Southland Officials Urge Deukmejian to Fight Against U. S. Oil-Drilling Proposal

Leaders of cities from Los Angeles to San Diego urged Gov. George Deukmejian on Thursday to seek exclusion of most Southern California coastal waters from oil and gas exploration.

At a public hearing in Newport Beach, they said offshore drilling would harm vital tourist economies, generate air pollution in an already-polluted air basin and endanger fragile ecological systems.

“The ocean and its beaches are what Southern California is all about,” San Clemente Mayor Robert Limberg said. “Southern Californians want this resource preserved.”

Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Tom Houston, speaking on behalf of Mayor Tom Bradley, said that to sell oil-drilling rights in coastal waters at a time when the price of oil is falling would be tantamount to “a giveaway of our natural resources.”

Industry’s Position

But oil industry officials urged state officials to allow the federal government’s five-year oil and gas lease program to proceed. Without it, they argued, the industry cannot make long-range plans or ensure that there will be oil to meet future energy needs.

“We consume much more energy than we produce, and that responsibility (to provide for future needs) must be taken very seriously,” said Terry Covington, a spokeswoman for Phillips Petroleum Co.

Thursday’s hearing was the first of four state-sponsored public meetings to take testimony on the proposal to lease areas off California’s coast between 1987 and 1991. A second hearing was scheduled today in Santa Barbara. Subsequent meetings in San Francisco and Eureka will occur in two weeks, according to Jan Sharpless, state secretary for environmental affairs.

In an interview before Thursday’s hearing, Sharpless said that Deukmejian and Atty. Gen. John van de Kamp stand ready to file suit against the federal government if the Interior Department proceeds with its call for industry nominations of high-interest tracts in Southern California, the first step in a process that could lead to oil and gas development in federal waters.

Nominations Sought

The Interior Department already has sought nominations of tracts off Humboldt and Mendocino counties in an area designated as Lease Sale 91, an act that Deukmejian has called “a breach of faith.” A call for nomination of tracts off Southern California in Lease Sale 95 is planned for May.

Sharpless told an audience of about 40 local officials at the morning session, and another 20 or so interested environmentalists who turned out to speak at the afternoon session, that Deukmejian would forward their comments to the Interior Department.

Further, Sharpless said the state plans to take a tough stand against pollution that is generated by offshore drilling platforms.

Bradley lieutenant Tom Houston said he was “heartened by those comments,” but criticized Deukmejian for failing to support a bill by Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez) that would give governors veto power over areas deemed too environmentally sensitive for development.

Protection Urged

Houston said that Orange County’s coastal waters and many other sensitive coastal areas need permanent protection from offshore oil and gas development. “Those have to be non-negotiable items between the governor and Interior Secretary (Donald P.) Hodel,” Houston said.

Newport Beach Vice Mayor Ruthelyn Plummer pointed out that the state has spent millions of dollars to dredge and restore the Upper Newport Bay wildlife reserve. She said it would make no sense to turn around and allow oil exploration near such wildlife preserves.

Many who spoke doubted industry claims that today’s technology can prevent a disaster such as the 1969 oil spill off Santa Barbara. But they also doubted whether the petroleum reserves offshore were substantial enough to warrant expensive and, in their view, environmentally risky, drilling.

“We understand there is a need for oil exploration, but we’re not sure it needs to happen at the cost of our scenic coast or our economies,” Irvine Mayor David Baker said.

‘More to Life’

“There is more to life than making a quick profit off the California coast,” Tustin City Councilwoman Ursula Kennedy said.

A spokeswoman for San Diego Acting Mayor Ed Struiksma said that drilling off those shores was “not in the best interests of San Diego or the nation,” citing the area’s large military presence.

Coronado Vice Mayor Lois Ewen noted that her area is “unable to meet state air quality standards now.”

“Any more industrial development would be a detriment that would place us further behind,” Ewen said.

But oil industry officials said that sound, reasoned development through the proposed five-year plan was the only way to ensure that those environmental issues were addressed.

Exaggeration Charged

Moreover, they said environmentalists and local leaders exaggerate when they say the entire coastline has been put up for bid.

“The (oil) industry cannot afford, nor is it interested in leasing the entire coastline. We are interested in very specific areas with geological potential,” Covington said.

Covington noted that in 1982, when more than 22 million acres offshore were nominated for potential lease sales, only 114,000 acres were actually sold by the time the process was completed.

But Fern Perkle, a leader of Friends of the Irvine Coast, and other environmentalists remained adamant that their areas should not even be up for discussion.

The stretch of beachfront from Corona del Mar to Laguna Beach is just as important a natural resource as Big Sur in central California and Pt. Reyes in northern California, Perkle argued.

(Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) proposed legislation this week that would create a 140,000-acre national forest scenic area at Big Sur. Offshore oil and gas leasing, exploration and drilling would be prohibited within its boundaries and anywhere on the Outer Continental Shelf for 20 miles out to sea.)