A bus of Santa Barbara environmentalists and attorneys traveled to San Luis Obispo on Thursday to oppose the controversial Phillips 66 rail spur project. For two days, they joined hundreds of activists who packed SLO’s government center, spilling into overflow rooms, and staged protests out front.
Wearing “Stop Oil Trains Now” t-shirts and buttons, protesters from all over the state urged the San Luis Obispo planning commission to uphold its staff’s recommendations and deny the project — a modification to the existing rail spur at the Nipomo refinery to allow for the unloading of crude oil.
The project — affecting 47 acres in and around the Santa Maria Refinery — was originally proposed in summer 2013 and has since gone through exhaustive environmental review. Public interest in the project is so great that planning commission chair Don Campbell decided to hold a third hearing date for continued public testimony and staff presentations on February 25. (The commission is expected to continue the meeting on March 11.) So far, nearly 25,000 written comments have been submitted. Of those, just 150 support the project.
