UnGovr Transcript
iHow this transcript is madeUnGovr transcribes the official recording with automated speech-to-text, separates speakers by voice, and matches voices to the seated roster. Names and attributions are AI estimates and may contain errors.Verify any quote yourself: click anywhere in the transcript and the official video jumps to that exact moment, so you can check any quote against the recording.0:00 – 0:079 turns
All right, good morning. I will call to order the September 15th 2026 regular meeting of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. Madam Clerk will you please call the roll?
Roll call, called by Jacquelyne Alexander
Show transcript
The next item of business is the approval of the September 1st, 2026 minutes from the September 1, 2026 meeting. Can I get a motion? Move approval.
I'll second.
A motion from Hartman and a second from Caps. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes unanimously.
Next item of business is the County Executive Officer's Report. Ms. Peterson, do you have anything for us this morning?
I do. Good morning supervisors. I am starting with a report from the Agricultural Commissioner's Office about the Japanese Consulate Delegation. On September 2nd, the Agricultural Commissioner's Office welcomed a delegation from the Consulate General of Japan in Los Angeles for a discussion and tour highlighting the importance of agriculture in the County of Santa Barbara. The visit included an overview of the office's plant health, pest prevention and environmental protection programs as well as tours of local agricultural facilities. Chair Nelson and members of his team joined the tour which provided and fueled an opportunity to explore potential collaboration in smart agriculture, agriculture data collection and other agri-tech initiatives.
Representatives of the Consulate General of Japan expressed appreciation for the opportunity to learn more about local agriculture, noting the significance of Santa Barbara County agricultural exports to Japan. I also have an update from county IT The County Information Technology staff members Kyle Slattery and Mark Garcia recently completed the year-long Certified Government Chief Information Officer, CGCIO program through the Public Technology Institute and Rutgers University. The Executive Leadership Program focuses on IT governance, cybersecurity, and digital transformation. Strengthening the county's capacity to align technology investments with organizational priorities and lead complex cross departmental initiatives. Congratulations to Kyle and Mark I also want to acknowledge that today is September 15th is National Voter Registration Day and the County of Santa Barbara is encouraging eligible residents to verify their voter registration information and register to vote ahead of the November 3rd, 2026 general election.
Voters can register or check their registration information at the county elections websites sbcvote.com The deadline to register for the upcoming election is October 19th The County of Santa Barbara will host a virtual El Nino community meeting on October 1st, 2026 from 530 to 7 p.m.. The meeting will provide residents with information on the weather outlook, county creek and road preparations, personal preparedness and key storm and flood safety tips to help residents prepare for potential winter weather impacts.
Spanish interpretation and closed captioning will be available Registration information can be found on the county's website. And finally this morning I'm pleased to share with you a new video in the Your County, Your Services video series. This series provides our community with a behind-the-scenes look at county programs and services helping explain how county government works and how residents can access services.
Videos are shared through channel 20, the county's monthly newsletter CSB TV's YouTube channel and County social media in English and Spanish. This latest video highlights the county's 911 dispatch operations including what happens when residents call or text 9-1-1 and how dispatchers connect them with the appropriate emergency response. Let's take a look
Welcome to Santa Barbara County. Let's explore what the county does for you, your county, your services. 911 what's the address of your emergency? When you call or text 9-1-1 help begins the moment your message reaches a trained emergency dispatcher.
Okay Jorge, what's going on there?
Available 24 hours a day seven days a week these highly trained professionals are often the very first people to respond in an emergency. What address did you use? gathering critical information, coordinating resources and helping send the right responders when every second matters. Across Santa Barbara County 9-1-1 calls are answered by trained emergency dispatchers. Depending on where you're calling from your call may be answered by the Sheriff's Public Safety Dispatch Center or another local public safety answering point.
If your emergency requires fire or medical assistance, your call is seamlessly connected to the Regional Fire Communications Center so the appropriate and closest available emergency responders can be dispatched without delay. Behind-the-scenes, dispatchers are doing far more than answering the phone – they're coordinating with deputies, firefighters, paramedics and other emergency personnel, sharing updates in real time, and helping ensure every emergency receives the response it needs.
But what if making a phone call isn't possible? Text to 911 is available throughout Santa Barbara County and connects you directly with the live local emergency dispatcher. Whether you're unable to speak because of a medical emergency, you're in a situation where speaking could put you in greater danger or your deaf, hard-of-hearing, or have a speech disability, text to 911 provides another way to get help.
Knowing what to do before an emergency can make all the difference. If you can, call. If you can't, text. Help is always just a call or a text away.
0:07 – 0:109 turns
With gratitude to our 911 dispatchers who do that important work every day, that concludes my report.
Thank you. Thank you, CEO. At this time, Madam Clerk are there any announcements or changes to today's agenda?
Chair Nelson and members of the board. I do have just one quick announcement this morning regarding public participation for information on the Board of Supervisors methods of public participation and instructions on how to provide public comment on items listed on today's agenda or during general public comment please refer to page 2 of the agenda Individuals who wish to provide verbal public comment may do so via Zoom by registering in advance using the link provided on page 2. Please note that Zoom is available solely for the purpose of providing verbal public comment and is not intended for viewing the meeting. Alternative viewing options are listed on page two of the agenda if you have any questions please contact the clerk at the board's office at area code 805 And that concludes my announcements for today.
And just an announcement from the chair for those here in the meeting or those that are watching online that may want to participate in public comment. I know there's a lot of interest in department item number one, the oil and gas prohibition likely public comment depending on how many speakers we have will probably be two minutes. So I just wanna make sure those of you that are here that are preparing to speak that you have a chance to look over your notes and see if you guys can keep it within that time frame. So just wanna get that announcement out before we get started here And with that,
the next item of business is the administrative agenda. Would any board members like to pull any items from the administrative agenda? A-17 from Supervisor Hartman. Madam Clerk, are there any items from the public that the public has pulled?
Chair Nelson and Members of the Board we also have A- 17 vote by the public today.
Okay all right so at this time I'd accept a motion for the balance of the administrative agenda so all items except A-
So moved.
Second. Motion by Hartman, second by Lee. Any further discussion? Seeing none all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Okay at this time we will go ahead and move on to our resolutions before coming back to item A-17. Madam Clerk will you please read administrative item number one into the record
0:10 – 0:164 turns
Chair Nelson and members of the board, administrative item number one is sponsored by Supervisor Capps and Supervisor Hartman. It is to adopt a resolution proclaiming the week of September 14th 2026 through September 20th 2026 as Diaper Need Awareness Week in Santa Barbara County and joining us in person today we have Lori Goodman CEO of LEAP. And Lori if you can please make your way to the podium and I'll go ahead and read the resolution.
Whereas diaper need, the inability to afford enough clean diapers can adversely affect the health and well-being of children and their families. With national surveys indicating that nearly one in two families struggle with diaper need and that 48% of families delay changing diapers to extend their supply. And whereas a sufficient supply of diapers is often required for babies and toddlers to participate in child care and early education programs, enabling children to thrive and parents to work. Yet many parents facing diaper need report missing an average of five days of work And whereas without enough diapers, babies and toddlers risk infections that may require medical attention leading to medical costs and parents may be unable to access child care needed And whereas diaper need is a public health issue and addressing it can lead to economic opportunities and improved health for children, ensuring all families have access of basic necessities to thrive.
And whereas Santa Barbara County is proud to be home to community-based organizations like LEAP Thank you for joining us today. Now therefore be it hereby ordered and resolved that this Board of Supervisors of the County of Santa Barbara does hereby acknowledge that September 14th through the 20th is recognized as Diaper Need Awareness Week and thanks LEAP, their staff volunteers and donors for their service and encourage citizens to support organizations that distribute diapers to families in need so that all children and families in Santa Barbara County can thrive past and adopted today.
Ms. Goodman?
Thank you so much for recognizing this important week and recognizing that diaper need is just, it's not just one week of the year but every week of the year. In December of 2020, I got a phone call from a friend and acquaintance who said to me, did you know there's no diaper bank in all of Santa Barbara County? Did you know there's not a diaper bank in Ventura County or San Luis Obispo County. And if people wanna access a diaper bank that's registered they need to go to Los Angeles Would LEAP, we were Isla Vista Youth Projects then.
Would LEAP be willing to start a diaper bank? Now there's no public funding for diapers. It's not like food stamps or WIC. None of that covers diapers and this was top COVID. We didn't know how we were gonna do it but we knew there was a need and so we said yes 328,000 diapers distributed later. I can say with confidence that we collectively are making a difference in Santa Barbara County for Santa Barbara County families. The community has stepped up and joined us. We have diaper drives this week and this month across the county from Lompoc to through Goleta into Santa Barbara Yesterday I was talking with one of our parents who, actually a grandparent who is now caring for five of her grandchildren unexpectedly.
And what she said that the diaper pickup allows her to do is bring a little extra joy into her grandchildren's life. Because she knows she can get a little extra each month in terms of diapers, she can sometimes make a choice to buy them ice cream or some water play. Now I think every child deserves some kind of joy and so I'm glad to be part of taking care of the necessities.
Last year we opened our Lompoc Children's Center and that meant that our Family Resource Center also expanded into Lompoc. We are seeing families come from San Maria, from Orkut, from Lompok, from the Valley, Isla Vista, from Goleta, from Santa Barbara all come to different places to get diapers. This coming year we are looking at expanding our reach to partner more formally with Family Service Agency this last year we've been partnering with Hearts Aligned so that we can really amplify that reach 328,000 diapers since When we open February 2021, I think that we're looking at a big increase in the coming year. We couldn't do it without your support and these will be distributed to a family soon. Thank you so much.
Thank you. All right. Madam Clerk, please read administrative item number two into the record.
0:16 – 0:224 turns
Chair Nelson and members of the board. Administrative item number two is sponsored by Supervisor Nelson and Supervisor Lavanino, it is to adopt a resolution proclaiming the week of October 4th 2026 through October 10th 2026 as National 4-H Week in Santa Barbara County. And joining us in person today as they're making their way to the podium we have Melissa Gillen, Shannon Klisch, Quinn Camacho, Lila Garay and Albert Flores.
I'll go ahead and read the resolution. Whereas Santa Barbara County's network of 4-H youth members, volunteers and leaders will celebrate National 4-h Week during the week of October 4th through the 10th 2026 with a theme Beyond Ready which reminds us that 4- H is building a ready generation in a world of change and equips young people with skills for the future while meeting them where they are today. And whereas 4-H is America's largest youth development organization, supporting six million youth across the country. Expanding from its strong agricultural roots, 4-h helps young people explore the world around them and grow into productive adults.
And whereas California 4- H is delivered by the University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources known locally as UC Cooperative Extension and envisions a world in which youth and adults learn, grow, and work together as catalyst for positive change. This is made possible through a continuance partnership first established in 1920 between the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors and the University of California to ensure local access to a nationwide network of educators and scientists dedicated to the development and application of knowledge to address local agricultural, environmental, youth development, and community health issues.
And whereas in 2025 through 2026 Santa Barbara 4-H reached over 555 youth and 120 adult volunteers in community clubs and through expanded learning, engaging them in hands on and experimental learning in projects such as large and small animals welding and ceramics. And whereas compared to the peers, 4-h youth are four times more likely to make a positive contribution to their communities and two times more likely to take courses And pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math STEM.
National 4-H Week showcases the incredible experiences that 4-h offers youth people and highlights the remarkable 4- h youth in Santa Barbara County who work each day to make a positive impact on those around them. And now therefore, be it hereby ordered and resolved that this Board of Supervisors of the County of Santa Barbara does hereby acknowledge October 4th through the 10th as national for each week we encourage all of our citizens to recognize 4- H for the significant impact it has made and continues to make by empowering youth with the skills they need to lead for a lifetime Passed and adopted today.
Thank you so much for recognizing this week. My name is Melissa Guillen, I'm the 4-H Youth Development Advisor for Santa Barbara County and 4-h is delivered locally through UC Cooperative Extension so thank you to the county and to the board for supporting cooperative extension and keeping these programs going. This year we've been really excited to pivot our focus to college and career readiness We have a lot of exciting initiatives on the horizon, including our Teens as Teachers program. We're bringing back Camp Wahoo which will have a counselor and training program and some career exploration camps so really excited for 2027 and the rest of this year in getting those going. You've heard enough from me I'm going to let you hear from some of our members.
So I'll have Albert, Lila, and Quinn speaking with you all today. Thank you.
Hello, my name is Albert Flores and I'm a youth member of the Carpinteria 4-H Club. I raised a goat last year and I had a lot of fun. It taught me a lot about animals and it taught me a lot about just being myself at fair. It was a very good experience and I am doing it this year as well. I'm raising a goat and a turkey this year and I hope that will go good this year. Thank you.
Good morning, thank you all for having me. My name is Lila Garay and I am the current president of Playa del Sur 4-H in Carpinteria although some people know us as Ron's Club. For those who don't know we are the furthest club south of Santa Maria so getting dragged out of bed at 6am to be here sure beats going to school. I have been in 4-h for three years and two animals in particular have changed my experience. The first was a little brown goat named Megatron. I got Megatron during one of the rougher periods in my life. I wasn't sure if I wanted to raise a goat or a lamb, but the second I saw him that decision was pretty much made. He was feisty loud and absolute loved eating my hair.
For six months, I raised him. He completely changed how I look at livestock. I went from wanting an animal to realizing that I wanted to spend my life around them. Megatron taught me love and then came Roscoe. Roscoe was my Charley Red Angus steer and he was practically a giant puppy with hooves. He would run to the gate to see me especially if I had a carrot.
He stepped on me, bruised me, bit me and generally made showing him an adventure but I always forgave him. And when it was time to sell him, I had to learn something else. Loving an animal means willing to let it go. Today I'm back to doing what I love. I have two dairy goats, two pregnant boar does and I'm working toward my goal of becoming a goat breeder.
Megatron got me started. Roscoe taught me how to keep going. And 4-H gave me the opportunity to discover that livestock isn't just something I raise. It's what I love. My name is Aliyah LeGuerre, the two time president of Playa del Sur 4-h of Carpentria. Thank you for having me.
0:22 – 0:2817 turns
Hello board members. My name is Quinn Camacho, I'm a sophomore and have the pleasure of being the president of Santa Ynez 4-H. 4-h has brought me up and built me in so many ways. I now understand that hard work and determination can get you through anything. I can speak confidently in front of a crowd and lead my team to our goals. I love the community that 4- h has brought me and the friendships that will last a lifetime. Thank you for everything.
Supervisor
Lavagnino. Thank you Mr. Chair, well it wasn't that long ago that we were going through some tough budget times here at the board and there was a movement to eliminate 4 H funding. And I know it says in the resolution that there are we serve 550 kids and 120 volunteers, I promise you at least that many were here in the audience and it all it took was for us to hear from the kids to realize like they said care for each is way more than raising an animal, it's teaching character development is teaching public speaking it's it's just an overall life changing environment and You know, thank God that day we did not cut the funding and it's obvious now that we should be looking in ways to continue to increase funding. This is one of the best youth programs out there.
Thank you all for being here and especially for those that came from Carpinteria. You do have makeup. We're going to be staying late at school today. But thank you to the leaders and all the volunteers that make 4-H a success.
Thank you Supervisor Lavinio and thank you. All right. All right, we'll next go to our items that were pulled by the public or by board members. I think the only item that we pulled was A-17. Madam Clerk can you go ahead and read that into the record?
