Sea
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Sea
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Saftey
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California's Rigs to Reefs Battle
Creates Strange Alliances
by Ken Weiss
|
Above the water's surface, oil rigs are rusting, clanging,
grease-streaked eyesores that mar our views of the blue Pacific.
Underwater, the view changes dramatically. Mussels, scallops and sea
stars cling to the steel latticework, turning platform legs and crossbeams into
a kaleidoscope of pink, green and orange sea life. Fish rarely found on natural
reefs congregate in the shadows of these superstructures.
Oil companies have long pledged that California's 27 offshore platforms
will be removed after their wells run dry and they become obsolete. Now, a
movement to leave the submerged portions of abandoned rigs intact has won the
support of the California Legislature and sparked a debate about the fate of
the hulking steel structures that have become the adoptive home to an
unforeseen abundance of sea life.
A bill awaiting the governor's signature proposes that state officials
consider each platform as it comes up for retirement. The platform
"legs" could remain in place if the Department of Fish and Game
concludes that leaving them would be more of a benefit than a detriment to the
environment.
The tops of the platforms in every case would be removed, probably down
to a depth of 85 feet. The legislation doesn't specify. But the Coast Guard
usually insists on an 85-foot clearance and also requires marking the reefs
with buoys to avoid hazards to ship navigation. The governor has not indicated
whether he will sign the bill.
If the program were to move forward, converting rigs to reefs would
release companies from their commitments to restore the underwater areas to
what they once looked like.
The industry could save as much as $660 million by avoiding the costly
and technically tricky procedure of removing every bit of each massive frame,
some nearly as tall as the Empire State Building. Under the legislation, up to
$400 million of the savings would be returned to the state to finance various
marine research and conservation programs.
Although the bill passed handily, debate continues to rage over an
issue that has stirred emotions since the 1969 oil spill off Santa Barbara.
Images of oiled birds floundering on the beach are still vivid in the minds of
people passionately opposed to the rigs-to-reef bill.
"We call it rigs to grief, or rigs to rubbish," said
Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara). "It is the worst
anti-environmental bill passed this year."
Nineteen of the 27 offshore platforms are concentrated in the Santa
Barbara Channel, fostering hard-core opposition by two dozen environmental
groups that contend the bill is a giveaway to the oil industry and will turn
the sea floor into a toxic junkyard.
"Some people have an emotional response to this bill," said
state Sen. Dede Alpert (D-Coronado), who sponsored the legislation. "They
never wanted offshore oil drilling, they had a spill off their coast and they
don't want to do anything that would benefit an oil company."
Alpert, an environmentalist, broke ranks with her friends on the issue.
She is convinced it would be better to leave the artificial reefs as oases for
fish. The reefs, at least initially, would remain off-limits to fishing.
Although California, up to now, has not allowed a single abandoned rig
to remain as a reef, states bordering the Gulf of Mexico have allowed such
conversions and collected tens of millions of dollars from the oil industry.
More than 160 platforms have been left partially intact, with only surface
structures removed, off the coast of Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and
Florida.
But the Gulf states have been friendlier to offshore oil development
than California. The debate over offshore oil has complicated the issue here,
making for strange political alliances.
Recreational fishermen, scuba dive clubs and other longtime critics of
the offshore oil industry have linked arms with oil companies to favor
preserving the underwater structures.
On the opponents' side, major environmental groups have teamed up with
the commercial fishing industry to challenge the legislation. One of those
environmental groups, American Oceans Campaign, is waging a campaign against
bottom trawling. Now, it finds itself aligned with the trawlers. American
Oceans wants the rigs removed as part of a general ocean cleanup. The fishermen
want the rigs pulled out so they won't snag their trawling nets as they drag
them along the sea floor.
Zeke Grader of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Assns. said
the steel legs and crossbeams could pose a major hazard for trawlers and other
commercial fishermen using heavy gear. "They could hang up on these
things," he said. "In some instances, it could result in the loss of
life" of a fishing crew member. Opponents also raise questions about
liability for accidents caused by the submerged structures. They believe the
state could end up paying more to maintain navigational buoys marking the reefs
than it would collect from the oil companies. Gulf states have not reported
such problems, however.
In addition, opponents contend that some of the shell mounds at the
feet of the platforms are contaminated by drilling muds and other toxic
materials that could leach into the environment. "No other industry is
allowed to leave its toxic mess for the state to manage and maintain at
taxpayer expense," said Linda Krop, chief council for the Santa
Barbara-based Environmental Defense Center.
George Steinbach, decommissioning project manager for Chevron, said the
sites are mischaracterized as toxic trash piles. "What they are labeling
as trash is not appropriate," he said. "It is a well-established
marine habitat."
The emotional debate has spilled into the halls of academia too,
generating hard feelings and dueling science.
Milton Love, a UC Santa Barbara researcher who has been tracking the
demise of rockfish, such as bocaccio, lingcod and cowcod, has found many times
more of those overfished species near the platform legs than anywhere else.
But neither his studies nor others have settled a fundamental question:
Do these artificial reefs increase fish populations or do they merely draw fish
from rocky reefs?
We may never know the answer, Love said. Yet he knows what he has seen
over the years tooling around in a tiny sub, surveying reefs, both natural and
artificial, and counting fish.
"There is no question that in certain years at certain platforms,
there are astronomical numbers of rockfish," Love said. "During those
years, the platforms act as nursery grounds."
