Oil spill changed attorney’s life 50 years ago

When he arrived at the Santa Barbara beach, attorney Marc J. McGinnes said there was so much oil in the water it quieted the sound of the crashing waves.

"As you neared the beach, you could almost see the benzene molecules in the air," McGinnes said in an interview Wednesday, recalling the oil spill of 1969 that changed national environmental law.

"... A seal was in the process of dying. It was completely covered. Its eyes were covered and you could tell it had ingested oil," McGinnes recalled.

The beaches of Santa Barbara had been stained black after Union Oil's offshore platform erupted, spewing gas and oil.

The disaster triggered a public outcry, leading to the modern environmental movement and a slew of legislative changes. McGinnes, then a business attorney with Thelen, Marrin, Johnson & Bridges LLP, became one of the pioneers of the movement. He is now an environmental attorney and founding professor of UC Santa Barbara's Environmental Studies Program.

Now 50 years later, many of the regulations and environmental laws he helped pioneer are being relaxed by President Donald J. Trump's administration, McGinnes said, in an effort to open the California coast to offshore production.

"That will turn everything back to 1968," he said.

At the time of the spill, McGinnes worked at a large corporate law firm in San Francisco, representing companies such as Kaiser Industries and Standard Oil, and political clients including then-Gov. Ronald Reagan.

However, after receiving a call from his mentor, then-Republican Congressman Paul N. McCloskey, telling him about the spill, McGinnes left his firm to help with efforts to establish the National Environmental Policy Act.

"He said, 'Get down there as soon as you can. ... What we'll create here, if we do it right, is a national environmental movement that is going to address the problem of environmental indifference and abuse of all kinds, everywhere,'" McGinnes said. "So that's what I did, I moved down to Santa Barbara and went to work with the people already on the ground."

Linda J. Krop, chief counsel of the Environmental Defense Center, an organization McGinnes helped found, said the spill occurred after Union Oil was granted a waiver from the government allowing it to bypass certain federal drilling regulations.

"Without the oil spill, we wouldn't have the environmental laws we have today," Krop said.

After the spill, Union Oil President Fred Heartley infamously said, "I am amazed at the publicity for the loss of a few birds," a statement McGinnes said fueled public outrage.

"Everybody across the country were just dumbstruck by that kind of indifference," McGinnes said.

The spill received so much public attention that President Richard Nixon and foreign dignitaries flew out by helicopter to survey the damage.

"They were gingerly prancing around, so they wouldn't get their feet in the oil," he added.

After witnessing the devastation, Nixon signed most of the environmental regulatory legislation proposed at the time, including the National Environmental Policy Act.

Sigrid Wright, CEO and executive director of The Community and Environmental Council, a nonprofit environmental organization McGinnes also helped found, said she and her associates are using the 50-year anniversary of the spill to bring awareness to environmental issues and the Trump-proposed rollbacks to offshore drilling regulations.

"Clearly, we have to stay vigilant with the types of rollbacks we are seeing from the Trump administration," Wright said. "We have deep concern that we no longer have federal leadership and there is no one steering the ship."

After decades of environmental advocacy and teaching environmental law at UC Santa Barbara, McGinnes, now 77, focuses on writing. He recently published a memoir entitled, "In Love with Earth: Testimonies and Heartsongs from an Environmental Elder," in which he chronicles his foray into environmental justice.

"For me, the environmental crisis has always been a spiritual crisis," McGinnes said. "Now 50 years later, we need to stop combusting hydro carbo and the way to prevent a spill is don't drill."