Three days after Ken Hough told county planning commissioners about “the dangers of crude oil tankers,” a semi-truck carrying 150 barrels of crude oil crashed into another vehicle a half mile from his home.
The Santa Barbara County Action Network (SBCAN) co-executive director had filed an appeal on the county’s approval of Sentinel Peak Resources’ proposal to construct and operate a loading rack and truck oil from Lompoc to Coalinga.
Though the county had placed mitigation measures on the project to improve trucking safety, SBCAN claimed the project needed an environmental impact report (EIR) due to its similarity to the controversial ExxonMobil trucking proposal, which the Board of Supervisors denied in 2022.
“Denials on ExxonMobil’s proposal were based on the hazards of trucking oil on many miles of freeways and two-lane highways, and the same hazards are present here,” Hough said during the Aug. 14 Santa Barbara County Planning Commission meeting. “SBCAN sincerely hopes you’ll give direction today that will lead to denial.”
Instead of upholding the appeal, the Planning Commission unanimously voted to direct staff to create an adaptive management plan that would create an accountability system for Sentinel Peak if spills or accidents occur. The project and plan will come back before the commission on Oct. 30.
“SBCAN is disappointed that the commission did not direct staff for the findings for denial,” Hough told the Sun. “We don’t want to see the trucking of oil, and an adaptive management plan would seem … to find a way to allow it to happen.”
The Aug. 17 crude oil truck accident on E. Clark Avenue and Telephone Road in Santa Maria didn’t spill any oil, but it did result in four injuries—reaffirming SBCAN’s appeal and action in order to keep oil trucking operations out of Santa Barbara County and away from fossil fuel production, Hough said.
Sentinel Peak Resources has operated in the Lompoc Oil Field since 2017, using the Phillips 66 pipeline 300 to transport crude to Coalinga until Phillips shut it down in 2023.
“Without this project, they’re out of business. … This is a lifeline for them,” said Errin Briggs, the deputy director of the Energy, Minerals, and Compliance Division in the county Planning and Development Department.
The project would construct and operate a truck loading rack that would allow six to 10 crude oil tanker trucks to carry up to 160 barrels of crude oil for 165 miles one way, with a limit on 2,000 trips per year. The permit would last for 50 years or until a pipeline becomes available.
“We don’t want to operate the truck rack for 50 years,” said David Budy, Sentinel Peak’s environmental health and safety manager. “There’s discussions around bringing the pipeline back into service, and we’re very interested in moving to that operation.”
Tankers would travel via Harris Grade Road, Highway 1, Highway 135 through Orcutt, Betteravia Road in Santa Maria, and then hit Highway 101 to cruise through SLO County. Truckers would connect to Highway 46 in Paso Robles, which turns into Highway 41, and then exit onto Highway 43 to head north to Coalinga.
While Sentinel Peak analyzed other routes, this path remained the most efficient and kept the project under California’s greenhouse gas emissions threshold. Budy told commissioners that the company would be open to considering a 25-year permit and operating outside of peak commute times.
If approved, Sentinel Peak would generate a spill response protection plan that includes truck driver training and would stop operations during rainy days.
“Sentinel Peak has served as a diligent steward of the Lompoc field’s energy resources during our operatorship, and this project—which does not include the drilling of any new wells—intends to continue that stewardship,” Sentinel Peak Resources told the Sun in an emailed statement. “The Lompoc field has contributed energy resources to the state since 1903, and Sentinel Peak’s project serves those needs under a highly regulated environment while also supplying much-needed jobs to California residents.”
Santa Barbara County reached out to Santa Maria, Lompoc, and SLO County for input on the project but didn’t get a response from any jurisdictions, Briggs said.
“One thing that disturbs me is we aren’t sure whether we’ve afforded an opportunity for other jurisdictions, counties, cities that are affected by this,” 3rd District Planning Commissioner John Parke said. “Another concern is the duration of this project. … I think 50 years is too darn long.”
Parke, whose district encompasses the construction portion of the project, suggested the adaptive management plan because it enables projects permitted for long periods of time to move forward, but it allows “another look” if something happens, rather than going to an EIR.
“If we had an EIR, it would take some time and quite a bit of expense and raise this issue again,” Parke told the Sun. “We’re not exactly back to square one, but maybe this would be a way to … give neighborhoods some practical protections.”
Parke has supported and suggested adaptive management plans for other projects, including cannabis permits to regulate odor control, the Channel Islands YMCA to ensure security for 24/7 operations, and the Strauss Wind Energy project to prevent bird deaths.
The Strauss Wind Energy Project’s adaptive management plan requires the operator to track the number of birds killed due to the windmills and follows a tiered response system based on the report, planning Deputy Director of Energy, Minerals, and Compliance Briggs said.
“It provides a way to allow the applicant to act if they are on good behavior, but if it gets worse we start to ratchet down the oversight,” Briggs said. “What we found [with Strauss] is they quickly hit level one, putting everyone on alert. They hit level two, which requires them to go back to the Planning Commission.”
The Planning Commission will receive an update on Strauss Wind on Sept. 25.
Sentinel Peak’s adaptive management plan is in its early stages of development, but Briggs imagined it would have a similar tiered system, with accidents or spills triggering the response.
“It seems like a good idea in certain situations, and I would agree it’s been helpful to Strauss, and I could see some benefit to having it on the trucking project,” Briggs said.
Although Sentinel Peak’s proposal is similar to ExxonMobil’s, Exxon’s scale was much larger—proposing 70 truck trips a day during daylight hours, with six or seven trucks an hour, as opposed to Sentinel Peak’s six to 10 truck round trips per day and only one truck per hour.
“Because of the circumstances of that project, when you look at … environmental review, you look at the existing conditions and compare them to what the project was going to do,” Briggs said. “Exxon had no operations, no pipeline—70-something trucks a day against nothing. With the current project, … their baseline was the use of the pipeline. We weren’t comparing trucking against nothing; we were comparing trucking against a pipeline.”
Sierra Club Santa Lucia Chapter Coordinator Gianna Patchen worries about the impacts beyond Santa Barbara County.
More than 90 miles of the proposed route cut through SLO County, passing through a number of neighborhoods, particularly on Highway 46, that sit next to the highway with just grass between their property and the trucking route, Patchen said.
“Increased truck traffic does have an impact; six to 10 trucks a day, the round trip makes it 10 to 20 trucks a day,” she said. “Truck crashes are not uncommon, spill incidents from these oil trucks are not uncommon. Any time that there’s a project like this, it’s important we take into consideration not only the impacts of spills on our ecosystems, but the truck emissions, [and] the safety for folks on the roads.”
Patchen said that she’d like to see more effort on multi-jurisdictional engagement beyond one notification.
“A lot of stuff comes across their desk, and sending one notice and not hearing back is not a sufficient amount of effort to ensure they are aware this project is happening and their participation is part of the process,” Patchen said. “In my opinion—of course, I’m not privy to all protocols behind the scenes, but you follow up a few times if something is going to be happening in their jurisdictions.”
Reach Staff Writer Taylor O’Connor at [email protected].
