In the Feb. 16 issue, a writer decried tar balls on the beaches around Santa Barbara, but misunderstands their origin. These (and those we get on SLO beaches) are from natural oil seeps that were leaking long before Europeans arrived. Early Spaniards used natural rafts of beach brea to waterproof their roofs, and Anglos mined […]
Peter D. Tillman
retired geologist-geochemist, Cambria