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mister chair Nelson and members of the board administrative item number 17 is from the General Services Department as well as the County Health Department it is to consider recommendations regarding the donation of 1, 4, 0, 1, North the street APN 0 9, 3, 0 for 0, 0 2, 3 to this county of Santa Barbara located adjacent to the long poke animal shelter RP file number 4124. This is in
Okay we're going to have the public come and speak first and then Supervisor Hartman.
And we will now remain here in Santa Maria and go to Kari Koaddeh.
Good morning chair and members of the board. I'm Carrie Cody, the secretary of SBC Animal Care Foundation. It is a privilege to be here today to celebrate this donation for our county animal services. I want to extend our sincere thanks to the family and to the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors Being able to keep this property in our ownership for the animals allows the play yards to continue and these play yards really give the animals in the county's care the opportunity for enrichment, for exercise and for some fresh air. So we really appreciate this donation. I also want to recognize Kappa and the Lompoc community there is an amazing homegrown pride in Lompoc.
It's residents roll up their sleeves, advocate for their community and work hard to raise their community and the lives of the animals within it. That spirit matters and that is why this is such a big part of why we are here today because they were able to nurture those relationships. Projects and donations like this allow our work to move forward thoughtfully while continuing to provide excellent care and services.
I would also like to recognize Director Sarah Aguilar for her leadership and vision, her commitment to animal services and her willingness to look for possibilities has helped move this effort forward to reality. At the Santa Barbara County Animal Care Foundation we are proud to serve as the philanthropic arm and friends of the Santa Barbara County Animal Services. Together we keep our finger on the pulse of the county listening, advocating, and taking action to assist our most vulnerable shelter animals.
This is an example of what can happen when government, nonprofits, advocates and community members come together with a shared vision. We invite you to continue being part of that work by joining us at Tales of Hope this Sunday September 20th at Stowe House in Goleta and our Zombie Glow Run walk on October 17th in Old Town Orchid. Thank you for believing in our shelters, our communities and most importantly the animals who count on all of us.
Thank you.
And that concludes public
comment on this item.
Supervisor Hartman.
Thank you, I just wanted to thank Mary Louise Breitman who made this donation it really allows for much more flexibility in the planning we've got some county money and some federal money going to improve the Lompoc animal shelter and this will give us more space more flexibility within which to design so thank you to Mrs. Breitman
All right, thank you Supervisor Hartman. Any further questions about this item? Seeing none I'll go ahead and take a motion. Supervisor Hartman?
Move staff recommendation.
Second. Okay, a motion from Hartman, a second from Lee. Any further discussion on the item? Seeing none all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes unanimously. All right Well that concludes our administrative agenda, we're moving right along.
Next item of business is general public comment this is the time in the meeting for members of the public to speak on items that are not on today's agenda so if you want to talk about oil and gas this is not the time to talk about that they'll be coming later. So Madam Clerk are there any general public comment at this point today?
0:28 – 0:3410 turns
Chair Nelson and members of the board we do have two requests to speak from the public in general. Public comment today, we are going to begin here in Santa Maria with Andy Caldwell and then we will go to Zoom with Theo Corretto.
Chair Nelson, members of the board and Andy Caldwell representing COLAB. I want to talk about errors in emissions from your solar decision to dedicate up to 16,000 acres of land for solar and battery energy storage. Supervisor Caps, you acknowledged that that would only take 2% of ag lands. We're not against solar and battery depending on where they're at But you know that we have this affordability crisis that everybody is concerned about in the number one poster child for that is housing.
We're asking that your board consider rezoning 16,000 acres of land for housing within housing should be as high a priority if not a higher priority than solar because California has a glut on solar You know the other problem with this is that you on your own authority rezoned ag land in Carpinteria and in Goleta for to meet your arena numbers. But cities have to go through LAFCO to do that, and your members of that sit on that board are not exactly helping the cities do that.
With regard to resiliency, I think that this is going to create resiliency. But as you know if you did the math there's not enough flat land which solar requires in this county or in the state of California for us to go 100 percent solar with battery energy storage and finally just consider our own record here. The one industrial sized solar facility that we have in Quiama, that power goes to Kern County It doesn't help our resiliency or to create a microgrid here. The same thing is with the Lompoc wind energy project that doesn't help Lompoc or the county, that power was purchased by Marin County and your own 3CE is doing projects outside the county and outside the state so this concept that you want a microgrid for resiliency, you've got no guarantee by what you just did to accomplish that And finally, I felt like you entirely glossed over the threat of fire especially on the Gaviota Coast.
Your Tahequas facility got harmed by fire. What would happen if a wildland fire, which as we know the Gaviota Coast burns every 10 to 20 years? Hundreds of thousands of acres. What would happen to solar and battery energy storage in a wildland fire? You'd have a toxic waste dump on your hands. So the other thing is on conservation is you'll note from next item solar does not conserve land compared to oil and gas. Thank you. Thank you
Mr.
Caldwell.
And Theo, Coretto.
Well I do appreciate the clapping we Try to keep the meeting moving so we don't do clapping in the boardroom. So if you want to show your approval, typically people wave their hands but we don' t do clapping just going to set us up for later in the meeting. And that's a rule across the board either way guys so it's not picking on this item in particular unless resolutions I'm sorry yes supervisor these are just long-standing traditions at the Board and some of you may be or when your first meetings here I just wanted to let you guys know how we proceed with the rest
And Chair Nelson, members of the board I did just want to note for the record that our speaker that was announced for Zoom Theo Corretto is not logged into zoom but we did have a late request to speak from Anna Arce.
Please proceed.
We will go to Anna now. Anna?
Yes hello thank you. So I wanted to give general public comment because this morning ICE was at the South County Santa Barbara Jail. They were there since 630 in the morning, they were terrorizing the community. We were just observing we did not interact with them in any negative way. They started to push and harass volunteers who are at the jail. And they bear pepper sprayed our volunteers while we were observing at the jail.
When we went to the sheriff's to request support, all they were able to say was like, we don't collaborate with ICE. Which was not the request. The request was like they are being extremely violent to the volunteers and we have evidence of this violence. We need you to do your job and ensure that they stop just without motive pepper spraying people just because they feel like it.
And so we're highlighting this again, because these are issues that continue to happen. The sheriff is not protecting the community. They are just trying to use this as an excuse that they're not in collaboration. And, you know, I don't even know why they need the millions of dollars that they have if they're not even going to be out here actually doing their job and taking in complaints. So as Board of Supervisors please we are again coming to you to ensure that you hold the Sheriff's Department accountable and stop collaborating with ICE.
0:34 – 0:457 turns
And that concludes general public comment for today.
All right, thank you very much. Moving right along we'll go ahead and begin our departmental items at this time in our one only item here today on departmental item number one. Madam Clerk will you please read that into the record?
Chair Nelson and members of the board departmental item number one is from the Planning and Development Department. It is a hearing to consider recommendations regarding phase 1 oil and gas prohibition ordinance amendments
All right, just for some agenda management. We're going to go ahead and start with the presentation and then we're gonna have questions from the board at that point then we'll go to public comment. At approximately about 1030 we will take a break allow the interpreter and others to take a small break and probably return to public comment at that time once public comment is concluded the Board will make additional questions of staff And then we will do deliberations before making a final decision on this item so just give everybody.
A preview into how this will proceed.
Good morning, Mister chair members of the board. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Today we are returning with an item that the board requested. It is an item to consider. An ordinance amendment changes that would prohibit the drilling of new oil and gas wells into the future. I have we have a number of staff present today. To assist with answering questions I'm going to turn it over to miss Martin and she's
Good morning Chair and Supervisors. Again, for the record my name is Karina Martin and I will be giving today's presentation on the Phase 1 Oil & Gas Prohibition Amendments. So this slide is a overview of what today's presentation will cover. And to briefly recap in August of 2024 during the adoption of the 2030 Climate Action Plan The Board adopted a resolution directing the Community Services Department, commonly known as CSD, to identify measures and goals to address greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas extraction and processing.
In response to the board's resolution, CSD returned to the board in May of last year and presented several options. CSD identified that prohibiting new oil and gas drilling is the most viable and least resource intensive option to develop, adopt and implement to ensure no net increase in onshore oil production from new drilling. The board then directed staff to return with a framework to develop ordinance amendments and a long-term plan to phase out existing oil and gas facilities and operations.
In October of 2025, CSD staff in coordination with P&D presented the board with a two-phase approach due to project complexity. The prohibition and the preparation of a long-term plan were divided into two phases. Phase one focuses on preparing zoning ordinance amendments to prohibit the drilling of new onshore oil and gas wells. Phase 2 will include the preparation of an amortization study for existing wells, oil and gas facilities and operations, and is being led by CSD staff.
Staff anticipates that Phase 2 will include preparing an EIR and considering and preparing amendments to effectuate the phase-out period to seize existing operations, and staff anticipates that this process could take approximately three years to complete. As part of Phase 1, the Board directed P&D staff to amend the LUDC and the Coastal Zoning Ordinance to prohibit drilling new onshore oil and gas wells in the inland area and in the coastal zone.
These amendments are intended to align with measures and goals contained in the 2030 Climate Action Plan that address greenhouse gas emission reductions and be consistent with Assembly Bill 3233 which was signed into law in September 2024. and authorizes jurisdictions to impose restrictions by ordinance to prohibit oil and gas operations or development, or impose regulations limits or prohibitions that are more protective of public health the climate and or the environment than those prescribed by state law.
In October 21st of 2025, P&D staff provided your board with a status report on the number location and condition of orphan and idle wells in the county. This status report is included in the board agenda letter package as attachment H. And at that hearing, staff reported that as of September 2025 the California Geologic Energy Management Division known as CalGEM records indicated that there are approximately 1,039 onshore oil and gas wells categorized as active and 1,221 as idle within the county's jurisdiction.
The county last approved an oil drilling and production plan For oil and gas drilling in March of 2014 known as the North Gary production plan. And more recently, the county approved a land use permit in September 2018 for three new wells for project known as Amherst. Moving on to the amendments. The proposed amendments of the LUDC and CZO revise existing standards to prohibit drilling new onshore oil and gas wells, prohibit re-entering previously abandoned wells, revise the applicability and development standards to be consistent with the proposed prohibition, and the proposed changes will not apply to existing facilities and operations with a vested land use permit or an approved oil drilling and production plan that authorize the future drilling of new wells.
A summary of the proposed ordinance amendments begins on page 3 of the September 15th board agenda letter package and are outlined in the next two slides. To summarize, the LUDC amendments revise sections 35.52, 35.53, 35 .55 to prohibit new onshore oil and gas drilling in all zones and update applicability and development standards to align with the proposed prohibition.
And again, similar amendments are being proposed to the Coastal Zoning Ordinance. The proposed amendments are recommended to be determined categorically exempt from environmental review as further explained in Attachment B. Class 7 and 8 categorical exemptions apply to actions carried out by a regulatory agency to protect natural resources or the environment.
As a result, no significant environmental impacts would occur as a result of these ordinance amendments pursuant to CEQA Sections 15307, 15308 and 15265. On April 8th, staff presented the proposed amendments to the County Planning Commission where they voted 3-2 to recommend adoption of the LUDC and CZO amendments to prohibit onshore drilling of new oil and gas wells as well as to revise applicable development standards for consistency with the prohibition.
Staff prepared minor LUDD and CZA amendments after the County Planning Commission hearing to provide further clarification These minor changes include clarifying that the proposed prohibition does not apply to existing invested oil drilling and production plans and re-drilling existing wells, correct typos and references to definitions in the Petroleum Code, and revise the permitting guide in the LEDC to reflect the prohibition amendments.
Staff returned to the County Planning Commission on July 1st, where they voted 3-1 to recommend approval of the Coastal Land Use Plan Amendment for consistency with the proposed prohibition amendments as well as to correct outdated references to Public Resource Code Sections 30260, 30262 and 30263 for consistency with recent legislation. The Inland Amendments will go into effect 30 days from the date of adoption and once adopted, staff will submit the Coastal Zoning Ordinance amendments and the Coastal Land Use Plan amendment to the California Coastal Commission for review and certification. This process may take up to 9-15 months And finally, the recommendations for today's proposed amendments can be found on pages 1 through 2 of the September 15th board letter.
To summarize they are to make the required findings for approval including CEQA findings found in attachment A, determine that the proposed ordinance and coastal land use plan amendments are exempt from the provisions of CEQA Adopt ordinances amending the LUDC and CZO found in Attachments C and D. Adopt a resolution to approve an amendment to the Coastal Land Use Plan found in Attachment E, and finally adopt a resolution authorizing the submittal of the Local Coastal Program Amendment to the California Coastal Commission for review and certification, and finally direct staff to submit the amendments to the Coastal Commission.
And that concludes staff's presentation and staff are available for questions.
All right, thank you. I'm going to take the chair's privilege since most of this impacts my district ask some questions first here. Okay want to make sure I understand the county's overall direction correctly. The board has already directed staff to pursue both a prohibition on new onshore oil and gas wells and future phase out of existing onshore and gas operations is that correct?
0:45 – 0:5146 turns
Yes, Mister chair that is correct
okay what is before us today's the first piece phase one.
That is correct
prohibition of new wells. And the second piece face to is already underway. It isn't an address eventual cessation of existing operations.
Yes, Mister chair that study is under way
OK and both days in want and phase 2 were directed by the board with the same action.
That is correct
thank you My next question is, is oil considered a mineral resource under CEQA and as our planning and our county planning documents?
Mr. Chair yes that's correct.
Can prohibition prohibiting future wells make some oil and gas resources that otherwise might have been developed practically inaccessible?
I would say that's correct yes.
Did the environmental review quantify or identify the mineral resources that could become unavailable as a result of this ordinance?
So, Mr. Chair, the environmental review for phase one is a CEQA exemption And the the the seque is meant to look at environmental impacts, not necessarily economic impacts. And it was reviewed and determined that because of the nature of the ordinance. Potentially being more protective of the environment that a sequent exemption would be the correct path there is going to be an environmental impact report that is being prepared as part
Thank you for that. I do have some additional questions to go along with my questions around CEQA. Did staff evaluate whether the loss of mineral resources availability could be environmentally significant? Yes or no is fine.
Well, Mr. Chair not as part of the CEQAs exemption. That's correct.
Okay did staff analyze whether prohibiting future wells could affect investment decisions or the economic life of existing oil field oil operations?
I think that is more appropriately assessed in phase 2.
So we did not
we did not okay
the staff analyze whether phase one could affect the timing of well plugging abandonment or facility decommissioning.
Mister chair, we did not
get. Did the environmental review analyzed and associated any of the associated effects such as trucking equipment activity waste handling grading or site restoration at the time decisions would might change based on a prohibition
No Sir.
Okay, so the potential consequences are not evaluated as part of this equal process?
The potential consequences that you have outlined today have not been evaluated in the manner that you are asking.
Okay thank you. Did staff identify evidence that prohibiting new wells in Santa Barbara County will reduce petroleum demand in Santa Barbara County? So by us stopping will this impact Did we analyze that?
I'm sorry, could you repeat that question.
So did we look for any evidence that prohibiting new wills might have impact on demand?
No sir.
Did we look at identifying evidence that it may have changed demand statewide?
No sir.
Did we analyze whether some portions of the production that otherwise might occur here could instead be supplied from somewhere else outside of Santa Barbara County?
We did not.
