An open letter from the Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN) and the Lower Mississippi Riverkeeper advises those affected by the Santa Barbara Plains All American Pipeline spill not to participate in the clean-up effort.
“We do not want to see your citizens’, workers’, and volunteers’ health harmed in the way we have seen it damaged along our Gulf Coast after the 2010 BP oil disaster,” the letter says.
But the warning may be too late to help some like Osiris Castañeda, a father, ocean lover and filmmaking professor who cleaned up a stretch of Santa Barbara County beach with other volunteers on May 20, the day after a Plains Pipeline spilled an estimated 101,000 gallons of oil into the Pacific Ocean.
A video Castañeda produced with the Youth CineMedia Inc, documents a confrontation between the volunteers and officials who ordered them to leave or face being fined or possibly arrested. An official provided a number for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife office of spill prevention and response , which was giving out passes to volunteers, and told them without the passes they were forbidden to be on the beach. The volunteers called to get passes but, to the group’s dismay, a representative from the agency told them no volunteers were needed.
