By Andrew Christie, Chapter Director
Opposition to the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary has been a case study in the evolution of bad arguments.
Opponents’ greatest hits were on display in “Thanks for opposing the Chumash marine sanctuary” in the Feb. 16 issue of the Tribune, giving the majority on our dysfunctional Board of Supervisors a pat on the back for passing a pointless resolution at their Feb. 7 meeting opposing the designation of the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary.
By turns ill-informed, speculative and anecdotal -- and featuring the usual attempt by economic special interests to label public interest groups as special interests -- these arguments have been put forward for years, and their variations don’t disguise their identity as re-treads.
Anyone who wants to see a real discussion of what national marine sanctuaries are and how they work, with opponents laying their fears and concerns at the feet of sanctuary managers and taking their best shots, must watch the video of the Jan. 6, 2016, Morro Bay town hall meeting on national marine sanctuaries. It’s a virtual documentary on the clash of fact vs. fiction, truth vs. obfuscation, reality vs. unreality.
Those two hours in Morro Bay really were the end of the debate over the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary as a factual issue. As a political issue, it’s a different story. The recirculation of the opposing arguments that were definitively refuted that night, and the subsequent pulling of strings to get three friendly supervisors to pass a symbolic resolution of opposition -- contravening a goal of the County’s General Plan -- is an ideological exercise.
The poster child for ideological exercises, newly arrived Board of Supervisors Chair John Peschong, one of the three votes that passed the sanctuary opposition resolution, is a political consultant whose firm has worked diligently against public power initiatives, crafted a “public awareness campaign” for a Koch Brothers front group, and worked on the Chevron-backed campaign to defeat Santa Barbara’s anti-fracking ballot initiative. During his career as a pundit for the Tribune, Peschong wrote admiringly of the joys of fracking and the safety record of the oil industry, alternating with attacks on the proposed Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary.
In signing on to the opposition Viewpoint, former Pismo Beach Mayor Shelly Higginbotham is also in opposition to former colleagues on the Pismo Beach City Council who support designation of the sanctuary. Other supporters include our former and current Congressional Representatives Lois Capps and Salud Carbajal, former State Senator Fran Pavley, State Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson, Santa Barbara County Supervisors Das Williams and Janet Wolf, the dean of the UCSB Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, 140 Cal Poly students, the City of San Luis Obispo, The Cambria Fishing Club, Patagonia, Pacific Wildlife Care, and some 7,000 members of the yak tityu tityu yak tilhini Northern Chumash Tribe, the Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation, Northern Chumash Tribal Council and Bakersfield Chumash Tribal Council.
You’d never guess from the zoomed and cropped photo that appeared with the online version of opponents’ Viewpoint that they were outnumbered three to one by sanctuary supporters at that board hearing. They are outnumbered by about 15,000 vs. 300 signatures on public petitions in support and opposition, respectively.
Which brings us to the center of this issue: Democracy.
While we don’t think much of their arguments, opponents are entitled to make them, and could do so at a time and place that won’t constitute a day-long waste of time when the majority of our board of supervisors is supposed to be doing the public’s business, not scoring political points with their base. That would be the designation process for the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary, a two-year process of public hearings and town halls, with every comment, question, and answer captured as part of the administrative record, along with all written comments, and a decision at the end of it based on all input received from a broad spectrum of stakeholders, not just the narrow economic special interests represented by opponents and their lobbyists.
In that venue, we’d be happy to introduce multiple peer-reviewed socioeconomic studies on the impact of national marine sanctuaries on local coastal economies. Opponents can trot out their anecdotes from chamber of commerce members.
They can claim that a national marine sanctuary will mean loss of “local control.” We will ask them how much “local control” was lost when President Obama expanded the California Coastal National Monument last month to include the Piedras Blancas Light Station and five other areas in three counties.
They can bring “four Monterey-area harbor officials” to bemoan “problems” with the disposal of dredge spoils caused by the Monterey Bay sanctuary. We’ll be happy to ask them if the Monterey sanctuary has ever once denied permission for the disposal of dredge spoils (answer: no), and if the “problems” those officials assert might better be described as feeling put out because they were simply directed to dispose of those spoils at sites where disposal wouldn’t compromise coral reefs, kelp forests or other sensitive marine habitat, thereby ensuring the future health of offshore waters and fisheries.
Before the Viewpoint authors asserted that “new sanctuaries must honor existing oil and mineral leases, which are already in existence in the proposed sanctuary boundaries,” they should have asked the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary what happened to the offshore oil leases in the area when the sanctuary was created. (Answer: They were abandoned).
Opponents can claim that we’re safe from future offshore drilling because we have a county ordinance. We’ll point out that the citizens of Marin, Sonoma and Mendocino Counties overwhelmingly opted to double the size and extend the protections of their existing national marine sanctuaries in 2015 because they knew nothing else would save them when -- not if -- Big Oil decides to put their coast in the crosshairs.
Before the Trib Viewpoint's authors blithely asserted that “sanctuary status does not offer permanent protection from oil development,” they should have checked in with Richard Charter. The difference between Mr. Charter and the authors of the Viewpoint is the difference between someone who speaks from deep personal knowledge of a subject and someone reciting talking points drafted by a public relations consultant. A Senior Fellow at the Ocean Foundation, Charter was involved in maintaining the 27-year Congressional moratorium on offshore oil and gas leasing that once served to prevent new drilling off our coast. He also coordinated the local government support that helped bring about the creation of the Gulf of the Farallones, Cordell Bank, Channel Islands and Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuaries.
In a Feb. 2 letter to the SLO Board of Supervisors, he wrote:
“The creation of a new national marine sanctuary has never in any way interfered with local control nor has it ever been demonstrated to interfere with fishing, since fishing continues, as always, to be regulated by the appropriate regional fishery management council and by California’s Department of Fish and Wildlife. It is, however, critical to realize that national marine sanctuaries can provide the only available mechanism that will permanently protect federal waters off of San Luis Obispo County from expanded offshore drilling, a protection from which your coast does not now benefit.”
Opponents could also check with former President George H.W. Bush, whose 1992 announcement of the designation of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary proudly noted that it would protect “an expanding population of sea otters and a wide variety of whales, porpoises, seals, fish, and sea birds, including many endangered and threatened species” and provided “a permanent ban on oil and gas development for the area, which includes a wide variety of pristine habitats.”
It was true there and true then. It’s true here and now -- all attempted arguments to the contrary notwithstanding
We will continue to look forward to the democratic designation process for the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary, and to having that discussion.