess, an oil and gas specialist with the Forest Service, there's an estimated 90 million barrels of "oil equivalent" - the total amount of oil and natural gas - in those two million acres. That amounts to about 140,000 acres - much of which is roadless - of "high priority" gas and oil exploration areas.
By law, Hess' agency has to look at all public land and assess it for oil and gas possibilities, which is what officials with the Forest Service have been doing for the last nine years in the Los Padres National Forest.
They've looked at areas with high oil potential. They've taken into consideration roadless areas and endangered species. They've come up with plans and alternatives to plans. They've announced a tentative release date for the survey, and then re-announced and re-announced and re-announced that date as complications arose.
One of many complications started in 2002 when they sent, as required by law, their plans to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for that agency's input on potentially affected threatened and endangered species.
Fish and Wildlife still hasn't sent a final reply to the Forest Service.
Creed Clayton, a Fish and Wildlife biologist, said that's because the Forest Service didn't give them the information they needed until recently. Hess said it's because the study hasn't been Fish and Wildlife's highest priority.
Clayton said that Fish and Wildlife now has the information it needs, and while he refused to comment on what the results would be, he did confirm that the service plans on sending the Forest Service its report in the next few months.
Hess said that when the Forest Service gets that report and finishes analyzing the hundreds of comments it's received on the plan, it will release the study and make a decision on whether and where the federal government will allow oil drilling.
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Oil is nothing new to the Central Coast.
The Chumash and other local American Indians used what oozed out of natural seeps to seal their canoes. The early Spaniards and Californios roofed their homes with it.
And since Old Maude - Northern Santa Barbara County's allegedly million-plus-barrels-a-year gusher - cemented the coast's role in the nation's oil industry back in the 1890s, derricks, pumps, and rigs have been a constant reality.
Since the 1960s however, the National Wilderness Act, along with a strong anti-oil movement after the devastating 1969 Santa Barbara Channel oil spill and a multi-million dollar, multi-county condor restoration project, has kept the oil industry out of the region's mountains.
Erin Duffy is a coordinator with the Coalition to Save Los Padres. She thinks Hess' estimate of 90 million barrels of oil equivalent in the Los Padres is far too high, and her organization agrees. They set the total amount at around 21 million barrels - or, as Duffy likes to point out, just about what the nation uses in a single day.
While Hess describes the crude oil as "average" and transportation-fuel grade, Duffy counters that the oil is such a low grade that it, like other oil from the inland Central Coast, is only suitable for making asphalt roads.
Quantity and quality top the list of concerns that Duffy easily recites when she talks about Los Padres, but the impact that drilling in roadless areas would have bothers her the most.
The Forest Service approximates that if it recommended 250,000 acres of the forest for oil and gas leasing, only 63 oil wells would be installed. That would take up 43 acres of land.
Duffy countered that the service's estimation doesn't take into account what would be disturbed by the roads that lead to those areas.
"They're talking about actual acres taken up by a rig or a tank or whatever they plan to put in. When you put roads through a wild place, you fragment the land," she said. "You lose that connectivity."
Hess argued that very little would be disturbed.
"We're not going to allow it where it's going to have any negative impacts that can't be mitigated. Period," he said. "I know we're not going to allow drilling where it can affect endangered species, for example. It's against the law."
Hess was quick to point out that the while the Forest Service had the mandate to develop oil and mineral leases where they would be environmentally acceptable, its mission is not dissimilar to the wishes of the many environmental organizations opposed to the drilling.
"We don't believe there will be any negative impacts. And that's one reason that there's not all that many areas that we're considering," he said. "There's really not that many areas you can drill without affecting something."
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The week New Times went to press on this story, the L.A. Times published a story that drew parallels between pressure from the Bush administration and a decision by the Forest Service to open New Mexico forests to a Houston-based oil and gas company.
Hess said he's seen no pressure from the White House to open the Central Coast's forests.
"Not up to this point at any rate," he said, laughing.
The Bureau of Land Management oversees the oil and gas leases in the Los Padres. Jeff Prude, a petroleum geologist with the agency, said that 20 years ago, when the rules regulating drilling were different, companies were interested in oil and gas exploration in the forest. Since then, it's been difficult to gauge demand because people have to wait for a final decision on the leases before they approach the agency.
"If land is offered, there's no doubt there will be bids," he said. "[But] no one's been pounding down our door."
In the end, the final word on drilling might come from a whole different branch of the federal government.
In February of this year, Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, introduced the Los Padres National Forest Conservation Act, which is legislation that would keep all oil and gas exploration out of the forest.
At the same time, California's two senators, Democrats Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, initiated identical legislation into the senate. After introduction, Capps' bill was sent to the House Resources Committee, which has jurisdiction on the issue.
It hasn't moved since.
Capps' office said that the congresswoman has done all she could and has actively lobbied for the bill - a claim partially substantiated by the nine cosponsors Capps has signed on since February.
Still, congress is getting ready to adjourn.
"The Congressional session may be coming to a close, but my work on protecting Los Padres is not," Capps wrote in an e-mail. "Introducing The Los Padres National Forest Conservation Act was just the first step in eliminating the risk of environmental and economic ruin that could result from more drilling."
While local forest officials and oil opponents have kept national politics out of their descriptions of the fray, Capps was not so shy as she finished her comments.
"I will continue to defy the Bush administration on environmental regulations that gut our national forests," she wrote. ³
Staff Writer Abraham Hyatt can be reached at [email protected].