Did we analyze where the replacement supply would likely come from?
We did not.
Do we compare the environmental impacts of producing and transporting that replacement crude with producing crude in San Barbara County?
Not as part of phase one, but I think many of the questions that you're asking will be factored into phase two.
Understood thank you,
but not for this phase
under CEQA exemption okay. All right. Does the conservation element that we have currently state that mineral resource extraction makes a relatively important contribution to our local, state and national economies and as such should be encouraged?
I expect that it does.
Does it also say that counties should encourage exploration for new resource sites?
It may. Yes sir.
Have either of those provisions been amended or repealed?
No sir.
Has the county previously in environmental documents relied upon those policies when finding oil development consistent with the comprehensive plan?
0:51 – 0:5617 turns
Yes, sir.
Okay. So what is staff's explanation for finding a countywide prohibition on new oil and gas wells consistent with existing conservation element policies?
Mister chair, I'm not sure. I have to go back and look at the conservation element. I think those are introductory comments and not necessarily policies. And so the change in the code we have found to be consistent with the comprehensive plan
despite that says it should be encouraged.
It's correct. If it's not an identified policy. Mister chair, then it is not we don't have to find that code consistent with those introductory comments.
All right, that will be it for now. I have a few other questions here before we go to public comment.
Sure.
Questions from my other colleagues? Supervisor Hartmann?
I just had a clarification on the number of active and idle wells. We had, I think three different numbers floating around one in our board letter, one in a statement and then one in your presentation. So I just want a clarification on that.
Supervisor Hartmann through the chair if you'd give us a moment, we will collect that information for you.
Commissioner Hartman through the chair. Apologies, the PowerPoint was an older version but for 2025 there were 1039 active onshore oil and gas wells and 1221 idle onshore wells and that is consistent with what's in the board letter. Thank you
Thank you, Supervisor Hartman. Supervisor Lavinino?
Thank you Mr. Chair. So it was stated that the Planning Commission voted 3-2 to support these no new wells ordinance but recently they also just voted 5-0 to approve the asphalt facility that was not appealed to the Board of Supervisors so I don't know a lot about...I did not watch that hearing In that hearing was there, and maybe Supervisor Nelson already asked this but as part of that packet was it studied the environmentally preferential manner in doing this? Was it looked at using local oil or what was determined in that facility? What would be going to that facility?
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much supervisor love and you know that through the chair, the action at the planning Commission was the change of ownership. They already had an existing permit that was still valid. And so this was them taking ownership. Of the facility and they're currently making improvements to You know, they are optimistic about it opening this year. But we think based on some inspections that we've done, it'll probably be in 2027. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you Supervisor Levin. Any other questions? Supervisor
Caps? Just a clarification to one of your questions about oil production because we did, prior to this coming to the board for the first time around I did a meeting with California Energy Commission and the Vice Chair Gunda he looked at our proposal and said that it would not have a significant impact on production so I'm just looking at my notes and I can find them later but I have more of a direct quote for that regard
Yeah, my question was I guess it was more not on the production but I think we're talking about mineral resources that would become inaccessible. I think there's some proven mineral resources in our county that don't have current production of them and they might become inaccessible which sounds like they would and that's a consistency question that I have.
All right other questions from the board? I have I guess one couple more questions on This, the health effects. So there's been some conversation about why to move forward with a prohibition and there's also new state law on the 3200 feet from an oil well. And that's because it's a kilometer away and that's kind of the health protection zone I think they call it is that am I understanding that correct?
Do we know how many active or idle wells in Santa Barbara County are within that 3200 feet?
0:56 – 1:0115 turns
Mr. Chair, we do
not.
Very few is our staff estimates.
Okay like maybe one or two percent? Maybe pretty minor
that
are actually impacting potentially under that health protection zone that are protecting people's health. Do we know what percentage of the remaining resources could be potentially accessed while still staying outside that zone so we have areas that you know we're not accessing now you know new wells could potentially access those resources and still be in a health protection zone right? Is that accurate?
Yes sir.
Okay um and so the public health materials in our record generally shows that risk increases with proximity, well density, and production volumes right? That's what I'm seeing in there and we're saying that 98% of our wells are not in proximity and we don't really have I'm going to go ahead and get started. So we're talking about dense oil fields, right? Not like you see another current in other places. Is that correct? Yeah, that's generally correct. OK. And our volumes are moderate to low here relatively low.
Do we have any study records indicate when health risk becomes zero at all? Does any study in our record establish a significant health impact to sensitive receptors from every new well regardless of how far it's from?
No.
Okay. Did staff evaluate a more restrictive setback or other location-based regulations as an alternative to a countywide prohibition? We did not. Okay, thank you. Those are my questions. All right. With that, seeing no additional questions from the board we will go ahead and move to public comment. Madam Clerk how many public commenters do we have today?
Chair Nelson and members of the board we have 53 requests to speak on departmental item number one.
Okay so we're going to go ahead and get started it's gonna be two minutes a piece that's gonna be about two hours of public comment like I said before we will break about 1030 to give everybody a little bit of a breather then come back to public comment at that point Yeah, go ahead and get started.
Chair Nelson and members of the board we are going to begin here in Santa Maria with Andy Caldwell to be followed by Eric Eisenhammer. Andy?
Chair Nelson, members of the board, Andy Caldwell representing Colab. Your board's not ignoring the elephant in the room. You're ignoring the foreign tanker 250 million barrels of oil come to California every year and And 345,000 barrels of refined product come every day. So you're not reducing greenhouse gas emissions, you're just shifting them and actually increasing them.
You're also ignoring that upwards of 50% of every barrel of oil is used for something other than energy. And you're not addressing the impacts of that shortage, including for asphalt that you yourself use on county roads. You're ignoring the fact that you could save hundreds of thousands of dollars on the following lawsuits that Supervisor Nelson Bravo built a record for that all by himself.
You can save that money by just watching LA lose their lawsuit on this very same matter. You're ignoring the will of the voters even in Santa Barbara measure P what. The oil was the rights to drill and all that were preserved in Santa Barbara throughout there's hardly any region or any precinct where that measure lost. You're ignoring the Constitution of both the state and the nation that preserves mineral rights.
This is one of those things that this has the same protection as surface rights, intellectual rights. Mineral rights are protected. You can't take them or say you no longer can use them without So just to recap. We're bringing in 52 million barrels a day from Brazil for 50 million from Iraq. Ecuador and Argentina between those 60 million the list goes on and on your you are accomplishing nothing but virtue signaling thank
you Andy we will now go to Eric Eisenhammer to be followed by Janet Blevins Eric.
1:01 – 1:078 turns
Good morning, Supervisors. My name is Eric Eisenhammer. I am Public Affairs and Public Relations Director for NARO California advocating for oil and gas mineral and royalty owners who would be harmed if you move forward with this proposal. Royalty owners are farmers, ranchers, seniors, students and non-profits. They rely on their royalty income to pay their bills, to leave a legacy for their children and give back to our community.
Royalty owners are also property owners. The insurance that one's property cannot be seized by government fiat is a foundational American constitutional principle, and taking their property is no more right or moral when it's done slowly in phases. Oil is an integral part of all of our lives in ways many people don't even think about, such as our roads. We're often told to shop local.
Doesn't that also apply to the oil and gas that we use every day? Shouldn't we be supporting our own community members rather than buying our oil from overseas? In Naro, California We are proud of our track record of successfully standing up for the rights of the families who would be harmed by this measure. Today I come to you with petitions signed by over 200 citizens, royalty owners and even our local mayor Alice Patino urging you to reject this harmful proposal thank you very much
We will now go to Janet Levins to be followed by John Wickenden. Janet.
Thank you very much. I'm so glad that my friend Andy brought up the failure of Measure P because the fact is that ever since Measure P failed, you have not approved one single new oil development and Steve agrees with me that that is absolutely the case. It can be researched. So Measure P failed but what it did succeed at is explaining to the public And what oil development does and all of the harms involved.
And so no new oil project has been approved since the failure or I like to think of it as a success of Measure P because it informed the voters. So now, the natural evolution of no new oil projects has come No new wells either. We are feeling the effects of climate change. We have gone over the scientific limit of two degrees centigrade. This results in not only extremely hot weather, people dying but also extremely cold weather and snow in the deserts So it's extremes on both ends.
And it is very dangerous and we need to lead the way to stop more oil wells, no more wells. I thought about wearing a party hat and having a little party blower thing but that's not allowed so thank you very much. Thank you Ms. Bethans.
We will now go to John Wickenden to be followed by Ted Cordova.
As John heads up here, I'm going to go ahead and close public comment this time.
My name is John Wickenden. I'm from Fox and Canyon, Siskaw California. I'd like to go over quickly the history of California production In 1980 was when the peak of oil production in California was a million point one million barrels a day. And there were 50 different refineries in California at that time. It was the second largest production in the U.S., behind Texas.
Now, 42 years or so later Crude is only 23% of produced in California, with 77% from foreign countries and Alaska. California is presently the largest consumer of jet fuel and the second largest consumer of gasoline in United States after Texas. California now only can supply 22.9% of the gasoline, the oil in California. The price of oil as of last month was $5.58 in California per gallon and the national average was $3.64 that's a dollar The gas price in California right now is ninety four plus.
Over the state is over the California. Now the present
percent
of gasoline oil produced comes from Brazil, 17 or 18%.
1:08 – 1:139 turns
Thank you
John. Iran is another one, 17.5% of our oil comes from Iran which is the country we're kind of having trouble with.
Thank you John I appreciate
it. Then comes Guyana's 13.7%. John your time is up. Please reject the oil and glass Thank you John. We will now go to Ted
Good morning Chair and Supervisors. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today, my name is Ted Cordova and I'm here on behalf of EMB Natural Resources and more importantly the employees sitting here today. Whose whose livelihoods are directly affected by this decision. We continue to oppose the phase one ordinance prohibiting future local oil production does not eliminate the need for oil or the products made from it before making such a significant policy decision we believe the county needs to fully understand the environmental economic and community consequences of where that supply will come from instead and we really appreciate the earlier comments from Supervisor Lavinino The county should understand that relationship between local production and local asphalt needs.
We strongly support such an approach in understanding, taking the time to understand those impacts before moving forward is responsible policymaking and we appreciate the board's willingness to consider those. I also want to emphasize that a just transition has to be just for the people and communities actually experiencing it. New Cuyama is a community of roughly 500 people and EMB happens to be one of their largest employers. Our employees live there, they work there, they raise their families there.
This year we offered summer internships to all 15 seniors at the Cuyama High School. Last year we had two that accepted, and last year we had one intern that turned into a full-time position. So those are things that are very impactful for the community. In a community this small, those jobs and opportunities matter. The employees sitting here today are the people who live with the consequences of the decisions made in this room, and we respectfully ask the board to postpone action and not close the door on responsible local production without first understanding Those consequences and considering risk reasonable alternative and feral pathways forward thank you so much I appreciate it.
Thank you, Mr. Cordova.
We'll now go to Kevin Evey to be followed by Alex Gutierrez.
Good morning, Board. Kevin Ivey, my family are mineral royalty owners. We are among the 500,000 Californians that lease our mineral rights to independent operators that produce the petroleum products like asphalt and transportation fuels that sustains life in California. Royalty owners kindly ask that instead of approving the proposed oil and gas phaseout ordinance, that you please table this ordinance and instead let's begin a study now of how we achieve sustainable local crude production in Santa Barbara County. We are all troubled when we walk along our beaches and we get tar on our feet, and we see tar balls floating in the surf. But that beach tar is not the result of land side oil operations. That is the result of natural marine seepage in Santa Barbara Channel.
Cal Berkeley professor Joseph Selvey's research shows That as many as 400 barrels of oil and up to 7 million cubic feet of gas seep into Santa Barbara Channel every day naturally. That's what's washing onto our beaches. Natural seepage from the coal oil point site off Isla Vista alone is 150 barrels daily, 55,000 barrels a year. And now that there's no production from Platform Holly, reservoir pressure is increasing and reservoir itself is recharging.
Not to minimize it but the unfortunate and preventable Refugio 2015 spill of 3,000 barrels is only a day-and-a-half of total natural seepage into Santa Barbara Channel. My point is this, let's not let natural oil seepage color our decision making for land side oil operations. We can collaborate and design a program for green and sustainable local oil. production that may be among the first in the nation right here in Santa Barbara County, let's do it. Work with us. Let's collaborate with oil field workers here today, producers, royalty owners and with planning staff and design a sustainable local production program that meets the goals for clean energy transition while still providing petroleum products that Californians need. Let table this proposed ordinance today and commence a study right away.
Thank you.
We will now go to Alex Gutierrez to be followed by Tony Padilla. Alex?
1:13 – 1:2014 turns
Good morning my name is Alex Gutierrez, I work for Sentinel Peak Resources and I live in Orkut with my wife and our three daughters. Outside of work I'm the field director of Orkut Youth Softball. We have got over 300 girls in our program and a lot of financial support comes from local field companies. This industry gives back to the community in ways most people don't see. It's not just jobs, it's youth sports, local charities and small businesses.
Pushing this phase out will hurt my family and many others. Please support my community and reject this phase-out.
Thank you.
We will now go to Tony Padilla to be followed by Emory Johnston.
Good morning board. My name is Tony Padilla. I'm a Sentinel Peak Resource Operator. My wife and I live here in Orchid our whole lives with my two boys. Orchids was built on oil, it's part of our story and our economy. These jobs are tax revenues paid for the parks schools and help with the sports. The very thing that makes our community great The county has a big financial gap and taking away local revenue and jobs does not make sense.
By phasing out oil, you're cutting into not just my job but it impacts those contractors that our communities employ. It extends to the businesses where all our families pay our hard-earned money. This is our community that you will be impacting I'm asking the board to stop this phase out so we can protect the environment without destroying our livelihoods.
Let's focus on local control, reliable energy and keeping Santa Barbara County strong. Thank you.
Thank you Tony.
We will now go to Emery Johnston to be followed by Cliff Simonson. Emery?
Thank you. Well what I have to say is pretty redundant, I think from what has been said. I'm a royalty holder in Cuyama and we've been involved in the oil since 1949, my grandfather, and it's pretty important to the whole community. One thing I would point out that may not be redundant is although this is very important issue, I think we need to give it great thought which is redundant study and cooperation And I really don't need 2 minutes because everything has been said that I had in mind but appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you, Mister Johnson.
We will now go to Cliff Simonson to be followed by Doug Imperato. Cliff?
Good morning Supervisors my name is Cliff Simonsen And I am with, I've been in the oil industry for 50 years and I've worked on, I'm second generation. My daughter back there is third generation oil and gas. I worked here in Orcutt and Santa Maria as well as around the state Thank you. Good morning, everyone. My name is John. I've been a member of the board for 50 years. It's unbelievable. I really enjoy the comment about the diaper program. I think that it really would support that. I just want to know that diapers are made from oil and gas. So just fun fact that we're a service company up here. We do that. The or like the mobile doctors offices The elimination of wells and the industry up here would be, I think a tragedy for the economy and for energy supply that we in the state.
So let's delay the study. Let's look at what it does for the county and for our people in the state of California. We need to protect the local jobs and the families those job support. Thank you.
We will now go to Doug Imperato to be followed by John Hochleitner.
Good morning, my name is Doug Imperato. I am a Santa Barbara resident for the last 35 years I've lived there and a UCSB graduate. So my concern with these ordinances under consideration is simple they impose real economic costs on the county without any real benefit. They'll have no impact on global CO2 emissions and no impact on climate change First, the economic cost.
Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation 2025 study estimated the county's oil and gas industry supports 5,061 jobs including 1,402 direct jobs, $519 million in labor income and $1.27 billion in economic value added. These are significant benefits to our local economy And the proposed amendments could ultimately eliminate much of this activity. Now consider the climate benefit.
These amendments do not reduce petroleum demand, this is pointed out by a few people here today. Californians will still drive fly and use petroleum products if oil is no longer produced here the oil needed to meet that demand will be imported Imports already comprise more than 80% of the California oil demand. These ordinances simply will change where all is produced, not how much is consumed.
California's own Air Resources Board recognize this as emissions leakage reducing production here while shifting production and associated emissions elsewhere. Back in the day we would probably call this a NIMBY situation, not in my backyard. It's okay to produce oil somewhere else just not here. So these proposed amendments have real measurable costs with no real benefit.
Thank you Doug that is your
time.
We will now go to John Hochleitner to be followed by Olivia Simonson.
1:20 – 1:257 turns
Good morning, thank you for hearing me chairman Nelson board. My name is John Hook Lightner. I'm a lifelong resident of Santa Barbara County with Pacific Troy and California incorporated. I've been in the oil industry approximately 53 years we have 305 employees all about 225 from Santa Barbara County residents and we pay living wage sustainable for them to buy houses and support their families The oil industry has changed a lot since I started. There's about 50,000 barrels a day in production in Santa Barbara County here.
We used to go up the Santa Maria refinery which was Union Oil at the time and through their extensive pipeline system we used to make a lot of the gas you guys have approved the old conical refinery on Sinton Road going. We desperately need the asphalt here for road repairs in this county and this state. I beg you guys to have a little bit of common sense and help support our industry and for everybody to have good paying jobs in this state. Thank you.
Thank you, John.
We will now go to Olivia Simonson to be followed by Rich Field. Olivia?
Hello good morning Supervisors, Mr. Chair and staff my name is Olivia Simonson I'm with California Well Services we are a service company supporting the well maintenance of local producers. I wanted to emphasize two of the key points that Supervisor Nelson mentioned in his conversation with staff earlier First, the county's use of a categorical exemption for Phase 1 ignores the significant impacts of the combined ordinances on mineral resources and fails to consider the greenhouse gas and other impacts that will be the inevitable result of the phaseout.
These are just some of the many flaws that make the county's use of a categorical exemption for the Phase I impermissible and unlawful under CEQA. Further phasing this ordinance process into two phases and sequestering the environmental impact report in phase 2 is a textbook example of the kind of piecemealing that is prohibited under CEQA. So really crucial to take these things into account and to make sure that we do this process right. I am really confident that this county can be a leader in sustainable and just solutions that balance the energy and climate goals of this community with the reality of the abundant natural resources that are available here And prohibition is the easy step to take. Balancing the interests of the amazing folks in this room and the reality of the natural resources that are available here in this community, is the hard part.
And the work and the conversations that need to happen in order to create those solutions I implore you all to have those conversations we're here for those conversations and we look forward to figuring out how we can create balance in this community with sustainable leadership that balances goals and local production. Thank you. We will now
go to Rich Field to be followed by Bill Dunlap.
Good morning. Chair Nelson, Board of Supervisors, my name is Rich Field. I am the senior EHS manager with Pacific Coast Energy Company. I'm here to speak on the ordinance that is before us. Before I start, I did tune into the Planning Commission hearing last week or a couple weeks ago about the refinery change since the refinery I think would be a good thing for local production because it does represent most of our to all of our productions since we are one of the larger producers here in North Santa Barbara County.
One thing I wanted to bring up was Planning Commissioner Park's statement about the refinery being a carbon sink, which I thought really kind of caught my attention and I want to give recognition to the district Joan Hartman and her planning supervisor for calling that out I think that's a good path forward for us. I think, you know, through negotiations maybe we stop what's going on here and we go back to the drawing board and look where we can produce our oil locally and send it, you know, to the refining process as well. The new refinery is not the cleanest refinery in California. There are cleaner refineries that are building lower emissions just look over in Taft That refinery is much cleaner than the refinery that is going in. So there's opportunities for more expansion for asphalt in Santa Barbara County.
We can produce it cleaner and provide them the barrels that we need. So I encourage planning to go back to the drawing board for the first phase, and let's start talking outside of the box to see how we can prolong our life in North Santa Barbara County. Thank you for your time.
We will now go to Bill Dunlap, to be followed by Claire Weinman.
1:25 – 1:305 turns
Thank you Chairman Nelson and Supervisors for allowing us to speak today. My name is Bill Dunlap, I'm a resident of Newport Beach and a fifth generation oil royalty owner. My great-grandfather who was Speaker Pro Tem in 1910 in the Assembly was asked by the Assembly to draft the first oil drilling permit in California Because he did, I guess a fairly good job. They issued it to him and he was one of the owners of the great Lakeview Gusher in Taft California which spewed oil environmentally safe for months but that's changed now. California is one of the most regulated and strictest environmental states In the nation and in the world, yet we import oil that you've heard tonight in great amounts up to 80% that has no environmental concern to it.
No one goes down to Brazil and looks at how they drill the oil but yet we imported up here and old tankers costing us. Hundreds of dollars per gallon actually, excuse me, dollars per gallon more. And that's why we pay this higher price because we buy foreign oil. So I ask that you delay this ordinance and review it. Let us be involved with a co-op study to do it together so we can call this a unique situation for Santa Barbara County. where you could be one of the leaders in how we do sustainable oil and drill the right way. So thank you for letting me speak. Thank you, Mr. Dunlap.
We will now go to Claire Weinman to be followed by Tara Renhefo. Claire? Good
morning my name is Claire Weinman I'm the president at the Grower Shipper Association in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties and we submitted written comments on Friday. Both personally and professionally, this is not the right thing to do. We urge you to vote no on the proposed prohibition and the fatally flawed findings of approval. If we look around this room at county facilities and its vendors or go to the corner of Main and Broadway, the answer is clear.
Our reality is that right now with the technology available our communities need oil gas in their derivatives as essential inputs. This is true for the county, for agriculture, our residents and many key employment sectors. Feasible alternatives are not currently available. They say if you like foreign oil then you'll love foreign food. I don't want either. I want for our county to be autonomous in both respects and to take responsibility for providing for its own instead of shipping problems elsewhere in the world.
Prohibiting a problem doesn't make it go away. Leadership is not canceling something because we wish our community's needs and realities were different. Let's meet our community where it's at and bring us forward together to advance solutions, not prohibitions. Thank you.
We will now go to Tara Renhefo to be followed by Edward Hazard.
Good morning Chair and Supervisors. My name is Taryn Hefo, I'm a Senior Attorney with the Environmental Defense Center. I urge you to adopt the staff recommended ordinance amendments to ban new oil and gas drilling in the county. This action is lawful, defensible, and a necessary first step to achieving the goals set out in your Climate Action Plan. Your authority here is clear.
The California Constitution gives counties the police power to enact land use ordinances to protect public health and safety, and Public Resources Code Section 3106.1 expressly authorizes the county to prohibit new oil and gas development within its boundaries. Prohibiting new oil drilling will reduce air pollution, protect our drinking water, safeguard our health and help meet our county's plan to cut GHG pollution.
For years, residents throughout the county and local groups have called for no nude oil drilling and a transition to renewable energy. Yet the oil industry continued to push riskier extraction techniques and dirtier projects. Over the past several years these projects have been defeated one by one but now the county is empowered This ordinance is an amendment to the L. U. D. C. N. C Z. O. to prohibit new
1:30 – 1:378 turns
We will now go to Edward Hazard, and after Edward we will take a break. Edward?
Good morning Chair Nelson and members of the board. My name is Ed Hazard I'm with the California chapter of the National Association of Royalty Owners my family and I are Santa Barbara County mineral and royalty owners NARO California advocates for an estimated 600,000 oil and gas mineral and royalty owners throughout California including owners directly affected by the ordinances before you today.
These royalty owners include families who have lived in Santa Barbara County for generations They're retirees, farmers, ranchers, non-profits and small business owners. We strongly urge the board to reject this ordinance. First, mineral rights are property rights unlike an ordinary business affected by a zoning change. A mineral owner cannot relocate his property. An oil or gas deposit exists where nature placed it. Its economic value depends upon the ability to access and responsibly produce that resource. If government prohibits production, the oil does not disappear. It remains underground while the owner's ability to realize the value of his property was taken. There is another consequence worth considering. For some agricultural families, royalty income helps keep farms and ranches economically viable and in family ownership.
Eliminating that income can put additional financial pressure on families trying to keep agricultural land intact for future generations. Second, these ordinance raise serious constitutional takings questions. NARO has been through this before. participated in the successful challenge to Monterey County's Measure Z. In that case, the trial court concluded in its intended decision that quote consequently should it take effect measure Z would affect a facial regulatory taking of CRCs and some members of NARO's property end quote. The court further stated that quote the remaining petitioners would have the option of proceeding with as applied taking claim end quote.
Measure Z was ultimately invalidated with the judgment unanimously upheld through the California Appellate Courts and the California Supreme Court. An amortization does not cure the constitutional problem. You cannot amortize a mineral right the way you might ordinary non-conforming business. A business may eventually recover its investment and relocate, the mineral cannot relocate.
Giving an owner an arbitrary number of years before government requires production to cease does not compensate that owner for valuable resources left underground. Extending the deprivation over a longer period does not make the owner whole. Third, we have serious concerns about CEQA. Phase one prohibits future drilling while phase two contemplates
this. That is your time. Thank you Ed.
Okay thank you.
All right, we're going to go ahead and take about a 10 minute break. We'll be back at 1045 for the conclusion of public comment. Thank you All right, welcome back to September 15th meeting the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors here in Santa Maria. We're on department item number one just for a point of. Agenda Management. We did get started a little earlier on this item and I think some people were told that it wasn't going to start until 10, so I'm going to go ahead and open up public comment back open for the next two speakers. So those of you who may have gotten here late will get a chance to still make public comment after two speakers. I'll go ahead and close it again. So I'm just gonna go ahead and reopen that at this time and we'll get back to our speakers.
We're about a third of the way through our speakers at this point Barring a couple of additions to that, but that's how we will proceed from here. So with that Madam Clerk who is our next speaker?
Chair Nelson and members of the board yes we will remain here in Santa Maria and we will begin with Ken Huff to be followed by Ben Oakley. Ken.
Good afternoon Chair Nelson and supervisors. I'm Ken Huff, a resident of Santa Maria Valley and retired SBCAN staff member. You've heard a number of good reasons to approve this item and you'll hear a bunch more in other comments that I know are going to be made but I have a personal story. In 2014 soon after I moved to Santa Maria I wanted to learn about the city And I decided to walk every street in the city limits. And then, I found out that from Public Works there's about 250 centerline miles and I decided I'll do this in one year and I'm not going to drive my car to get to a starting point. And I used my bike on the public transit and I did it in one year exactly and I learned a few things.
So it wasn't a physical challenge, you know 300 miles in 365 days but I wore out a city map and a yellow highlighter keeping track of it. That was the hard part making sure I didn't miss something. When I walked through Sunrise Hills, a relatively new neighborhood single-family homes in the southern part of Santa Maria, I was surprised to find about three dozen And I was puzzled. Why why is this happening?
So the follow-up research, such as it was for me, indicated that the lots were purchased by an oil company and that all of the owners had signed nondisclosure agreements. Those agreements, it seems to me, limited the amount of public information about the causes of these demolitions. The impact on these three dozen families and their neighbors and the potential for this to happen again is one other good reason for you to approve the action before you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Huff.
We will now go to Ben Oakley to be followed by Pasha Marabi.
1:37 – 1:437 turns
Good morning board. My name is Ben Oakley, I'm with the Western States Petroleum Association. I'll just note that this is not a small housekeeping ordinance amendment. It is the first binding chapter of a shutdown the Board ordered last May. Freeze new wells now phase out existing operations later. Staff split the single program so Phase 1 could move under a CEQA exemption. The law does not allow that.
You have to review the whole action, including the second half you already directed. California is an oil island. We import most of our crude by tanker, cut Santa Barbara production and those barrels do not disappear. They arrive by ship with more emissions, more spill risk and more pressure on strain ports and refineries. You are required to study this first half of a single programmatic action.
Operators and royalty owners also invested on permits the county already approved. The draft says vested rights are protected, but it never defines them or how disputes will be decided before activity is banned. AB 3233 does not wipe these problems away. It does not excuse CEQA. It does not erase vested rights. I'd also like to note that we've heard that we need to pass this ordinance for air quality issues. I'm on the Santa Barbara County Community Advisory Council and at our last meeting, we just looked at the draft ozone plan where we are moving into non-attainment transitional which is the first step A couple years ago and then slip back slightly. And so actually the air quality story for Santa Barbara County is actually a success story.
This is done, you know with with the industry in production there's been a lot of emission reductions required by APCD rules that have cut emissions at those production facilities. So, I just want to note that the draft ozone plan does undercut those arguments we've been hearing in support of the ordinance. Please vote no today or hold this item. Study the full shutdown plan before you lock in the first step. Thank you.
We will now go to Pasha Maravi to be followed by Marie Dawson. Pasha?
Good morning, Mr. Chair. My name is Pasha Madabi. I'm a resident of Santa Barbara in District 1 and a professor at UCSB where I teach statistics and energy policy. My research team in conjunction with the Community Labor Center at UCSB led by Carmen Rhodes conducted a 10-month research study on the demographics of the oil and gas workforce, the economic impacts of a prohibition on new oil and gas drilling and phase out of existing oil and gas operations, and public attitudes on these issues. That report is submitted as public comment. I'll give one top line result here from our public opinion survey of roughly 3,000 residents across the county where we found that 65% of all county residents support an ordinance to prohibit new onshore oil and gas drilling in the county which is the measure before us today recommended by County staff.
That is nearly two out of every three county residents support this and it's not just a North versus South County story. We find majority support in four of five districts. In a previous report, we modeled the economic and health impacts of a phase-out to find that phasing out oil and gas operations in the county would significantly improve public health By reducing exposure to harmful pollutants such as PM 2.5 and VOCs, we found that a phase-out policy could prevent an estimated 54 to 81 million dollars In mortality related costs by 2045. And lastly, I want to say there is no relationship between oil production extracted here and gasoline prices as has been noted before it. I just got back from leading a convening in Sacramento where at our keynote vice chair of the CEC Siva Gunda remarked that even if California has full in-state crude oil production or full refining sufficiency it does not matter for gasoline prices as these are set by global markets.
By banning new oil drilling, Santa Barbara has the opportunity to be the light of the world. To show the rest of the country how to transition into the future. With that I respectfully ask for your aye vote on approving the recommendations from Planning and Development Department to prohibit new oil and gas developments in the county. Thank you.
We will now go to Murray Dawson to be followed by Eric Vasquez.
Chair, board and staff. My name is Murray Dawson, the South County Director for SBCAN. I'm here to speak on behalf of our organization alongside the 60% of county residents demanding more climate protection in support of approving the proposed amendments prohibiting the drilling of new oil and gas wells in order to protect our community's health and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
This is an important moment An opportunity for our leadership to make a strategic decision about our county's future. Bring us closer to the economic benefits of a clean energy economy and creating opportunities for alternative uses of the land now dedicated to oil production. In the short term, a phase-out policy could prevent the release of approximately 344 metric tons of CO2 emissions by 2045 and avoid climate damages valued at $21.8 million.
