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- A cleanup effort residents say was slow to start is now underway off the coast
of Santa Barbara, California, where crude oil from a broken pipeline leaked into
the Pacific Ocean and washed ashore at Refugio State Beach. The company that
operates the pipeline first said 21,000 gallons had leaked, but then increased
their estimate to 105,000 gallons. On Thursday, The Santa Barbara Independent
revealed the ruptured pipeline operated by Plains All American is the only
pipeline in the county that is not required to be equipped with an automatic
shutdown valve in case of a leak, because it operates outside of the regulatory
oversight of the county. This latest spill recalls a catastrophic blowout at an
oil well in the same area in 1969, when Union Oil’s drilling platform spewed an
estimated three million gallons of crude along 30 miles of coastline. We speak
to Tyler Hayden of The Santa Barbara Independent and Linda Krop of the
Environmental Defense Center.
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