Making smart growth happen

Across the state, developers are trying to skirt local growth plans: The 4,300 home Terrapin Run development next to the Green Ridge State Forest in Allegany County will be marketed to people who work 100 miles away in the Washington region. A proposed 3,200 home subdivision on the edge of the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge was stopped only after tremendous public outcry. 

To direct growth in ways that are compatible with current residents’ vision for their communities, the state requires counties to create “comprehensive plans” establishing guidelines for growth. But that doesn’t stop developers from pursuing plans directly in conflict with local growth plans. We are working with our allies to develop new policies that would make growth plans more enforceable.

Expanded oil drilling: A risk we can't afford

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Offshore drilling activities produce a steady stream of pollution, and destroy kelp beds, coral gardens and coastal wetlands.

Sometimes, the effects are far worse. In 1969, one of Unocal’s offshore platforms spilled 100,000 barrels of oil off the Santa Barbara coast. Within days, the spill contaminated 800 square miles of water surface, stretching to the Mexican border. Millions of birds died, fish stocks were decimated, and beaches were left covered in oil.

For many Californians, these memories  are still fresh, making it all but unthinkable that government would allow a dramatic expansion of offshore  drilling. Yet the threat is real. The debate over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has drawn the lion’s share of media attention, yet similar drives to open more of America’s natural treasures to drilling are underway in Congress.

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Last year, Richard Pombo, the congressman from Tracy who represents parts of four California counties, proposed an amendment that would have allowed drilling off of our coast. Called the “Ocean States Option,” the amendment  would have lifted a 24-year moratorium  on new drilling in federal waters.

Thanks to the work of U.S. Rep. Lois Capps (Santa Barbara), Gov. Schwarzenegger and others, the amendment was removed from the federal budget bill at the last minute. However, with oil industry lobbyists pushing to exploit rising energy prices as the latest rationale for expanded offshore drilling, there’s still a chance that this provision could end up in the final version of the Budget Reconciliation Act, which will be voted on later this year.

We have cleaner, safer options

“Allowing drilling off our shores was wrong for our coasts 24 years ago and it’s wrong for our country today,” said Environment California’s Dan Jacobson. “We can do better.”

In December, Environment California Research & Policy Center released “America Idles,” a report that details how much money and oil Americans would have saved in 2006 had the Bush administration increased gas mileage for cars and trucks four years ago. 

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If our cars and trucks got an average of a couple more miles per gallon, he says, we’d save more oil than exists off the entire coast of California. Yet federal gas mileage standards haven’t significantly changed in 20 years.

Environment California has called on California’s congressional delegation to support bills sponsored by Sen. Richard Durbin (Ill.) and Rep. Christopher Shays (Conn.) to raise gas mileage standards to 40 miles per gallon over the next 10 years. We’re also urging Congress to take steps to permanently protect California’s coast from offshore drilling.