Pearl River A picture in the Times caught my eye. The caption indicated that people were jogging on Refugio State Beach in Santa Barbara County. The article wasn’t really about the beach so much as it was about the fact that Trump and his Energy Department had used his Iran war to trigger the 1950s Defense Production Act to reopen an oil pipeline that had been dormant since 2015 due to an oil spill. Too much of this sounds like the perpetual dispute between Trump and his antipathy to California, particularly it’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsomo, a potential aspirant for the White House.
This all sounds environmentally risky, but that’s not exactly what took me to Google with the question: Was Refugio State Beach the same as El Refugio State Park? The AI answer came back quickly;
Yes, California El Refugio State Park is the same as Refugio State Beach. It is officially named Refugio State Beach and is a protected state beach park located approximately 20 miles west of Santa Barbara on the Gaviota Coast.
Why was I asking? That answer is also available quickly. In 1968, driving a Ford Econoline van doing double duty in what is now called “van life,” I had camped there for several days. The article referred to this area using a nickname, “American Riveria.” This was news to me, having pulled into a cheap state campsite over the Thanksgiving weekend joining scores of other campers on a busman’s holiday of tents, pickups, RVs, and whatever. Suffice, it to say, we fit right in, though maybe a bit déclassé, even in that crowd. There were red and black stripes painted on the side of the van and something hand painted on the driver’s door, saying “Gypsy Wheels”.
All of that is a longer story, but it pulled me into the article on a personal level. The reporter notes that some of “The nation’s first offshore rigs were built here in the late 1800s, and in 1969 came the nation’s first oil spill, which brought about the modern environmental movement and radicalized many Santa Barbara residents against fossil fuels.” I had camped there and enjoyed the generosity of families in neighboring campsites sharing their Thanksgiving dinner with me only a year before this epic, game changing oil spill.
Exxon Mobil offloaded the pipeline in 2024 to Sable and its Texas-based owner. In a too familiar story, Sable worked the referee, Trump, to restart the pipeline by taking advantage of the crippled Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the opportunity provided by Trump’s war. An earlier investigation had found that the pipeline ruptured “because of severe corrosion and poor monitoring” which “is a symptom of a design flaw in that kind of pipe,” according to the nonprofit Pipeline Safety Trust. The federal government and the White House have doubled down and claimed that new shut-off valves make it all safer. It goes without saying that shut-off values are only employed after a leak is detected. Nothing about such values is preventive, and there is no report of the company planning to lay an upgraded pipeline to modern standards and design.
The Department of Transportation stated that “Sable Offshore is being held to safety and environmental standards that exceed normal federal standards.” This is an interesting position, since federal standards have been diluted and waived, changing the benchmark, and leaving any and all to wonder if there are any standards at all.
Santa Barbara County is one of the richest in the United States, but what was special about El Refugio is that it was in fact a refuge for people without deep pockets to enjoy a special piece of the country that was then, and certainly is more so now, out of their reach. It’s not a wilderness area, but that doesn’t mean that it should not be protected for the people, especially when the risks of the pipeline are demonstrably more than the small amount of oil it is carrying. It will be no surprise when researchers and reporters uncover a donation to a Trump-something from Sable, and even more tragically, when El Refugio suffers another catastrophe.