oil & water
A
Ben Shichman
California’s Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act (or Prop 65) was enacted as a ballot initiative in November 1986. The proposition was intended to protect California citizens and the state’s drinking water sources from chemicals known to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm and to inform citizens about exposures to such chemicals.
lmost every American can tell you about the Exxon Valdez oil spill. This spill is a national yardstick for environmental catastrophe and rightly so: oil covered so much of the Alaskan coast that, had it taken place further south, it would have covered every inch of beach between Oregon and Mexico. Although Exxon claims it spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound’s pristine waters, the true number is much larger. But as big a disaster as the Valdez was, it is dwarfed by the world’s largest spills and the accumulation of the thousands of smaller oil spills that happen everyday. In 1991, some 240 million gallons of oil poured from Kuwait’s sabotaged wells into the Persian Gulf, creating the largest spill on record. In 1979, an offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico spewed 140 million gallons of black crude onto the coast in the world’s second largest spill. Then there are the ‘everyday’ drilling spills that don’t make the newspaper. For example, California’s offshore rigs have been the source of 120 ma-
28
Waterkeeper Magazine Summer 2007
jor ‘blowouts’ — industry lingo for uncontrolled discharges under pressure. And the state’s drilling operations reported close to 40,000 smaller spills totaling more than three million gallons over just a three-year period in the 1990s. The next stop on our oil journey is the gauntlet of pipes, pressure cookers and tanks known as the refinery, another sieve in this porous system. The U.S. oil industry has admitted that a stunning 85 percent of its nearly 200 refineries are major sources of groundwater contamination. The rest of the oil journey goes on much the same: leaks from storage tanks at America’s omnipresent filling stations; discharge from cars, trucks, boats and lawnmowers; and used motor oil often illegally dumped down storm drains. It all adds up to billions of gallons every year, and whether spilled by the tanker, by the gallon or by the drop, oil is an environmental poison. And what of the oil that finally reaches its explosive destination in the cylinder of an automobile? Well, it too sullies our waters, less directly perhaps, but no less harmful. Rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from burning oil and other fossil fuels are acidifying the oceans, literally changing their chemical composition and upsetting nature’s delicate balance. Researchers warn that the last time the ocean underwent such a chemical change was when the dinosaurs went extinct. And as carbon emissions warm the world, rising seas will inundate the wetlands, marshes and estuaries that now buffer us from storms and filter polluted runoff before it can reach our fisheries and nesting grounds for birds and wildlife. What can be done? How can we beat our oil addiction before it beats us? I offer this three step cure to anyone willing to listen. First, America must civilize the oil industry. In a civilized society we demand that one person not needlessly harm another. It is a basic rule that we are taught as children and that is enshrined in our laws. But not when it comes to the oil industry. The oil industry has polluted our waters by the billions of gallons, killing fish and wildlife and destroying vital habitat. Its products sicken millions of people each year with asthma, emphysema, heart disease and cancer. It is loading our atmosphere with carbon emissions that will warm the earth and cause vast environmental damage. Yet it skips through life seemingly untouched by the hand of law or reason. Oil companies report the largest profits in the history of commerce, their CEOs are paid gargantuan salaries of hundreds of millions of dollars and they enjoy a gusher of government subsidies totaling as much as $113 billion per year. They call it black gold, after all. We need a new business model. www.waterkeeper.org
