-The effects of the oil disaster in the Santa Barbara Channel are widespread.

The people of this community have gone on record officially opposing the drilling and wanting the removal of the platforms.

It is a monster that, far from serving its master, the public interest, has gone mad and bites the hand that feeds it.

If there are no assurances possible by the oil industry that will protect us from a disaster such as we are suffering, it is unlikely that the controversies surrounding oil drilling in the Santa Barbara Channel will be solved this month or even this year.

-End oil now.

End oil now.

End oil now.

-The oil slick has expanded to about 4 miles.

It's about 21,000 gallons of oil that were spilled.

-This is a highly toxic situation, and people should stay away.

-We do not want offshore oil drilling.

We do not want more spills on our coast or anywhere else.

-We apologize for the damage that it's done to the wildlife, and we're very sorry for the disruption and inconvenience.

-It could take upwards of years before the area is completely returned to its normal state.

-I am here because I'm a resident of Santa Barbara County, and I can smell a rat.

This project is a rat.

-They have violations for destroying wetlands.

They have violations for destroying habitat.

-It's not a stretch for the Congress members to ask the state to do what they're supposed to be doing in the first place.

[music] -This is not [?].

This is the moment for them to act.

This is the moment we're all for fact-finding.

This is [?].

-I started a lot with communication.

I think I've always had that background of talking and being a speaker and being a voice in a lot of ways.

Then, obviously, the environment, I mean, it can't speak for itself.

It does need people to talk for nature.

Without the environment, without the world, without nature, what else is there?

My hometown, super affected by wildfires.

My whole childhood neighborhood burnt down when I was in high school.

That was the first time I ever saw climate effects in my space, ever.

Watching the community shift so much because of fires that we kept having every single year and nothing was being fixed, and it was pretty easy to see who was at the root cause of a lot of these fires.

It was the corporations that ran our electricity and gas.

It was PG&E.

That was who caused fires in my hometown.

-I was born '61 and grew up during the oil spill of '69 in Santa Barbara that led to a lot of awareness, national awareness, to our need to take care of the environment.

I was fishing at 13, 14, 15.

I was always engaged with the ocean at a young age, and I was just drawn to the marine environment.

I look at myself a little bit uniquely positioned as to be president of CFSB, which represents all the different fishing interests that exist in the Port of Santa Barbara.

If you remember the details associated with that spill, we were precluded from fishing.

It started as a 6-mile area of coast up there, and then they expanded it.

It was offshore.

We weren't allowed to fish in that space for a fairly long period of time.

Then, there was this broader market impact that, "Okay.

Santa Barbara's had an oil spill.

The fish that come from Santa Barbara may have oil on them."

-The amount of oil that spilled into the ocean was huge.

This is one of the biggest oil disasters that we've ever had in California.

I mean, there was oil that spread all the way down to Redondo Beach, 150 miles away.

Killed untold numbers of animals in the channel.

If we have another oil spill here, that affects everybody's livelihoods.

That is an economic disaster.

-From the commercial fishing perspective, they got payouts in the past couple of years because of those spills, but no fisherman wants to be paid not to work.

They love their job.

They need their job.

It's ingrained in who they are.

It's their identity.

It's why they get up every day.

It's what they know how to do.

It gives them a sense of purpose.

Getting a check is almost just like a slap in the face.

It's like, "Here, we soiled your office [sarcastic chuckle] and ruined and killed everything in it, but here's a check."

-The company announced on the 10th anniversary of the oil spill, they had restarted production at one of these platforms.

They were celebrating.

That's really disrespectful to people here who lived through this disaster.

The way they built it and designed this pipeline, it doesn't work.

We know this technology is not effective for this pipeline, and it's not going to be effective for this pipeline.

Right now, we're at a point where this has been moving forward with zero environmental review of any kind.

The way they have operated here has made a lot of people think that this is not a company that we can trust to follow the law.

They started digging up coastal habitats and sensitive areas here.

What they would say is in order to fix those defects on the pipeline.

-It honestly became so all-enveloping.

I would wake up and go to sleep and think about this.

We see it as there's no question.

There's no question that this isn't the right project.

There's no question that these aren't the right owners.

-Coastal Commission gave them notices and eventually ended up issuing cease and desist orders, which Sable did not comply with.

They just kept working.

