By Andrew Christie, Chapter Director
On Thursday and Friday, after more than two years of environmental review, including a draft environmental impact report, a drastically revised report, a final draft review, and urgent comments urging denial of the project from 24,000 individuals and dozens of California cities, counties and school districts, the Phillips 66 Santa Maria Refinery rail spur project in San Luis Obispo County finally made its public debut at the first of several planned hearings before the San Luis Obispo County Planning Commission.
It did not go well for the oil company.
The proposed rail terminal would enable up to five trains per week to bring tar sands crude oil from Canada to the refinery. Each train would carry more than 2 million gallons of the world’s dirtiest crude oil – which also becomes highly volatile when mixed with diluent in order to be piped into rail tank cars -- and pass through some of the most sensitive habitat and heavily populated areas in California.
The SLO County Planning Department produced a staff report for the hearing that advised the Planning Commission to deny the project in order to protect the health and welfare of its citizens and avoid toxic emissions in exceedance of legal limits, multiple violations of the California Environmental Quality Act, the County’s General Plan, ordinances and Local Coastal Program, and the devastation that would threaten communities and wildlife habitat the length of California due to probable derailments, spills and fires.
On Wednesday, the staff of the California Coastal Commission sent a letter to the Planning Commission stating “we strongly agree with and support your staff’s recommendation that the project’s coastal development permit application be denied,” and reminding them that “any action taken on this coastal development permit application by San Luis Obispo County – either approval or denial – is appealable to the Coastal Commission.”
By the end of Thursday's hearing, after 69 speakers and eight hours of detailed testimony exploring all the project's fatal flaws, not one person had come to the podium to speak in defense of the project, with the exception of the lawyer hired by Phillips 66 to represent them.
Late in the afternoon on the second day of hearings, several Phillips 66 refinery employees finally stepped to the microphone to voice support for the project. They cited the oil company’s charitable donations to local elementary schools, the robotics program at Nipomo High School and the San Luis Obispo Railroad Museum, and noted the extra tax revenues the project would bring. An executive from the Phillips 66 office in San Francisco told the commission to approve the project because they could “count on Phillips 66 to do the right thing.” None of them spoke to the issues in the Environmental Impact Report or the findings of the planning department's staff report.
Many of those who had raised their voices in protest during the lengthy environmental review process made the trip to SLO County to do so in person at the meeting.
The mayors of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo urged denial, as did representatives of state Senators Bill Monning and Hannah-Beth Jackson, Assemblyman Das Williams, and city council members and county supervisors from Northern and Southern California. The Santa Lucia Chapter of the Sierra Club, along with a legal team from the Environmental Defense Center, drove the point home that the Commission has no legal grounds on which it can approve the permit or certify the defective and incomplete Environmental Impact Report.
During the lunch break on Thursday, the coalition that joined with the Mesa Refinery Watch Group to oppose the project, including ForestEthics, Sierra Club, Surfrider and the Center for Biological Diversity, held a rally in the county court house plaza across the street. Elected officials, first responders, teachers and nurses rallied 600 California citizens in defense of their homes and schools. (The California Nurses Association and the National Education Association are opposed to the project.)
The Commission continued the hearing to February 25, at which time they will complete public testimony, discuss the issues raised, and possibly vote. If they don’t get that far, they are also holding March 11 open for another hearing date.