Many in Santa Barbara County heaved a huge sigh of relief when the San Luis Obispo Planning Commission voted down Phillips 66's rail spur project that would have given the green light to trainloads of volatile crude from Canada and throughout the United States. Wednesday's hearing was a tense one, said Linda Krop, chief counsel for the Environmental Defense Center (EDC), which represented the Sierra Club, Surfrider Foundation, and Center for Biological Diversity against the proposal during the three-year process.
The Phillips 66 facility in Nipomo, called the Santa Maria Refinery, is seeking permission to move up to 250 trains annually, consisting of about 80 tanker cars carrying about 50,000 barrels of crude to the refinery from the north and south. The prospect of derailment of these trains prompted opposition to the project from about 45 school districts, cities, and counties — including Santa Barbara city and county — and about 20,000 Californians, the EDC stated in a press release. Wednesday was the eighth hearing the SLO Planning Commission had held in order to accommodate all the public speakers, staff information, and reports from Phillips.
"It was so dramatic," Krop said. "We didn't know until the very end" which way the swing vote, held by Commissioner Jim Irving, would go. He started off with an appreciation of the comments by the other commissioners, in particular the two opposed to the project, "which usually means they're going to go the other way," Krop said. Irving even went so far as to acknowledge the audience, "I know some of you are about to have heart attacks," she paraphrased, before he finally said the risks outweighed the proposed benefits — a handful of jobs — to whoops, whistles, and applause from those gathered for the four-and-a-half hour meeting.