I think the company would tell you the same thing.

The Commission ended up giving Sable an $18 million fine, which is the largest fine I think the Commission has ever issued to anyone.

-The insurance policies that we're looking at that Sable wants to still bring up today and use today are the ones when the pipe was put in.

That was in the '80s.

I think it was 1984.

-We should be able to weigh in and be part of this decision-making process and submit expert testimony.

The public is supposed to have a say in this.

-It's hard to keep people sustained in an action that doesn't necessarily have big wins to celebrate.

This is a fight that's been going on for at least two years.

It's a super long, interesting legacy.

I feel like we had to keep that alive.

It all started in Santa Barbara.

It all started with that horrible spill.

Now, it's like we're back again at this dark, sad place that is on the horizon that could happen again.

This was the Coastal Commission hearing where they had an $18 million fine.

This was in April.

The students got a feature, which is super cool.

-All the students at UCSB who have showed up to all of these different public hearings and events and made these incredible arguments.

-Not a single representative from an almost $2.3 billion company would be bothered to show up for the single largest project in their company's history, which also happens to be one of the most destructive we've seen on this coast.

-We should have standards for companies that are operating in California.

In particular, companies that are operating a dangerous, high-risk project affecting people's lives.

Not just the people that live along the route of this pipeline.

A project like this has a major impact on all of us who live in this area.

-My dad was a commercial fisherman for his whole life.

He fished for abalone and urchins, crab and lobster, and pretty much everything else in between.

I was fortunate to have a lifestyle on the water and to be around a very unique industry, especially as a child.

He just taught me a lot about what's important in life, which is, in my opinion, the relationships you have with people and the relationships you have with Mother Nature and how you engage with the natural environment.

Because my dad passed when I was 12 years old, it's an age when people tend to still take you in as a child.

I'm so fortunate, though, because I had this harbor community and they still embrace me just the same.

To be able to work with those types of people and make my livelihood in that environment is really a special thing.

-It's the health of our oceans.

It's the health of our ecosystems.

It's all of these creatures that we depend on.

Our whole life would fall apart without this super fragile network that exists out in the water out there.

-There are those oil producers that aren't going to relinquish their grip on their captured market.

We're in a bad place as a serious industrialized nation that produces a lot of oil and exports oil to have our government captured by oil interests that then distort our ability to make good decisions moving forward.

-I don't have a lot of faith in the California Regulatory Agencies.

It just doesn't feel like it's strong enough, and that's a pretty scary thing to say.

I think Sable is stronger.

-Everyone feels sort of involuntarily neutral.

I think everyone feels like this type of thing is too big for us to have any say because it's federal.

-What's the next thing that they're going to ignore?

If they don't feel like something should apply to them, then how can we trust that they're going to follow anything here in California?

-The pipeline didn't burst.

It didn't leak.

It corroded.

It's pretty crazy that this pipeline that they're seeking to restart, the thing that they're ignoring is the corrosion controls, cathodic protection.

-There could be a spill every year and a major rupture every four years in this pipeline if it restarts.

Major ruptures could be up to twice the size of the 2015 spill.

-It just can be so discouraging.

The discouragement can probably be the hardest part because it just feels so daunting and depressing every day.

There's so much to learn that kills your spirit.

-It's like a flea on a dog.

The thing we really need to do is try to regain control of the system.

-I think on a national scale, we're definitely fighting a really big beast.

Sable is kind of like a figurehead of this bigger, more horrible, ugly thing that we are all trying to fight against right now.

These policymakers and laws and all these different things that are changing, I think they want to keep us tired and keep us not wanting to work hard and keep us down.

What else can be done?

If a huge fine doesn't work, if legal action isn't working, what would stop them?

-This company making money should not outweigh the risk to everybody here in California, the damage that this does to the earth's climate, the potential for another spill.

A few people from Texas and Las Vegas making money should not outweigh the potential devastating impact that all of us here can take if this were to go on again.

-Our rights as individual citizens have been grievously violated by the wrong train of abuses and insertions.

Our local government in Santa Barbara has acquiesced to the intimidation by federal and state government in consort with irresponsible activities of legal private enterprise to rob us of our unpolluted natural environment.

It is our feeling, and perhaps your own, that legal-less nation has now superseded justice and that legal ritual has been performed, but justice has not been fulfilled.

[music]