A panel of six marine scientists from UC Santa Barbara and the Scripps
Institution of Oceanography this spring challenged Love's conclusions, stating
in a report that there is no "sound scientific evidence" to support
that platforms enhance the abundance of fish.
Furthermore, the panel said that removing the top 85 feet of the legs
closest to the surface, would diminish the mussels, algae and other organisms
that provide food and shelter for young fish. Other marine scientists, who have
avoided the fight, consider the sea life on the platforms to be an
insignificant speck in the vast ocean.
Yet some of them are dismayed over the prospect of killing marine
animals when platforms are removed--a process that begins with detonating
explosives to loosen the legs from the sea floor. The process regularly kills
thousands of fish in the vicinity.
When Chevron removed four platforms in 1996 off Carpinteria, it left
2,700 tons of mussels, scallops, sea stars, sponges and other creatures rotting
on the docks in Long Beach. Ultimately, they were scraped off the platform and
hauled to a dump.
It was the removal of those platforms that prompted United Anglers of
Southern California, a consortium of recreational fishermen, to propose leaving
the legs in place as artificial reefs.
"Our folks believe this is a unique way to turn lemons into
lemonade," said Barry Broad, United Anglers' lobbyist in Sacramento.
"It could never harm the ocean to leave them there. If you take them away,
you kill everything that lives there."
And a bit older article:
Monday, October 25, 1999
Plan to Turn Oil Rigs Into Reefs Fuels
Controversy Environment: Firms say seven platforms off the Orange County coast
could become habitats. Activists say companies want to avoid removal.
By SEEMA MEHTA, Times Staff Writer
Seven oil platforms
off Orange County's coast nearing retirement could become permanent havens for
aquatic life if their owners win a legislative battle to turn them into
artificial reefs. But environmentalists say oil companies just want to avoid a
costly cleanup. Underwater invertebrates such as mussels and barnacles attach
themselves to the steel towers that support the platforms. Creatures such as
strawberry anemones, ochre starfish, rockfish and sea cucumbers gather around
the skeletal structures. Under state and federal law, these supports are to be
removed with the rest of the platforms when oil companies decommission the
rigs, cap their wells and restore the sea floor to its original condition. But
"rig to reef" proponents say these thriving underwater communities
should not be disturbed--even when the offshore rigs are no longer in use.
"For most of us, the notion that an oil rig's anything but an oil rig is
unheard of," said state Sen. Dede Alpert (D-Coronado). "People forget
about what lives under the water." Alpert has sponsored a bill that would
allow oil companies to leave the underwater steel structure in place to act as
an artificial reef, even after the platform is removed. Oil companies would
save millions of dollars in decommissioning costs, but would still have to pay
a substantial sum--perhaps 75% of the savings--into a marine research endowment
fund, Alpert said. The California Endowment for Marine Preservation bill
probably will come before the Senate Natural Resources and Wildlife Committee early
next year. The Legislature's decision could determine the fate of seven
platforms off Seal Beach and Huntington Beach. These rigs will be
decommissioned in the coming decades, some as soon as 2005. Statewide, 32 rigs
will be decommissioned in the next decade. Factors such as shipping traffic and
water depth and quality will determine which could be turned into reefs.
"This is a situation where we feel true environmentalists' interests and
industry's interests could very well be aligned," said George Steinbach,
Chevron Corp.'s decommissioning manager for California offshore areas. Chevron
and other oil companies funded the start-up of the nonprofit California
Artificial Reef Enhancement program, which is lobbying for the conversion of
rigs to reefs. "People don't realize what's out there," said Kristin
Valette, a program board member. "We've already got this ecosystem. It
would do more harm to rip [the rigs] out. It would kill a lot of the marine
environment." Backers say successful rig-to-reef programs exist in Texas
and Louisiana. More than 100 Gulf of Mexico rigs have been turned over to the
two states and now attract a variety of marine creatures, which in turn attract
divers and sportfishermen. Environmentalists remain skeptical of the proposal. "A
reef is a natural, alive animal system. An oil well is an oil well. It's
absolutely ludicrous to call an oil well a reef," said Gordon Labedz, a
member of the Sierra Club's Coastal Protection Committee. The Surfrider
Foundation of San Clemente only supports artificial reefs as replacements for
natural reefs destroyed by people. "Our position is that artificial reefs
should be looked at when you have an existing reef habitat that's been impacted
by human activity," said Eve Kliszewski, Surfrider's environmental
director. "We're skeptical of the [rigs to reefs] concept because it's
basically leaving trash in the ocean. The push toward legislation is premature
because we need to know more." Susan Jordan, a board member of the League
for Coastal Protection, disputes the proposal's basic premise that a rig could
ever be a reef. "Some people try and say this is a habitat. It's not--it's
an oil company leaving debris in the ocean. We have a tremendous amount of
debris left over by them already," she said. "The analogy that I use
is a telephone pole versus a tree. Just because it sits there, it's a structure
and birds can sit on it doesn't mean it's a viable habitat." Key to the
long-term debate over turning rigs into reefs is determining the environmental
benefit. Researchers and environmentalists hope that question will be answered
by the time more rigs are decommissioned. "There isn't anything that's
happening overnight," said Warner Chabot, the Pacific region director for
the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Marine Conservation. "Let's do
science first and policy second."
Additional
Reading:
http://www.calreefs.org/qa.tpl
Back to Safety and Education
Posted March 5, 2003
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