I appreciate your disciplined stewardship of this county and please approve the amendments proposed. Thank you.
Thank You Mr. Dawson.
We will now go to Eric Vasquez to be followed by Mike Stoker.
1:43 – 1:497 turns
Good morning Chair Nielsen, members of the board. My name is Eric Vasquez and I'm here representing Asfalta LLC. We are a longtime producer of oil in Santa Barbara County with the majority of our oil being used for asphalt. I think you've all heard this before we've submitted several letters and we've had that stance since we started producing here in 2010.
My company did submit a letter opposing the proposed changes Thank you Mr. Paskus.
We will now go to Mike Stoker to be followed by Tia Cordell.
Actually before Mr. Stoker comes to the mic I'm gonna go ahead and close public comment again so it's now closed thank you Mr. Stoker
Honorable Chairman, honorable members of the board. You know Dr. Patrick Moore co-founder of Greenpeace resigned from Greenpeace in 1986 because he said the organization was a bunch of hypocrites and he couldn't be a part of an organization that wasn't true to the cause because they didn't support nuclear energy because it had the lowest carbon footprint of all the energies available And I only bring that up today because I think if we're going to be intellectually honest, you know picking up on what Andy said earlier.
We really have two policies here. We get 62% of our oil from foreign sources, 20% from Iraq, 19% from Brazil. That gentleman said earlier what happens in Brazil they cut down the rainforests to get it in Brazil. 62%. 10 to 20 times the carbon footprint, because it's what they're coming from the oil tankers. Then if we have it from California with California refineries that have much more stringent labor occupational safety environmental standards and Iraq by the way they have no air quality emissions. And they have very little standards when it comes to occupational safety, labor and environment.
So what you have here is a policy choice. Now it's great with most of your constituents like we're for the environment and we're going to stop oil and this and that but every time you vote on a policy like this, it's a de facto vote for foreign oil. That's a fact. That's if you're going to be intellectually honest and I don't care. You can talk about CO2 emissions You want to talk about what's better for the environment. California oil that's produced in our refineries with the highest standards in terms of environmentally, in terms of labor transported by pipeline versus foreign oil. So you're voting for foreign oil. You're voting for rainforests being cut down. So be intellectually honest on that, at least acknowledge that fact because that's what's before you today.
They say if we unleash California's energy we can cut it from 62% to less than 10%. So what you have here is California oil from these folks or foreign oil from outside this country transferred by an oil tanker.
Thank you Mike, that is your time. We will now go to Tia Cordell to be followed by Amir Salazar. Tia?
My name is Tia Cordell and I am the Director of Communications for the Community Environmental Council. First, I want to thank you, the county staff and elected officials for working hard over the years to advance strong climate policies that protect our health and home. I'm asking you to take the next step forward and approve the opposed amendments prohibiting the drilling of new oil and gas wells a decision that will help us advance toward the county's climate goals and protect community health Over my three years with CEC, I have had the great fortune of talking with many of our community members about what matters most to them.
Time and time again people express they want clean air, clean water and a livable climate future. A future that is still within reach, according to a new UN environmental program report. It's also clear what our community doesn't want. We hear it all the time. No more fossil fuels. No more dirty oil extraction that causes air pollution, risks the health of our community and wildlife and pumps carbon emissions into our atmosphere.
To show just how prevalent this sentiment is, CEC and our partner organizations have circulated postcards over the last few months asking folks to sign if they support no new wells. I'm here to deliver nearly 800 postcards all signed All signed by residents who support the ban on new oil and gas extraction. When I hold this box, I imagine each person who signed a postcard standing here with us today asking for an end to new oil drilling.
This room would be overflowing with people. People all hoping you'll take this step to protect our home health and future. We're immensely grateful for the progress we've made. Please continue toward the clean future that Santa Barbara community wants and needs. Please vote to prohibit new oil and gas wells in our county. Thank
you. We will now go to Amir Salazar, to be followed by Ethan Madej. Amir?
1:49 – 1:558 turns
Good morning, Chairs and members of the Board of Supervisors. My name is Amri Salazar and I am a UCSB student. I grew up in the 805 and I'm here today to strongly support Santa Barbara County's proposed oil and gas phaseout ordinance. For me this issue is personal. I grew up in the 805 in a community where working class families, immigrant families, and communities of color are deeply connected to the land and to industries like agriculture.
I've seen how environmental issues are never just environmental issues. They affect our health, our jobs, our families and our ability to feel safe in our own communities. And we already know that oil and gas production comes with real public health costs. According to California Air Resources Board data, oil production has been the largest stationary facility source of several harmful polluters in Santa Barbara County. And there's a very real economic cost to those health impacts. Research from UCSB estimates that phasing out oil and gas operations in Santa Barbara County could prevent between $54 million and $81 million in mortality-related costs by 2045, in addition to avoiding an estimated $21.8 million in climate damages. That matters to me because I grew up here.
I remember the Thomas Fire in 2017. I remember watching the smoke cover Oxnard and seeing how quickly a disaster can disrupt people's lives. And then just weeks later, the Montecito debris took 23 lives. I don't bring this up to say that oil production caused those disasters. I bring it up because living through events like that changes the way you think about risk. Santa Barbara County already faces serious wildfire flooding and other climate-related issues and hazards, and the county itself recognizes that climate change is making these disasters more intense and frequent. So when we have an opportunity to stop expanding an industry that contributes to climate change and exposes our communities to harmful pollution, I believe you have a responsibility to take it.
And I also want to emphasize that this is not about turning our backs on our workers. A responsible transition should include workers, communities, and a plan for what comes next. We should be investing in clean energy, good jobs, and transitions that make sure working people are not left behind. Santa Barbara has the opportunity to show what responsible climate leadership looks like. We can acknowledge the role oil has played in our region's history, while also recognizing that our future does not have to depend on it. I urge you to approve the proposed amendments. Thank you.
We will now go to Ethan Madej to be followed by Haley Evers. Ethan?
Hello I am Ethan Madej. I'm a high school student at Santa Barbara High School and I am the president of 805 Action, a youth advocacy group in Santa Barbara. Everyone in this room is here fighting for what we think is a better future. Mine doesn't involve fossil fuels and I know it doesn't just there's not just a valve you can close. You need to slowly start phasing out fossil fuels And that starts today. We need to make leaps and bounds, we are leaps and bounds farther along on this process than so many places in the world. I'm grateful for this county's leadership in this issue. Thank you for getting us this far and thank you for protecting our future. I urge you to vote yes on this proposal Because it's just common sense. We need to start phasing out the fossil fuel industry that starts with no new wells, that just makes sense.
Why keep drilling for something we have enough of? We import enough oil and we have enough oil all around the world in California, in the U.S., we have We have the resources we need and we can move forward without oil. Who couldn't make it out today, obviously. But we want to include youth voices in this conversation so we made a video with some of our 805 Action Youth who will be speaking in a little while. Keep an eye out for that. Thank you for leading in this and I urge you to vote yes. Thank you.
Thank you Ethan.
We will now go to Haley Evers to be followed by Drake House.
Hello, my name is Haley Ehlers, Executive Director at Climate First Replacing Oil and Gas or CFROG, a grassroots advocacy organization leading a just transition away from fossil fuels to protect our health economy and climate here on the Central Coast. We urge the Board of Supervisors to approve staff recommendations on the simple but incredibly important ordinance amendments to prohibit the drilling of new oil and gas wells. I'd like to emphasize the legality of this narrow policy First, state law reaffirmed by AB 3233 grants local governments the explicit authority to quote prohibit oil and gas operations or development within their jurisdictions.
Second, the ordinance would not impermissibly impair vested rights as there is an exemption for such cases and it is narrowly concerned with infrastructure that does not yet exist. Similarly, takings claims are irrelevant here as prohibition on new wells is not a deprivation of all economic value of an oil and gas operation. Expecting or hoping to make a profit is not enough to weigh in favor of a regulatory's takings because there is no absolute property right in theoretical profits. This is particularly true for heavily regulated industries which property owners are expected to reasonably anticipate new and restrictive regulations through land use policy.
Lastly, moving forward with this ordinance to prohibit new oil and gas wells is essential to fulfilling the county's mandated service delivery promise of a safe, healthy and prosperous life for all Santa Barbara County residents. There are over 30,000 residents who live within an unsafe distance to a polluting oil and gas well, over 60% of whom are people of color. The documented negative health impacts they experience and the compounding health and safety threats to all Santa Barbara residents That all Santa Barbara residents face as a result of fossil fuel fossil fueled climate catastrophe are evident enough to support an end to new oil and gas drill, new oil and gas wells from being drilled which is all that's in front of you today. Thank you.
Thank you
we will now go to Drake House to be followed by Bruce Haas.
1:55 – 2:017 turns
Honorable members of the board, my name is Drake House. I'm the president of Sierra Resources a local operator and I'm speaking for myself. I've got a wife and five kids all under the age of 10 looks like for my wife actually she's closer to my age of course And I came from humble beginnings. I grew up in Taft, California and a small house no AC and the only one of my family to get a college degree. And I've kind of put all my eggs in this basket. And so here I am you know in this county I'm going to go ahead and start by saying that this ordinance is not in compliance with federal law. It's not in compliance with the laws of the state operating here and so approving this will absolutely harmfully impact me and my family so I do want you One of those things doesn't require an environmental impact report but the other one does.
It doesn't seem to make sense and so I would ask that you do not adopt this today, thank you.
We will now go to Bruce Haas to be followed by Anne Marie. Bruce?
Good morning Chair Nelson, members of the board. My name is Bruce Haas and I'm the director of the Sierra Club Santa Barbara Ventura Chapter. And I'm here today in support of this ordinance change. I am here today speaking on behalf of the 5,000 members in this county as well as the thousands of members in North County where oil and gas extraction has continued to scar our landscape, spew toxic methane gas into our air and pollute the groundwater particularly In October 2025, your board heard from staff on the status of orphan idle wells in Santa Barbara County.
That report over 1,200 idle wells, over 1,000 active wells I think was an important show of display of the amount of methane that comes from idle wells overall. The California Energy Commission found that 65% of idle wells and 67% of active wells are leaking methane across our state. This, using EPA data and based on the research that is done from the California Energy Commission equates to about 125,000 pounds of carbon per day that is emitted from our wells in this county. That's about a million pounds a week.
This is a human health, environmental and economic crisis for our citizens. As you know the county has no legal mechanism or funding to plug in abandoned orphan or idle wells. We're at the whims of CalGEM state funding, prioritization and recommendation timeline. Considering the average cost to plug idle and abandoned wells in this county is over $200,000, our county would need hundreds of millions of dollars to be able to address this issue today.
What is before you today is to do something or to do nothing. Doing nothing has led us down this course where we have leaking methane all over our communities. I urge you to vote yes on this amendment and thank you for your time.
We will now go to Anne Mairie, to be followed by Charlie Katherman.
Thank you, good morning members of the board and chair. For nearly 90 years my family has operated a cattle ranch in Quiama. My name is Anne Meyrie along with my sisters and my cousin four women we the third generation continue to operate this ranch as Caliente Ranch Quiama LLC In addition to grazing ground, we have developed some irrigated farmland and we have exercised our mineral rights through oil and gas exploration.
While we own the surface many of our cousins have benefited and continue to benefit from the mineral rights. Today I ask this board to please protect our ability to exercise environmental rights by rejecting the oil and gas prohibition ordinance before you. Further, this not in my backyard policy is baffling. In my view it is anti-environmental on a global level and elitist on the local level It doesn't recognize the needs of the average resident in this county.
And I can say this, oh, I'm also a graduate of UCSB as some of your other speakers. Furthermore locally sourced energy production is a matter of economic and national security. Thank you.
Thank you.
We will now go to Charlie Catherman, then we are going to zoom with Brooke Baltazar. Charlie?
2:01 – 2:0821 turns
Good morning still yeah. My name is Chair Nelson members of the board my name is Charlie Catherman I'm a small business owner in Santa Barbara County that is involved in oil and gas but also in groundwater I've been in front of your board numerous times. You know, one of the drawbacks of going last in the speaker is everybody's already hit all of your points so I'm gonna take a different approach as a business owner and our business owners in this room including some of you on the board 35 years I've 10 families, 10 partners, a lot of service companies.
They depend on this work and this is their livelihood, it's my livelihood. If you can imagine as a small business owner standing up in front of this board and hearing we don't like you so we're going to regulate you right out of business Where is the compromise? Where is the cooperating? Gentleman over here said, oh we have methane spewing out of all these wells. APCD would roll me over on the ground and threaten lawsuit if my wells leaked methane. I have to check them all the time constantly, daily, weekly, monthly. It's a bunch of crap.
My 40 years in groundwater tells me there's not oil contamination on our ground water in Santa Maria. I don't know where this stuff comes from, but I'm directly involved and knowing the answers to those questions. I appreciate your time. I hope that we can cooperate going forward to find a compromise if South County doesn't want drilling ban it there
Thank you, Charlie. That is your time.
Thank you all.
We will now go to Zoom with Brooke Balthazar to be followed by Lauren Tatarsky. Brooke?
Hi can you hear me?
If you could speak just a little bit louder that would be greatly appreciated.
Is this better?
You're still a little quiet.
Okay I'm gonna take my headphones out here. Is this better?
Yes thank you.
I believe the clerk has a video that I'd like to play for my comment. But before we play that, good morning. My name is Brooke Balthaser and I'm the Community Organizing Manager at Seafrog or Climate First Replacing Oil & Gas. Through my role, I have the privilege of working with young leaders in Santa Barbara County. Leaders that wanted to be here today to share their voice but cannot due to being in school. Because of this, I would like to share a video that these leaders made so that their voices can still be heard today and urge you to take their perspective seriously. You all have an opportunity today to help create a future in which the young people you serve can not only survive but thrive. I hope you take advantage of it. If you could play the video now, that would be great.
Hi there, I'm Ethan Madej.
Hi my name is Lauren Folletti.
I'm Ezra Manriquez.
Hi my name is Jade Garcia and I am a sophomore at Santa Barbara High School. I am Bella Pena and I am freshman at Santa Barbara City College. My name is Iris Hecus and I'm an 11th grader at Santa Barbara High School. Hi my name is Sophia Azam. Hi I'm Nanami Fuller and I support the oil phase out just because I'm very concerned about my future I support the no new well policy because I think we have enough fossil fuels in our ecosystem. I'm 16 and I don't think that fossil fuels need to be part of my future.
We don't need to continue investing in a dead industry. We have the solutions to replace oil and gas, and I am grateful that the county is taking the first steps to do so.
I urge the
Board of Supervisors to approve the proposed amendments to prohibit the drilling of new oil and gas wells, to protect community health and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Thank you
We will now go to Lauren Tatarsky, to be followed by Mary Ellen Brooks.
Lauren? Hello everyone my name is Lauren Tatarsky you can hear me? Yes, we can. Great yes my family owns oil and gas mineral rights I'm a member of NARO and also the co-coordinator of the Mineral Rights Action Network which is a nationwide alliance of oil and gas mineral rights owners who are directing our legacy and resources to environmental protection community well being and industry accountability My grandfather moved to Colorado in the 50s to follow the booming oil industry and bought oil and gas mineral rights across this region as investment opportunities. These assets have been passed down to my mother and my aunt, and I am preparing along with my sister and cousin to inherit them in the years to come. I loved my grandfather very much we were very close and I'm grateful for his legacy Myself and fellow owners at the Mineral Rights Action Network support the phase-out plan.
