Santa Barbara Oil Spill by Sophia Burnett

114305_5 — 2025-01-14 16:11:57 UTC

Santa Barbara, Southern California

What Happened?

114305_5 — 2025-01-14 16:29:35 UTC

On January 28, 1969, an oil rig off the coast of Santa Barbara began to release oil after 14 days of built up pressure, leading it's pipes to crack and release nearly 9,000 gallons of oil into the ocean per hour. By the time Union Oil (the company that owned Rig A) stopped the leak, roughly 3 million gallons of oil spread 35 miles. Although Union Oil tried to stop the oil from spreading, the oil still raced towards the city of Santa Barbara, reaching the beach on February 3, 1969.

How Did it Impact People?

114305_5 — 2025-01-14 16:38:11 UTC

Negatively: After the spill, the beaches and the smell of Santa Barbara still smelt like an oil refinery.

Positively: This lead people to begin thinking of projects to help the environment, and even later on, the idea of Earth Day.

How Did it Impact Economics(Profit)?

114305_5 — 2025-01-14 16:52:53 UTC

Union Oil got permission from the government to only build a protective wall 239 feet down into the ocean when 300 feet was required to prevent spills, this shortcut was costly and was even more costly to clean up.

Negatively: Although it is not specifically stated, scientists believe that this incident caused $60 million dollars to clean up. This incident also caused a loss in fishing income, recreational facilities, and damage to personal property.

How Did it Impact the Environment?

114305_5 — 2025-01-14 16:57:03 UTC

Negatively: From this oil spill, close to 10,000 birds of different species were killed along with the destruction of plants, marine animals, and their habitats. This ruined both the ocean and Santa Barbara's beach.

Positively: People came together to help clean up the beach and waters, help animals, and create environmental solutions.

How Did We Address this Issue?

114305_5 — 2025-01-14 17:06:58 UTC

Within the first week of the spill residents of Santa Barbara started the Get Oil Out! (GOO!) group that fought the government to stop drilling in the Santa Barbara Channel. A Wisconsin Senator named Gaylord Nelson had earlier traveled to Santa Barbara and gave a speech at a water quality conference, after the spill he came up with the idea of a nationwide environmental teach-in day now known as Earth Day, celebrated on April 22nd. I personally think this event could be technocentric, anthropocentric, and ecocentric, this is because during this time, the company used technology like planes dispersing talc and saw to sop up oil, people began to protest against oil drilling to stop events like this from happening, and people began to go more green and push for environmental factors to be seen, so for these reasons, I think this event hits all three.

Why is This Event Important in Environmental History?

114305_5 — 2025-01-14 17:14:32 UTC

At the time, this oil spill was the biggest to ever exist, holding first place in biggest oil spills in the nation, now it still holds it's spot in third as one of the biggest oil spills. This event is important in history because it opened the eyes to those in America and helped create the first environmental movement which started the environmental revolution.

How Did This Event Change Humans?

114305_5 — 2025-01-14 17:16:53 UTC

This event caused our nation to go green and showed the country of America how pushing big technological ideas brought risks to both the environment and themselves. Even more important, this event caused the creation of Earth Day, a holiday still celebrated to this day.

Interesting Facts

114305_5 — 2025-01-14 17:25:01 UTC

The amount of oil that spilled into the ocean from this event was enough to fill 4.5 Olympic swimming pools (1 swimming pool is 146 feet long).
Many famous people came to Santa Barbara to see, write, and deduce what had happened including former President Nixon, who had a beach house on the Santa Barbara beach at that time.

Connection to Other Events

114305_5 — 2025-01-15 16:51:49 UTC

After reading about the causes of 10 of the most harming oil spills, it seems like most of the times these oil spills happen because of equipment breaking down or people being careless. And like all of these other oil spills, it cost billions of dollars to clean up, for example, the Deepwater Horizon – BP Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill cost around $63.4 billion to clean up. All in all, these events all connect because they are all events that happen in the ocean that harm the ecosystem and push people to fight to help our environment and hold these companies accountable.