STATEMENT OF PATRICK HEFFERNAN Mr. HEFFERNAN. My name is Patrick Heffernan, representing the county of Santa Barbara, and my comments today and those of Dr. Corwin are from the county supervisors. The first offshore oilwells in the Nation were drilled in the beaches of Santa Barbara in the twenties. We are currently producing 93 trillion Btu of energy for the Nation on an annual basis, which is about twice what the county itself consumes. There are 14 active platforms in the channel and those platforms produce approximately 15 percent of the offshore oil that comes out of California. So offshore oil development in the Santa Barbara Channel is a reality. It has been a reality for 50 years and it is probably going to be a reality for another 40 years. The proposal for the marine sanctuary, the nomination document which I believe you have there, is not an attempt to block offshore oil development. That is a reality and the county has dealt with that reality and will continue to. Rather it is an early response to the increasing conflicts over multiple use of our offshore marine areas due to technology which allows us to develop those areas. I am going to summarize my testimony, so I won't follow the written copy that you have before you. There is now a critical need on the west coast, and I believe in the entire Nation, for a consultative and regulatory mechanism to resolve the conflicts over the use of marine resources, biological, and mineral. The present scheme in the Santa Barbara Channel is in chaos. We find we have to deal with as many as 50 Federal agencies and a half dozen State and several other local agencies. They issue conflicting rules and regulations. They get into turf fights, there are regulatory gaps, contradictions between them. As a result of this, Exxon Corp. has been forced to build an offshore storage and treatment processing plant that they didn't want to build. The county didn't want it and the State didn't. But because of a conflict with the State Coastal Commission, that plant is being built. The county of Santa Barbara has responded to these conflicts by developing a comanagement principle in which the county, State, and Federal agencies sit down and resolve problems through hard, but good-faith, bargaining based upon very good scientific, economic data. We have had a number of successes in this comanagement process. One is the successful negotiation with Exxon Corp. for an onshore processing plant that, if it had been built would have been a model of evironmental design. Unfortunately, the conflicts removed that from our jurisdiction. We have negotiated an agreement with Arco for increased production from their offshore platform Holly. We are now involved in a Joint Industry Government Working Pipeline Group which is attempting by using economic and engineering studies and biological data to develop a transportation plan to move offshore production from the channel to market with the minimum air and water pollution problems that we have seen in the past. This is the county's response and it has worked very well and we intend to continue that response. As I said, we probably are going to see offshore oil production in the Santa Barbara Channel for the next 40 years. It is not going to do us or the Nation any good to say we don't want any or we want a sanctuary that says no oil. Obviously, we are going to have to deal with that. Unfortunately, the county's authority stops at the 3-mile limit. Once we get to the 3-mile limit, we are faced with the chaotic relationship among the Federal agencies in the Outer Continental Shelf area. We can't deal with that. We have proposed a marine sanctuary with a single agency with strong oversight and review powers to help resolve those conflicts so the 2 billion barrels of oil we know are in the channel can be developed in such a way that the biological and recreational resources and half a billion pounds of fish supported by those biological resources can also be enjoyed by the people of the United States. This is essentially why we have put this document before you. Rather than go into the details of the gap, the regulatory problems and the comanagement principles, the county is attempting to work out with the industry and Federal agencies, I would like to ask Dr. Corwin to explain the kinds of hard, biological data that the Santa Barbara County nomination is based on. If you refer to the map which is on page 2 of the testimony you have before you, you will see the gray areas are nominated areas. Every one of those areas and every line drawn to indicate our nomination is based on very solid biological fact. We have spent over $20,000, I would estimate, of donated scientific time plus $8,000 of contributed consultant time and 6 weeks of very hard work almost 7 days a week, drawing those lines and justifying every one of them. We intend to continue this process from the county's point of view. In order to do that, we need facts. We need the kind of data you find in the management information document I believe your counsel has. The county does not have the facilities to develop that data nor does the State coastal commission. This is one reason why we have asked NOAA to assist us in designating a nomination area for a marine sanctuary because once that is designated, we can begin to develop the biological data necessary to make rational decisions concerning the conflicts of resource development in that area. Dr. Corwin will explain why those lines have been drawn and the kind of data we need to make good, solid decisions in the future. STATEMENT OF DR. RUTHANN CORWIN Dr. CORWIN. I would like to point out that the area that is covered by gray in this map we have estimated to be a little over 3,000 square miles. I am not sure where the previous estimates came from, and I would be disappointed if the estimate the gentleman from NOAA was using was based upon a misinterpretation of this information. Mr. BREAUX. I think they might have been lumping Santa Barbara and San Diego together. Dr. CORWIN. That would give you over 10,000 square miles. |