As the National Wilderness Act turns 40, locals celebrate the legislation that keeps the wild in the Central Coast’s wilderness
BY ANDREA ROOKS
PHOTOS BY CHRISTOPHER GARDNER
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WILD, WILD WEST |
Jerry Connor says he's just
a person who uses and enjoys the wilderness, not an activist per se.
He keeps his feet on the ground when it comes to enjoying and protecting
the wild areas in the Central Coast's backyard. Particularly special to
Connor is the Figueroa Mountain area just north of Los Olivos. It's one
of the areas where he leads hikes for the Santa Maria chapter of the Sierra
Club.
It's also just one of the wild landscapes he's had the joy of wandering through since he was a teenager. As a youngster in New York, he frequented the Adirondack State Park - the largest state park in the lower 48 United States.
As he grew older, he sought out wild areas in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Montana, Washington, Utah, Oregon, and, since 1985, California.
"It's always been a part of my life and my family's life," said Connor, who's led hikes locally through the Los Padres chapter of the Sierra Club since he came to the Central Coast nearly 20 years ago.
There are numerous treasures Connor said he loves in wilderness areas within the Los Padres National Forest: unmarred vistas, clean-running streams, and wildlife in its natural habitat. And there's one thing he'd hate: their destruction.
Next month, conservation groups such as the Wilderness Society and the Coalition to Save Los Padres will celebrate the 40th anniversary of a piece of legislation designed to prevent the destruction of the country's wilderness areas.
Veteran wilderness wanderer Connor said he's seen that legislation - the National Wilderness Act of 1964 - do all that it was designed to do, namely preserve wild landscapes for future generations.
"There have been some setbacks, but I've read in conservation magazines over the last 40 years of one victory after another," Connor said. "The Wilderness Act works pretty much the way it's supposed to. In a democracy, nothing ever goes in a straight line, but we tend to head in the right direction."
He noted that most presidents since World War II have been adding to the country's wilderness inventory as Congress designs proposals, but the current administration has slowed the pace.
President Bush did, however, sign into effect the most recent local wilderness area with the Big Sur Wilderness and Conservation Act of 2002.
"He did it once," said Erin Duffy, coordinator for the Coalition to Save Los Padres. And President Bush could do it again, she said, if there's enough local-level support to protect wild landscapes.
That's the goal of the Wilderness Act: to give local residents the ability to work with their elected representatives to create federally protected areas.
"From 1964 on, rather than having to wait for land management agencies to make recommendations through a time-consuming administrative process, citizens could develop their own wilderness proposals and submit them directly to a member of Congress," reads the Wilderness Society's handbook on the Wilderness Act.
"It very purposely allows the public to approach Congress with wilderness proposals rather than just relying on federal agencies to make those recommendations," said Jay Watson, former regional director for the Wilderness Society.
Watson, who now heads the wilderness organization's wildland fire program, said that the public has wholeheartedly embraced opportunities to propose its own wilderness protections - particularly in California.
"We're probably up to around 115 individual wilderness laws passed in Congress since the Wilderness Act of '64," he said. "We're at 18 . in California alone, which is far more than any other state.
"One area that has been revisited the most in wilderness legislation is, in fact, the Los Padres [Forest]," Watson said, noting that the Wilderness Act is alive and well on the Central Coast with six congressional designations creating 11 wilderness areas. "[Designated wilderness] is probably approaching 50 percent of the forest."
When it first established the National Wilderness Preservation System, the act designated as wilderness 9 million acres in the United States. Now, there are 104 million acres within the preservation system.
But recent proposals would change protections to wild areas, including revisions to the Roadless Area Conservation Rule that would allow governors to make changes in roadless areas and potentially remove the protections established in 2001, Duffy said.
She worked on the Roadless Rule when it got enacted and listed changes to that protection among the biggest threats to the Los Padres Forest, including oil drilling and off-highway vehicles.
Duffy named erosion and increased human-caused fires among the potential perils of creating roads where there are none.
But both Duffy and Connor said that exploratory oil and gas drilling is the most immediate threat to the Los Padres National Forest, which already has some oil development within its boundaries.
"It's the only forest in California that has oil and gas drilling in it right now," Duffy said.
Such threats, immediate and eternal, led members of the Wilderness Society more than four decades ago to put their heads together to create a process to permanently protect such pristine areas.
"It was perceived as being essential from conditions that were developing in the '40s and '50s," Connor said of the act, which was eight years in the making.
He added that in 1984 he attended a national celebration in Seattle for the act's 20th birthday where he rubbed shoulders with long-time environmentalists and conservationists.
"These were people who'd written guidelines for preserving wilderness," Connor said. "And the warning from the older wilderness statesmen was universal: The threat is always there. Be eternally on guard for people who would unwisely use that which should be preserved forever."
He said there are dozens of reasons why the wild areas should be protected, not the least of which is to ensure that future generations have beautiful recreation opportunities. Future generations of plants and animal species - many of which are endangered - will also have the chance to thrive under such protections.
"If wilderness is preserved, it ensures that the same plant species will be there and other horrors will be lessened or avoided, such as soil erosion or degradation in the variety of plants," Connor said. "When you've gone too far, you can't reverse it.
"It's best not to get that close."
And if the Wilderness Act didn't exist, what would the Central Coast's backyard look like?
Duffy laughed wryly, "Have you seen L.A.?"
Santa Maria Sun News Editor
Andrea Rooks can be contacted at [email protected].
National wilderness answers |
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• National wilderness areas lie within national forests,
Bureau
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