More than 200 people showed up for the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday regarding the transfer of permits from ExxonMobil to Sable Offshore Drilling.
"We thought Santa Barbara being the creator of Earth Day, something like this wouldn’t happen here but it happened," said Jeff Miller, Santa Barbara resident.
Miller remembers the Refugio oil spill in 2015 when a pipeline, then owned by Plains All American, failed and spilled over 140,000 gallons of oil along the coast.
"There was no response from the company. There was no response from anybody. People out there, just regular citizens with shovels and buckets trying to scoop it up, birds and fish dying right and left," Miller said.
He was one of hundreds of people at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting speaking out against Sable Offshore Drilling, which wants to restart the pipeline after acquiring it from the most recent owner, ExxonMobil.
"I know that a lot of our world runs on oil, but like the general shift away from oil to other renewable sources is definitely what we need to be doing," said Kaili Brand, UCSB Ph.D. student of Environmental Science.
"The biggest risk, I think, here for people is that we're going to end up inheriting the cost of an oil spill and the responsibility to clean it up and maybe letting Exxon off the hook," said Brady Bradshaw, Center for Biological Diversity Senior Oceans Campaigner.
But not everyone agrees. More than 80 people showed up in support of Sable, including Danny Zermeno with OST Trucks who says oil has supported his family since 1947, along with 80 employees.
"None of them are college-educated, but they make up to $80-100,000 a year," Zermeno said.
He says oil provides his workers with opportunity.
"We depend on this industry to keep us going so we can look forward to the future, put their kids through college so they can do what their employers cannot do," Zermeno continued.
After 127 public comments, the board voted 2 to 2, essentially hung on whether to transfer permits from ExxonMobil to Sable Offshore Drilling. It is unclear what will happen next. KSBY News will continue to follow this story.
