On Tuesday, May 13, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors will be taking on a big issue. At the meeting in Santa Maria, the supervisors will consider proposals to phase out our county’s onshore oil production. It’s a discussion that is long overdue. Because the evidence is clear — pumping oil harms our environment, damages our health, warms the planet, and does little to boost our economy. To protect our community, the board should take bold steps now to phase out existing oil wells.
Fortunately, the Board of Supervisors has the clear legal authority to take decisive action. A new law created last year affirmed local governments’ authority to limit or prohibit oil operations within their jurisdiction. In fact, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors themselves — including four members of the current board — wrote in support of the bill before it passed, arguing that it would give them “the independent authority and ability to restrict and otherwise limit oil and gas operations to meet local needs.”
The county will consider a range of phaseout options at the meeting, including proposals that will only apply to new drilling. That’s the wrong approach. Only one new oil well permit was approved in the last 10 years. Several projects were abandoned over the same period.
Instead, we need to phase out oil production. We cannot leave the more than 1,000 existing wells in our county untouched. Just last year, Santa Barbara County set a commendable target to reduce carbon pollution 50 percent by 2030 — and that isn’t possible if we keep these wells operating.
We and our colleagues at UC Santa Barbara decided to look into the impacts of different approaches the county could take on our health, environment, and economy. So we ran the numbers.
When it comes to our health, oil production is bad news. Wells release toxins that are linked to serious health problems, like heart disease, asthma, and diabetes. Nearly half of our county’s wells are located less than one mile from schools, hospitals, and residential neighborhoods. We shouldn’t be putting these communities at risk. Further, drilling activities near the Santa Maria aquifer pose a serious drinking water contamination risk for the 200,000 residents who rely on it. Decommissioning these wells would give us clearer air and cleaner water. Our analysis found that an ambitious phaseout policy could avoid over $80 million in health-related costs.
And oil production is also bad for our environment. We’ve seen firsthand how spills can wreak havoc. Poisoned wildlife, contaminated ecosystems, beaches turned black. But even without disasters, pumping oil in Santa Barbara County adds carbon and methane pollution that warms the planet. Plus, Santa Barbara’s oil is dirtier on average than other places because our wells are aging and depleted, making it more expensive to extract here. We found that if the county adopted an ambitious phaseout policy, it would avoid more than 300,000 megatons of carbon pollution by 2045 and save an estimated $21.8 million in damages from climate change.
And while some folks will tell you it would be bad for the economy to phase out oil, the evidence just doesn’t support that. Oil property taxes contribute between $3.3 million and $4.4 million — a miniscule 0.2-0.3 percent of the county’s total revenue. At the same time, oil infrastructure costs our community, by dragging down nearby property values. Oil production also strains public resources: emergency services, road maintenance from heavy truck traffic, and costly oversight of a high-risk industry. And when spills happen — as they inevitably do — companies often walk away, leaving taxpayers to foot the cleanup bill.
Oil and gas interests argue that we can’t phase out production because of job loss. But we see ways that the several hundred workers employed in the county’s oil and gas sector can move to better jobs. Our county should include policies for robust financial support and job training for workers transitioning to new sectors. Plus, winding down oil operations will require skilled oil workers to help. We’ll need workers to decommission wells as we phase them out. And some wells could even be converted for geothermal energy — a reuse option especially well-suited to Santa Barbara County.
At UCSB, we’re building models that show how the region’s growing clean energy sector will impact jobs and workers on California’s Central Coast. So far, we’ve found that nearly 3,000 solar and wind jobs could be created by 2045 if we hit statewide clean energy goals. Installing electric vehicle chargers and heat pumps could create even more high-quality, local jobs. These jobs in clean energy are also safer — the fatality rate for workers in oil and gas extraction is seven times higher than other occupations.
We can also look nearby to see the economic impacts of increasing oil production. Our neighbors to the east, Kern County, produce 30 times more oil than Santa Barbara County. Kern also has a consistently higher unemployment rate than Santa Barbara County. Pumping oil does not translate to a booming economy.
Finally, phasing out oil production is politically popular. Residents of Santa Barbara County hold strong beliefs about oil and gas development and climate action. Approximately 60 percent of county residents believe their local officials should do more to address global warming; 56 percent oppose expanding offshore drilling for oil and natural gas, and 69 percent believe developing clean energy should be a priority. People want their elected officials to take climate action seriously.
Santa Barbara sparked the modern environmental movement after a tragic oil spill. Now it’s time for us to lead again. We are on the brink of a historic decision for our community: We can either stay tethered to a toxic, dying industry or step boldly into a cleaner, safer future. The county supervisors have the legal power to act. They should use it to protect our air, water, and communities — not just by blocking a handful of proposed wells but by committing to a full fossil fuel phaseout.