We analyzed data from over half a million individual mineral rights owners in the state of Texas where this data is easily accessible. We discovered that 70% of oil and gas mineral rights owners are either likely or highly likely to care about the environmental impacts of the oil and gas industry, and to support the climate movement. We also sent a survey to over 70,000 of these owners and got the same results around 70%.
I am here today to speak on behalf of oil and gas mineral owners who understand that our continued reliance on fossil fuels is polluting our air and water, and causing the climate crisis. The adverse community environmental impacts of fossil fuel extraction extend far beyond the boundaries of individually owned private property. The members of our network strive to be responsible stewards of our assets, and we support regulations like the phase-out, an action that is consistent with the dire urgency of our crisis after decades of compromising with the interests of the oil industry.
The mineral rights owners at the Mineral Rights Action Network want to invest collectively in a sustainable future for our children and grandchildren rather than fight over private property ownership in short term profit. We know how expensive climate chaos is and will continue to be. In the end, we will all profit if we can prevent further damage to our planet. Thank you.
We will now go to Mary Ellen Brooks to be followed by Emily Engel. Mary Ellen?
2:08 – 2:147 turns
Yes, good morning. My name is Mary Ellen Brooks, and I'm speaking right now as president of Citizens Planning Association. I would like to voice our support of the adoption of phase one which would prohibit new oil development. CPA has followed oil and gas activity in Santa Barbara County since we were formed in 1960. We have supported the county's efforts to provide for safe and clean oil production.
And yes, we have also come before you to voice our concerns over multiple oil disasters. We were here in 1969 for that oil spill and that oil spill and the reaction from the public did really begin the environmental movement not only in Santa Barbara County but in the United States We have also voiced concerns in front of you about the refugio oil spill. We've also voiced our concerns about problem companies such as Greca.
Today at long last, we're here to commend the board for researching and proposing phase one of this ordinance. On a personal level I live in Vandenberg Village which is adjacent to a very active oil field Everyone in Vandenberg Village needs a voice when it comes to issues of oil development and even the existing oil industry. We live in the fourth district, all of us and probably half of us feel that we're not getting the voice that we need today.
So just in closing I would like to say that we encourage the board to support And enact phase one and it is a good start. Thank you very much.
We will now go to Emily Angle to be followed by Mike McClellan, Emily.
Good morning, thank you for taking my comment. My name is Emily Engel. I'm chair of the Santa Barbara Sierra Club group speaking on behalf of our over 8000 local members and supporters including families with young children who cannot be here today as you all know, I am an advocate for this work that you're doing. I think what you are Working toward in our county is the future for our children. And it's working toward keeping all of us safe and giving us access to protected wild lands and wild spaces.
I commend your work, and I encourage you to support this measure. I also would like to emphasize as Professor Mondavi spoke in his study, the $54 million plus of associated health risks are disproportionately felt by women and girls and our grandmothers. All members of our group who are seeking your protection as our community leaders. We know that you are committed to working on behalf of all of us and we truly appreciate your service and all that you do for our community.
Thank you for all that you do and for all the work you need to protect our local communities. Thank you.
We will now go to Mike McClellan, to be followed by Michael Malhart. Mike? And Mike we have unmuted you on our end if you can please unmute on your end to provide your comments Mike McLellan. All righty, we will now go to Michael Malhart to be followed by Nicole Marvis. Michael?
Okay just unmute it okay my name is Michael Malhart I'm a private property mineral rights owner in Ventura County. I'm here today as a member of NARO to support My family has owned our small farm since 1886, east of Oxnard and our oil production since 1957. We're also proud that of our operator and the care he takes of our oil field and the support and positive testimony from the Ventura County APCD on the operation.
Conservation using state regulations has blocked oil drilling permits for at least the past five years. My family had 30 permits approved that were canceled by Newsom, and as you know there are legal cases now in the courts to reverse Sacramento oil policies that are designed to cause the death spiral of petroleum in California. Using supervisory environmental virtue To take a constitutional right is a violation of trust. Confiscation of the right to explore and produce California petroleum is a taking under the state and constitutional rights, my opinion.
Based on knowledge of my family's oil lease, the financial damages caused by a Santa Barbara type taxpayer ordinance are both unconstitutional and easily create a liability for taxpayers in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Perhaps Do not allow members of the Board of Supervisors to use their will. To revoke the constitutional rights of private property and mineral owners, thank you very much.
Thank you
we will now go to Nicole Marvis to be followed by Jeff Jennings Nicole.
2:14 – 2:205 turns
Good morning, Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. Thank you for this opportunity to speak to you. My name is Nicole Mervis. I am a member of the environmental group within WAVE Women for American Values and Ethics. I'm here today to ask you to exercise your authority to not allow new oil wells and to phase out oil and gas operations. Oil from Santa Barbara is expensive and energy intensive.
By reducing oil production, you can more easily meet your climate goals Although I am not a resident, what you do in your city does have an impact on mine. Your leadership in this area will set an example for other California communities. With the Trump administration moving forward with plans to open 850,000 acres of BLM land to new oil leases we need action from Santa Barbara to protect against more drilling. Please phase out oil and gas operations. Thank you so much for your time.
We will now go to Jeff Jennings to be followed by Maureen Allenberger.
Good morning, Chair Nelson and Supervisors. I'm an attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation. PLF is a national public interest law firm that defends Americans from government overreach and abuse. We're one of the premier law firms that protects private property rights. Regarding this oil phaseout ordinance, it creates many constitutional concerns. PLF is actually litigating two cases on behalf of mineral owners right now in federal court. They're members of NARO. They've had their mineral rights rendered worthless Our restrictions on oil and gas drilling.
As the board knows, the 5th Amendment prohibits the government from taking private property for public use without just compensation. The Supreme Court has been very clear on multiple occasions that preventing use of minerals can rights can rise to the level of a 5th Amendment taking. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, for practical purposes the right to coal consists in the right to mine it with profit.
So in other words being able to actually use the minerals is the property right that logic applies to oil and gas rights as well. Peeloff is very concerned about this ordinance. It has many of the same characteristics of the laws that we've challenged in federal court, specifically its potential to render certain mineral rights inaccessible. From what I've seen in the drafts there's no provision for compensation for property owners in that situation. It's also unclear whether the definition of drilling a new well also prohibits We will now go to Maureen Allenberger to be followed by Pedro Matias.
Good morning, Supervisor Nelson and other supervisors. My name is Maureen Ellenberger. I am a grandmother but today I want to speak about something that I think we can all agree on. I'd love to just have a few minutes to chat about why Santa Barbara County is already a dumping ground for over 1400 abandoned wells. When oil companies go bankrupt, they leave contaminated sites leaking bleaching toxins into groundwater that ground water supplies drinking water to 200,000 county residents. We still haven't figured out how to clean up that mess and that's already what's left behind We can't afford to add more wells to that burden. And here's another thing that troubles me the most, the oil we're extracting from onshore oil wells today doesn't even stay here.
It's piped out of Santa Barbara County or trucked out of Santa Barbara County through San Luis Obispo and Kern counties to refineries elsewhere. We bear all the environmental costs, the abandoned wells, the contaminated groundwater, water, the risk of another oil spill And Santa Barbara County residents get none of the benefit. Yesterday, Lee Zeldin from the EPA announced that the federal government is terminating clean air laws. But this is more than just about air quality. This is about water quality, about groundwater protection. about the aquifer that supplies drinking water. The Trump administration is taking environmental protection and water quality decisions out of the hands of states and counties, out of your hands. Your job is to represent Santa Barbara County residents, to protect us, to fight for our rights to self-govern and protect our water.
This ordinance is how you do that. We're already living with 1,400 abandoned wells poisoning our groundwater. We can't afford to add more. We have to stop the bleeding before we can figure out how to heal. Please vote for this ordinance. Please do your jobs and please be responsible so that we can maintain control of our own land and county. Thank you.
We will now go to Pedro Matias to be followed by Candace Mennegan.
2:20 – 2:259 turns
Okay, can you
hear me? You're a little quiet. If you can speak a little louder get it a little bit closer to your microphone that would be much appreciated.
Good morning to the Board of Supervisors and community members who have gathered here today. My name is Pedro Matias, I'm a fourth year ES student at UCSB and Advocacy Chair for the UCSB's Environmental Affairs Board. To me this is an environmental justice issue. The consequences of oil production, polluted air and water, wildfire risks, and damage to ecosystems are not just numbers in a report They affect real communities and will continue to affect future generations long after the oil is gone.
Santa Barbara County has already committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and that commitment requires us to move away from oil and gas production. We cannot say that we are serious about addressing climate change while continuing to allow new oil wells. Today I am a student, but I won't always be. And I do not want those that come after me to inherit a community where protecting public health comes second to fossil fuel extraction. We have the opportunity to make a choice and so I urge the Board of Supervisors to approve the proposed amendments to the Land Use and Development Code and the Coastal Zoning Ordinance prohibiting new oil and gas wells to protect our communities, our environment, and our futures. Thank you for your time.
We will now go to Candace Minigan to be followed by Sneha Namburi. Candice?
Good morning, Chair Nelson and members of the board. My name is Candace Minigan and I'm the Executive Director of Coastal Ranchers Conservancy, a local environmental non-profit dedicated to supporting conservation restoration and education along the 76 miles of the Gaviota coast. I'm speaking today in support of the phase one oil and gas prohibition ordinance. I am speaking not only about climate change but About something much more immediate and local protecting the extraordinary biological richness of the Gaviota Coast. And Santa Barbara County, a central coast Mediterranean ecosystem is a global biodiversity hotspot it supports rare endemic.
sensitive and federally protected species. These are not replaceable resources once habitat is damaged, wildlife populations are disrupted or water reaches our creeks and watersheds we cannot simply nor quickly restore what was lost. The reports presented to you in the numerous comments before you make clear that oil development carries real risks to these resources Oil production has harmed sensitive plants and animals, whilst bulls have contaminated waterways. Oil facilities also increase wildfire risk in areas already threatened by drought and extreme fire conditions. Wastewater injection carries additional environmental risk, and these risks are not offset by meaningful economic Benefits. Oil extraction and drilling account for fewer than 100 jobs in the county, while a broader oil support sector represents only a small fraction of our workforce.
Yet oil operators impose costs on public resources including roads, emergency response regulation and cleanup. Oil property taxes provide only less than a percent of the county's revenues and meanwhile the public health benefits of moving away from oil are significant Oil operations produce volatile organic compounds, including carcinogenic pollutants. It is for these reasons I championed a buffer from sensitive receptors during my tenure at County of Ventura. Research cited in the Santa Barbara County materials estimates that a phase-out could avoid a 54 to 81 million in mortality
rate. Thank you
Candice,
that is your time. We will now go to Sneha Nambodiri, to be followed by Dwight Belden. Sneha? Hello can you hear me? Yes we can please proceed
Good morning, members of the board. My name is Sneha Namboodiri and I am a third year student at UCSB where I serve as an advocacy chair with the Environmental Affairs Board. I'm speaking today in strong support of the oil and gas phase out policy. While the county adopted a climate action plan to reduce emissions by 2030 without action it currently leaves out local oil and gas facilities.
As youth who will inherit the long-term economic and environmental consequences of today's policy decisions, we need our local government to take comprehensive action. A just transition to clean energy starts here with phase one. Phasing out these operations is a clear step for our public health, our coastal safety, our unique and sensitive ecosystem We will now go to Dwight Belden to be followed by Kathleen Belden.
2:25 – 2:307 turns
Good morning, this is Dwight Belden as a county taxpayer and the manager of our family ranch comprising 12 square miles in the Coahuila Valley that has extensive agriculture and grazing acreage for livestock and continuous oil production since 1949. This ranch has conducted continuous grazing and farming operations for nearly 135 years by my family. We are a member of NARO California We request that the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors reject any ordinance intended to phase out oil and gas production in Santa Barbara County, and to respect and protect the constitutional and vested property rights of mineral and royalty owners who recognize the continuing importance of petroleum to California's economy, its public services It's daily life and to support safe, responsible local energy production instead of increasing California's dependence upon foreign oil.
We urge the board to reject phase one onshore oil and gas prohibition amendments as locally produced oil and gas supports our labor force, our workers' families. The argument that this ban on future production ignores the economic and national security of the nation and overbakes the greenhouse gas impacts. You can't move water without energy, you can't stock the shelves in a grocery store without energy, you can't grow food without energy. There is no ample supply of alternative energy that would support a ban on oil at this time in the United States. Thank you for your time
We will now go to Kathleen Belden to be followed by Michael Chiakas. Kathleen?
Good morning,
can you hear me? Yes we can please proceed.
Thank you. I'm a longtime property owner in Santa Barbara County and a taxpayer in Santa Barbara County I agree with all the statements already made to oppose the proposed ban on all oil and gas production in Santa Barbara County. Most importantly, this proposal does require CEQA evaluation and therefore your board should at least postpone this proposal. Clearly more work needs to be done As is shown by all the testimony that has been presented to you this morning, it would be premature and wrong.
To pass this proposal. Thank you.
We will now go to Michael Chiakis to be followed by Doctor Lee Heller. Michael?
Good morning, my name is Michael Chiakos representing Community Environmental Council and CEC is strongly in favor of passing this ordinance. California has a carbon neutrality by 2045 target codified into law by AB 1279 and more oil extraction is completely at odds to the state law. Many of Santa Barbara County's oil fields peaked in the 1950s, and it's clear oil production here is ending. The question is whether we phase it out responsibly or let the decline happen chaotically?
Our oil reserves are old and tired. Oil companies are now using massive amounts of natural gas to heat up the last dregs of oil in an extremely greenhouse-gas and costly process known as cyclic steaming. Cat Canyon and Orchid oil fields rate among the highest across the state in terms of greenhouse gases emitted to produce one barrel, almost twice the GHG intensity of foreign oil inclusive of shipping.
The oil industry is notorious for privatizing the benefits and externalizing the cost to all of us. Local oil production gives our county just 1.7 million in property taxes, compare that to the 36 million it costs taxpayers to plug 171 orphan wells left behind by Greta after they went bankrupt or Veneco's cleanup costs estimated at $348 million. California is quickly transitioning away from oil into electric vehicles California oil usage peaked in 2006, and it's been declining. Recent quarters have seen 20 to 29% of new vehicle sales being EVs. And while we lead our nation, China just hit 65% EV market share, Europe is at 35%, Ethiopia is at 60, Nepal is at 75, and Norway is at 99%. EVs keep getting cheaper and better, and their sales are accelerating globally.
For these reasons and others, the county should start now to prohibit new oil drilling and work on a plan to phase out existing wells. Thank you.
2:30 – 2:368 turns
We will now go to Dr Lee Heller to be followed by Thomas Becker.
Good morning, Chair Nelson and members of the board. It's always convenient to follow speakers who make my points better than I ever could. In this case UCSB gets double credit. Professor Mondavi's expertise covers the points I would have made about the police power of the state under the 10th amendment to regulate in order to protect public health and safety as well as the fact that oil prices are set by the global market not by local production.
In other words producing more oil locally will not reduce our costs Student Anne Marie addressed the community impacts of oil and gas development, and the right that we all have to be safe from those impacts as being more important than the individual ownership rights of property owners. Like her I'm concerned for the economic impacts on those rights holders as well as employees in the industry but not at the expense of public health and the health of the global ecosystem. Instead we need to focus on industrial scale solar wind and the jobs that clean energy sector can provide Maureen Ellenberger addressed the consequences of abandoning or leaking wells, which I lived with for 18 years as a Summerlin resident and which that community continues to struggle with.
Time stopped adding to the inventory of things that the state pays to repair and abandoned imposing those externalized costs that Michael Chacos just referenced. So here are the two reasons we ask you to adopt this ordinance. First, to protect this community and its abundant natural resources not the natural resources that is oil and gas and other minerals but the more important universal resource that is our local ecosystem and then global ecosystem and all the beings living in it. And then to do locally what is not happening nationally due to lack of political courage or climate denial which is to take action to protect and defend us from the devastating impacts of burning fossil fuels.
Here's the reality, we can reduce fossil fuel demand. I drive my highly affordable used Chevy Bolt past gas stations daily and I never have to stop for fuel because I charge at home using either my solar panel generated electricity or the 100% green energy provided by my city's community choice aggregator. That future is in reach while oil and gas development threatens all of our futures. Thank you.
We will now go to Thomas Becker to be followed by John Harris who is our final speaker.
Yeah, thank you. I submitted written comments asking for Supervisor Joan Hartman to recuse from this item. Hartman has an acknowledged conflict of interest involving the Lost Forest Pipeline. The Lost Forest Pipeline is a common carrier pipeline. It is reasonable and foreseeable to assume that future oil production, onshore oil production may use the Los Flores pipeline to transport oil to market.
The banning of new oil production may impact the financial value of the Lost Flores Pipeline, which may cause a financial impact on Hartman's property. Hartman has a foreseeable financial conflict of interest. In fact this is a textbook example of a conflict of financial conflict of interest if I've ever seen one. A corrupt procedure will produce a corrupt result.
And this having Hartman sit in this item today and participate may very well be a procedural due process violation. Hartman was asked to recuse, she refused and just to let people know that Hartman and County Council have a history of submitting false documents The state agencies to get around recusal requirements and you can read my letter that I submitted the details how they submitted that false document knowing that the false document was contradicted by official County documents. Thank you very much.
We will now go to John Harris who is our final speaker on this item John.
Hi, can you hear me?
Yes we can. Please proceed.
Great. Well good morning Supervisors Chair and staff my name is John Harris I work at Numeric Solutions in Ventura. I have 30 years in petroleum geoscience working both domestically and internationally started working in Santa Barbara County in 1998 when I moved to California And I've been engaged by NARO to look at the mineral estate and royalty estate value in Santa Barbara County.
We started with publicly available data that anyone can download from CalGem and other sources provided by the state and nationally. Our assessment was based on industry standards and methodologies. We have a value of those minerals in the hundreds of millions to multiple billion dollars. based on current oil price and cost analyses. So we recommend planning staff to carefully review the economic impacts of this proposed prohibition phase out, thank you.
2:36 – 2:4640 turns
And that concludes public comment on departmental item number one.
All right, thank you Madam Clerk. At this time we'll have questions of the board. Any board members have any questions that came up during public comment? I'm going to have questions first before deliberations. Any other questions? Supervisor Hartman, you have a question.
I do have a question for staff and that is this ordinance doesn't really address slant or horizontal drilling or approved oil drilling production plans or vested LUPs. Is that correct?
Supervisor Hartman through the chair that's correct.
Okay so there's still lots of opportunity out there even if this phaseout were implemented or this ban.
So yeah existing wells and plans and permits will still be valid. Thank you
Right. Supervisor Caput, do you have any questions for staff before we go into deliberations?
Yeah,
go ahead.
I would like our County Council to respond to Mr. Becker's claim that I should be recused
Members of the Board, Supervisor Hartman I'm happy to address that. So this item is a legislative item. It's not involving one particular property and so we do not have any concerns about Supervisor Hartman participating.
All right thank you. I have a couple questions about mental rights that kind of came up here today And I know that there's been letters submitted in the record that you know, there's there's proven no reserves and especially in the Santa Maria Valley. I think the letter from asphalt goes over some USGS studies America is staff aware of any type of mineral reserves that are In the Santa Maria Valley or here in the county in general?
In terms of their volume, or their extent, or their location no.
Okay but we do understand that there are mineral rights out there and quite a bit of oil still under the Santa Maria Valley and throughout some of these different oil fields throughout the Santa Barbara
County. Chair Nielsen yes I mean we understand that minerals continue to exist in all the areas where they've been produced before
Okay. And this board may or may not have the legal ability based on state law to prohibit, but prohibiting oil operations doesn't make the county compensation proof for potential takings right?
Mr. Chair those issues are going to be studied when the amortization analysis is going to be completed I can't make a determination about whether or not there are going to be potential takings at this point.
Okay, so the study will look into potential takings of areas that are no longer accessible because of a ban?
Mr. Chair, the study is looking at what the investment-backed expectations were and then there is a component that's going to be looking at the issue of mineral rights and what the impact of this program would have on those.
The amortization or the ban?
The amortization.
Okay so there's no assessment on what the ban might have as an impact on mineral rights owners?
Not to my knowledge.
OK, so those that own an asset that's specifically to mineral rights would not be able so we're not looking at that at all?
That's correct, Mr Chair.
Do we acknowledge that has any value or are we operating under the assumption it has no value?
Mister chair, I don't think I can opine on what the value of it is. But I understand that the mineral rights exist and that there may be minerals subsurface that exists
OK. And our actions today would potentially make some of those unretrievable because we can't hit them all with the slant drilling that you mentioned right?
I imagine that's possible Sir.
OK great thank So
yeah if there are no other questions for the board, there's a couple of comments that staff would like to make about and provide information regarding some of the questions that had been asked earlier. So there is a question about sort of the breadth of CEQA in terms of the alleged impacts of the ordinance And under California Environmental Quality Act law, it doesn't require an exhaustive analysis of all conceivable impacts that might be associated with a project particularly impacts that are outside the county's boundaries.
That is because those impacts are indirect and difficult to predict. And so it was determined based on information that we had about the impacts caused by oil and gas operations, that the CEQA exemption was the correct CEQAs document for this particular action. There is some question about the projects of phase one and phase two whether they're dependent on one another or independent of one another And in this case, while they are called phase one and two, they are actually independent of one another.
And these independent projects can undergo different CEQA analysis. In fact, we will be in the next fiscal year looking at budgeting funds for the environmental document to be prepared as part of the amortization study. And so it's really unknown at this time and too premature to speculate and undertake any sequel review that would cover those impacts that are going to be analyzed.
There was a question about Appendix G and some comments that were made as part of the public comment regarding mineral resources. The sample questions in Appendix D are intended to encourage assessment of impacts, they don't represent thresholds necessarily of significance Additionally, we don't consider this future looking ordinance to cause significant loss of mineral rights.
At this time extraction of mineral resources in the county is still ongoing and as noted earlier in the presentations, the county has not been receiving applications for new wells for quite some time. And then lastly, the documents referenced in the board letter that notice of exemption and findings support the adoption of the ordinance. And amendments to the coastal land use plan which are part it which is part of our comprehensive plan are being made to ensure consistency with our zoning ordinance and the coastal land use plan. I think that covers the remarks that I wanted to make
All right. I think since those are responses to my questions, I have a couple of follow-up questions for that specifically around the mineral resources. Do we have any idea the percentage of mineral resources that will still be accessible versus those will not be based on this action?
We did not analyze that.
So we don't
know. Mr Chair, we do not know.
Okay so when you say there's still significant amount we just don't know in any type of relation
I do not have
that statement. I mean, it could be actually an insignificant amount in comparison.
Anything's possible, sir.
Okay? All right. And when you said that you're not required to evaluate impacts that happen outside the county We have not evaluated that right. I'm sorry can you restate And I'm just wondering if you could comment on how that might impact potential capping of wells, other environmental impacts at well sites and in oil fields.
2:46 – 3:0231 turns
I'm not even sure how we would do that, to be quite honest. How we would be able to determine that?
Okay but we didn't look into that though
either. We did not and it's not something that would traditionally be identified in the CEQA checklist as potential impacts but I understand your question. I
understand that it could be a foreseeable impact okay thank you all right that was...
I think it might be speculative is what I would say. All
right back to the board for deliberations
Just to state for the record, coming in from the restroom. So this is just on phase one and I know there was some confusion in the comments
but... Yes although yes today's decisions on phase
one. Okay just dealing with phase one
great. All right thank you Supervisor Kapp, Supervisor Hartman
Yeah before we actually get to deliberations I was intrigued by some of the calls for a conversation. I don't believe that that would have been raised if we weren't where we are today but I think that is something I don' want to ignore I think it may be more appropriate as it relates to phase two. And we're not really agendized to talk about phase two today, but I would like to just set out where I would like to see things head. I would very much like to see an analysis of different amortization periods for different types of wells and I would like to see that come prior to our budget workshops. I think idle wells, wells over health protection zones, wells over aquifers and perhaps locally produced and processed and applied asphalt that would actually sequester.
I would like to see an analysis of that. So we can't really give direction but I'm just putting my thoughts out there something I'd like to see. And so I don't know if anybody else has thoughts they'd like to put out there. I have a statement about where I'm coming down today. I don't know when that's appropriate to make it.
Supervisor Lavinia? Well,
I appreciate I think that's a great point. And I appreciate the words there at I think as we move to phase 2 that there's that's part of we're talking about a 3 but definitely you know, I It's interesting that there you know such polar. Opposites as far as views go on this but some there's always new wants to everything and bands just the have shown that they really don't work anywhere anytime you're banning something means There are compromises that can be made, there are things that just make common sense.
Even if you're anti-oil for example I mean to me just reading from a phone or computer at public comment that says no fossil fuels It just to me indicates the complete disconnect the public has between the petroleum and oil industry and life in the real world because that computer, that phone you're reading from was made from the product that you want to ban.
So I think there's some conversation that needs to happen. I think it could be a long conversation. I mean it's supposed to be a three year study But I think the industry would welcome that. I think some cooler heads or even bringing students in, bringing everybody together to try to figure out a path forward of what phase two would look like so I would love to say I would love to be a part of that but might need a public member but I appreciate the olive branch that's out there.
Thank you Supervisor Levin. Speak to Supervisor Hartman here for a moment. I appreciate the asphalt idea, and we think that's a great idea to have that conversation. You know, I was trying to kind of kick off that conversation also with a well abandonment strategy was something I was trying to bring this board previously because I do think that we can be working with the oil and gas industry. And so I think you're right. We're not agendized on that today, but I do think we probably should come back with another item in the future to talk about what other things that we can do with the oil and gas industry that are environmentally You know, justify our progress you know looking at the local versus imported life cycle analysis. You know all those types of things that we should be Evaluating so that we can truly say you know yes or no that this is environmentally superior.
Our actions here today and in the future could be moving in the wrong direction and that may seem counterintuitive for some people because they're caught up on national headlines but I think it's the on-the-ground that we need to be looking at. So if we can do it this year actually Steve, while I'm still chair, I'd love to bring back an item where we at least talk about What those future conversation looks like but I mean that isn't what we're talking about today.
Thank you Supervisor Hartman for bringing up the issue because i think it's an important one any additional comments on Supervisor Hartman? Okay Now back to deliberations on today's item. Supervisor Lee?
So are we giving direction about what we want to see in Phase 2 right now?
No, no, no. We can't do that today so we're
going to bring it back tonight. Yeah I'm sorry. Supervisor Lavinio kind of got my interest there and if there is a conversation I appreciate the notion of involving younger people and because they really have been a true gift of this conversation in the ways that they've showed up, engaged in their government. I mean showing up to County Supervisor meetings is pretty admirable and I don't want to get into it with you but like I mean having to use a phone what other options do they have? And I think that they're saying exactly that is my point.
It
is indispensable
so what you're
saying is the petroleum industry we couldn't live without it
but they don't want to live that way
But they are
living that way. This
is reality, what you want and what real is what we're talking
about. I knew I couldn't get away with a comment without a rebuttal but anyway.
Well one at time. Supervisor Capps.
Okay I'm done.
Floor's yours all right
we're good
okay
then I might as well kick off because i think it's going to get rebutted a lot today so 16 years I've been trying to bring North and South County together. And why does it not work? Because of this issue, this is what is the dividing issue in this county and The reality is we're not talking about offshore oil in Santa Barbara, which is your backyard. We are talking about our backyard and I understand why you would want to ban offshore oil or pipelines or anything in southern Santa Barbara County.
I get that but we are two different economies. We have two industries here that are supposed to support The economy for all of North County, it is ag and it is oil. And that's the way it's always been in South County you have tech and you have tourism now both economies supply the majority of the jobs and the revenue but both also have impacts but we don't talk about we never study the impacts of what South County industry is If we really believe that GHGs are the existential threat to mankind, why do we allow over 7 million visitors to come visit Santa Barbara every year?
We don't allow it. We encourage it. We subsidize it. We celebrate it. And what are we celebrating? 20,000 people a day are coming here. How did they get here? 38 commercial flights a day land at Santa Barbara Airport burning GHGs or they drive here from Southern or Northern California. They drive on the 101 increased vehicle miles traveled, or they show up on a cruise ship burning bunker fuel in the channel.
There's 81 hotels in Santa Barbara County, 5,000 rooms most of them air conditioned Nowhere in my 16 years on this board have we ever had a study about what's the overall environmental impact from tourism. And why not? It's because on the South County, that's where people go to have their jobs. That's where they have their jobs. That's what creates revenue for this county.
So why is it different for us in North County? The Environmental Defense Center speaker spoke about environmental justice. Well, if it's environmental justice from what I understand about environmental justice or what you have to ask the question why are we targeting the industry that helps disadvantaged communities pull their people out of poverty? This went on the ballot In 2014 and 62% of people sided with the oil industry. Now I know you guys said, well, I sent out 800 cards or I called 3000 people 69,000 people voted for Measure P.
Let's go to another thing here is this fear, because I think fear is a great motivator. It really is. It motivates people to do a lot of things and during campaigns what we always hear it's scare tactics all the time. It's hey they're gonna cut your Medicare both sides do this. They're gonna cut Social Security that gets people motivated to vote. So what I constantly hear that needs to be corrected is that the oil and gas industry in Santa Barbara County is polluting Our water and our air.
Let's talk about that because this is good news we all should be celebrating and we never do, we never do. Our local water quality meets or exceeds all state and federal regulations outside of a few very few problem areas like solving has nothing to do with oil and gas. Now let's talk about air quality in Santa Barbara County There are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 levels of air quality. You know how many hazardous days in 2026 we had in Santa Barbara County? Zero. How many severe air quality days we had in Santa Barbara County? Zero. You know how many unhealthy days we had in Santa Barbara County? Zero! You know how many poor quality days we had?
Zero. You know how many moderate days we had? 10 and we had 244 days of green air quality. We're doing the job, you guys are doing the job. You're holding government's feet to the fire, you want better quality water, you want better quality air and we're responding and you're getting that. If you go back and look at the charts from when we were kids In the 70's and 80's, I don't know how we're still alive breathing the air we did. It is terrible but it has been cleaned up and it's much better.
I support the transfer to green technology. I have voted for all of our solar projects. I voted to electrify the fleet, the county fleet. I voted for battery storage. I'm proud of the fact that Santa Barbara County is producing most of its energy from green sources. That's the wave of the future When the technology is there, we will switch. The majority of people will switch. I just recently bought a hybrid.
Why? Because now the technology has been available for awhile. I wasn't comfortable with it. I didn't think it was as good. It's now better. I get better gas mileage than I do with my other car. I love it! But we don't have a lot of options in North County Our oil patch offers head of household jobs to many that live in the most disadvantaged community. That's why our local trades always support the industry, so many union members support our industry.
You just have to come to terms with the fact that in life there are tradeoffs Oil production has its impact, but so does tourism. So does any industry that you bring in is going to have impacts? So why are we trying to kill off one while we're celebrating the other? It's been a long haul up here for me whenever this issue comes up because It's so limited up here and I don't think South County understands that. How limited our opportunities are here for people?
There's not a lot of places to go if you want to stay here and raise a family and buy a house, you got two choices basically. And so eliminating one is just doesn't make sense to me. I really appreciate Supervisor Hartman's comments that I think cooler heads can prevail. We don't, this is what our community is built on ripping the stool away from people is not a way to success. So if we're all going to move forward and be successful, we've all got to sit down and face the real facts. Our air quality is not being compromised. We're drinking clean water. Let's really get to the root cause of this. Otherwise, all we're really doing as somebody said you know, we want to be the light, the example so that others can follow Well, not really. We don't want everybody to follow what we're doing or there'll be no production and we won't have any energy at all.
What we really want to do is we want other people- we don't want to do it but we want you to do it somewhere else and that is the definition of elitism. That is the definition of limousine liberalism. It's okay as long as I don't see it or I don' hear it or it's not going to happen in my backyard so I know this is gonna be And I'm sorry that I'm so passionate about it. But when I see people like Pacific Petroleum who in this community, there is not an event for kids for veterans for People that are struggling, that isn't supported by our local oil companies. They're the first ones out there to write a check to the Boys and Girls Club, to the YMCA that keeps this community moving and until government's going to do that We've got to have these folks doing that.
So like I said, I'm sorry that I'm passionate about this. I know that there's a huge argument on the other side of it but the reality is you could bust up 500 people here from Santa Barbara and they wouldn't be able to find Cat Canyon don't even know where it is. It's not in your face. It' not the problem so I hope cooler heads prevail probably shouldn't be involved in discussion because I'm too passionate about this one but I appreciate Supervisor Hartman wanting to get people around the table and it should include young voices. It should have people that disagree with me because what I found on my time up here is that Hearing opposing viewpoints. And I know people, I see people out there shaking their head and giving me the side eye. You got to hear this.
I listen to what you're saying and you've got to hear the other side as well so when we all are listening to each other hopefully we get to a place that's a little bit better off.
3:02 – 3:207 turns
Thank you Supervisor Labanino. Supervisor Hartman?
Well, let me start by saying I think your characterization of North County is changing radically with the space for space and all that's predicted to happen there. There's new aeronautic ag tech low altitude flight. I mean North County is projected to really grow in terms of jobs and opportunities so it's not an either or choice anymore. There's a lot that's happening I think, too, it's a false choice to say it's oil from here or oil from elsewhere. We do have substitutes. We have most of our electricity in California in the daytime is generated now by solar.
We haven't had blackouts and brownouts because we've got the battery storage. Fuel pumps can heat and cool. Every new well we approve today is a bet that the market will still want oil in the 2040s and the 2050s. I believe that's no longer a safe bet. Solar and battery storage costs have hit record lows, renewables now generate more of the world's electricity than coal For the first time in the history of the modern grid, new gas plants cost more to build than they have in a decade while new solar and wind routinely undercut them.
A quarter of the cars worldwide now last year were electric. In California we have more charging stations than nozzles So the shift away from oil is not a policy aspiration anymore. It's a market fact happening faster, much faster than anyone predicted even five years ago. So when we're told that blocking new wells takes something of value consider the reverse. What does it mean for this county to help someone lock in 30 more years of a business the rest of the world is already leaving? If we approve new wells and the industry contracts faster than expected, and that's what every serious economic forecast says, this county doesn't walk away clean. We inherit idle wells, the plugging costs, the boom-and-bust budget holds. Saying no to new wells isn't this board interfering in a free market.
It's declining to cosign a bet that the market is already backing away from. And there's a pattern that I think is worth naming. Exxon's own scientists predicted global warming with remarkable accuracy back in the 70s. The company's response wasn't to warn us, it was to spend decades funding doubt so it could keep selling more oil not less. The plastics industry is now running the same playbook, promoting recycling when they knew over 90% of the plastics would enter the waste stream. It worked. Production is on track to triple by mid-century even though it contaminates human blood, brains, children and has now been linked to stroke and dementia. Risking a decline in fuel demand, those same companies are pouring billions into new plastic plants manufacturing a new addiction to supplement the old one.
This is the business model know the harm deny the harm manufacture more demand anyway that is the model that we need to break It's manufacturing and addiction, and the same logic animates federal energy policy. This administration has moved to open more than a million acres of public land in California to new oil and gas leasing while separately trying to freeze offshore wind and solar development nationwide. It ended federal incentives for electric vehicles just as they were gaining ground. They blocked California emission standards and pulled solar funding from communities like Puerto Rico that fought hard to build energy independence. This isn't a hands-off approach to energy, It's a thumb actively on the scale against renewables and to push the same manufactured fossil fuel addiction I just described.
Santa Barbara County cannot set federal policy, but we can set a different course. Beneath this discussion is a much simpler question the county cannot look away from We know exactly what a warming world looks like because we've already lived through it. We watched the Thomas Fire burn nearly 282,000 acres, the largest fire at the time in California history. Three weeks later on a January morning, we were coming in and we learned a mountain of mud and boulders came down onto a Montecito community 20 miles an hour and by sunrise, 23 of our neighbors were dead. Highway 101 was buried closed for 13 days.
That's not a statistic here. Many of us know people who didn't come home that morning Our own County Fire Department has the numbers on what's happened since. From the 1950s on, this county averaged roughly one large fire per decade. That was the pace of disaster we built our lives around. In the eight years since Thomas Fire, We've had four major fires. The Holiday Fire tearing through Goleta neighborhoods in 2018, the Cave Fire in 2019 which pushed 6,000 people out of their homes above Santa Barbara and left a fresh burn scar now that we're bracing for floods. The Alice Hall fire in 2021 and the Gifford Fire which burned more than 130,000 acres and became the largest fire in California.
One fire a decade has become one major fire every two years. That is not a changing climate we can adapt our way out of. This is a different county than most of us grew up in, and it's not just fire anymore. Two years running, we've had our roads and hillsides torn apart by something that I'd never heard of until then, Atmospheric River. That cost us millions of dollars that we may not get back given changes at FEMA.
So we're the ones paying for this in fire, in mud and dying wildlife, in our own health and the exorbitant costs of trying to adapt and mitigate. I'll say plainly what I believe. There's no version of the Earth's future that gets fixed by leaving it. There is no Mars for the rest of us. This is the only planet for most of us and everyone we love, everyone We ever will love, it's precious and finite here. And it's already telling us in fire, in flood, in the animals washing up on our shores. It cannot keep absorbing decisions made as if this were business as usual.
We won't undo the last 150 years of fossil fuel dependence with just one vote, but every era has a moment when it stops digging a hole deeper and starts climbing out. And for this county on this question that moment is now.
Thank you Supervisor Hartman. Supervisor Kaps?
Thank you. Well, I don't have too much more to add to supervisor Hartman. I'm just proud to be on this board at this moment in history. I do believe it is a historic moment and I'm glad that she referenced the mud slide because as Supervisor Labadino pointed out there are differences that in North and South, and I respect your attention to the differences. But one thing that definitely does unite us is these crises, these fires, all of the extreme weather events that we go through. And it unites us in a good way. We all come together in a beautiful way. Our first responders respond, and we all as five supervisors I don't want to put any any ounce of difference aside to support our number one goal which is keeping this county safe when we do but there is a direct connection between what Because of the marker in the sand, it's been noted we haven't approved new walls.
So this is about laying a marker. This is about historic moment. This is about saying who we are what our values are going forward in the future and just to add some a few more numbers to Supervisor Hartman's list of good context here In the past five years in this county, oil companies extracted $512 million in profits. Yet because of these climate-related events we've had to deal with a lot of damages related to climate.
Obviously there's not I'm not making a direct connection between the drilling here and climate all over the planet but I'm just making a climate crisis point that we spend a ton of money That could be going elsewhere regularly and that is a climate crisis. $2.2 billion in damages on that Montecito debris flow. That was the total cost. The 215 refugees oil spill was 330 million dollars.
150 million on public infrastructure damages. These are not isolated things, this is just now a way of life so we all there's so many things that we can attack and talk about how this afflicts everybody but weather and fire and the fear of living in this climate crisis that is just normal to these students? This is what their norm Just to wake up and know that there could be a mudslide, that there could be a fire. That we're now have 95 degrees. There's classrooms don't have AC.
They don't have heat pumps. We have a responsibility to change course. And I feel it very profoundly to be immensely proud to be at this moment of history. I know it's hard. I'm sorry for that. I hear the pain, I hear the disappointment, I hear the disgust in some people's voices when they look at us and they don't feel as though we can relate. I appreciate the effort. More talking is always good. More listening is always important. I will always do that for you all and I am happy to support staff recommendation.
Thank you Supervisor Caput. Supervisor Lee?
Thank you for staff for working on this. It's been challenging and difficult, so we appreciate your work on this. So of all the districts my district is probably the one that cares the most deeply about this issue and they have made their voices heard. They do support banning of new wells and the transition to renewable energy. My district feels the most effect from fire and flood. Just yesterday we had a meeting to talk about the flood in Montecito because it's so severe and scary that the community came out, hundreds of them because they are that concerned. They still remember what happened years ago.
So I'll keep it short and I do support this moving forward. Steve, I understand your point you see how North County was and is but I say county that can't be. It can't be the focus on renewable energy and focus on creating new jobs because I don't want to I want to make it seem like it's not important because. It is, I see a lot of jobs that will be lost and I want to make sure that we do focus on that because there is affecting families and we have to make that priority going forward that people are able to provide for their families so that is very important to me but I'm going to support staff recommendation.
All right thank you Supervisor Lee. I exhibited by the questions. I asked initially that I am concerned that we can't make this equal exemptions here that this staff is trying to I think that that is obvious and it's obviously piece milling even by the conversations that were having up here that we're talking about phase 2 at same time talk about these one to me as evidence that this is one big project and so no matter what we do today, I suspect.
That may be overturned A couple of conversations that were happening over here, we talked about you know especially the Thomas fire and debris flow which was actually not started by climate change. It was started by an electric fire and a lack of forest management. And so that led to that and I know that there's other things that asked climatically that were contributing factors but there's a whole story here in a whole picture that we should be looking at here Supervisor Hartman, you mentioned that there are other job opportunities besides just oil and gas in northern Santa Barbara County. And you're absolutely right there are.
But something that we have a struggle with up here in North County is many of those jobs you talked about need a bachelor's degree. 62 and a half percent of the people in Santa Barbara County have high school degrees, or sorry north of Santa Barbara County have high school degrees. Only about 15.7 actually have bachelor's degree and we're doing a lot of good work up here to try to close that gap but that does kind of feed into a point I want to make and I actually want to borrow on I think there's some really good data in here. Actually, it actually fueled me reading some of this information here and says that generally most field and support roles require no more than a high school diploma just like we're talking about and limited prior experience yet pay well above what workers with those credentials typically earn.
The premium effect reflects the high-risk nature of oil and gas work, which we all understand. Preliminary analysis of census data subsets to the Santa Barbara metro area suggests an oil extraction workforce that is disproportionately male and Hispanic in the field and support occupations, a pattern consistent with broader demographics of oilfield labor in California.
And when workers do leave the local industry, separation data suggests that they tend to leave the region So we're going to lose our local workers when we go ahead and people that grew up here. A lot of the jobs that we're getting with the Air Force Base are actually importing jobs, and I'm really concerned about some of my neighbors and my friends, people I grew up with that are in this room, that are impacted by what we're doing here.
Going deeper into Pasha's work I originally was a little critical of some of his statistical data, but actually looked a little bit deeper and I saw in there in almost every category where you look at where the opposition is to oil and gas bans. Over and over again here the majority opposition can be seen in southern portions of Santa Maria or Quiama. If you look at where the wells are in Santa Barbara County they're exactly there The people who live in these areas have counted the costs, they know the impacts and they've decided that despite those that you guys are all concerned about that they do still support this industry.
And this report also talks about the county's obligation before we do any of this work is we should have thought ahead of them and their workforce and what that looks like in the future. And again I think this report actually says that we're pitting the cart before the horse by beginning this process today without actually addressing the future for them. So that kind of leads me to my closing comments, which is what disappoints me most is that we often talk about one county, one future.
But this policy does not fall evenly across one county. The wills are overwhelmingly in one part of this county. The workers are concentrated in one part of this county. The mineral owners, service businesses and families who will bear the economic consequences are concentrated in one part of this county. And the polling submitted by the proponents tell us that the community most directly affected views this policy differently than the rest of the county.
One county, one future cannot mean one part of the county decides that another part will bear the cost of its policy choices. We're going to make decisions of consequential we owe those people who have more than good intentions. We owe them a complete environmental analysis and honest accounting of our legal exposure an inventory property rights and a serious examination of the alternatives I will not be supporting staff recommendation Supervisor Harmon.
3:20 – 3:227 turns
Well, I just want to say that in South County there have been tremendous impacts from offshore oil and a lot of workers who work in that area and I've spoken with them so I think that's not quite the characterization you have but it's only North County. It's onshore North County, offshore South County. I'm prepared to move staff recommendation.
And I'll second.
Any further discussion on the motion? Okay, seeing none let's go ahead and do a roll call vote.
Roll-call vote Passed 3–2 motion? Okay, seeing none let's go ahead and do a roll call
Show transcript
Motion passes 3 to 2.
All right thank you guys all for being here and participating That concludes department item number one. At this time we will go to closed session so if you guys could all be quiet for a moment, we're going to go ahead and read the items that will be discussed in closed session. There will be no additional business public business after closed session so that will conclude our meeting after we conclude closed session.
Madam County Council?
Thank you Mr. Chair and members of the board. In closed session today, the Board will consider anticipated litigation deciding whether to initiate civil litigation in one case as well as existing litigations Sable Offshore versus the County which is a U.S. District Court in the Central District of California And Conference with Labor Negotiators, the Employee Organization of Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Managers Association and the agency designated representatives are CEO Janet Peterson and Human Resources Director Christine Schmidt.
The time estimate is 45 minutes but of course it's possible we may come back sooner.
All right so we're gonna go ahead move to closed session it is 1230 right now 1239 will be back no earlier than 115. Welcome back to the September 15, 2026 meeting of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors in Santa Maria. We are just coming back from closed session and so Madam County Council can you please report out on what we discussed?
3:22 – 3:232 turns
Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the board. The board met in closed session on one item of anticipated litigation on deciding whether to initiate litigation. Existing litigation Sable Offshore Corp versus the county and conference with labor negotiators for Santa Barbara County Sheriff Managers Association and the board took no reportable action.
All right thank you that concludes our business for today we will be now adjourned to September 22nd 2026 in Santa Barbara.