Santa Barbara Oil Pipeline movie to air at DUC event
For the City Times
STEVENS POINT — The Stevens Point Chapter of 350.org is sponsoring a showing of the film “Broke: The Santa Barbara Oil Pipeline Spill of 2015.”
The movie will be presented in the theater of the Dreyfus University Center on the UW Stevens Point Campus (1015 Reserve Street) at 7 PM on Tuesday April 23, which is the second day of Earth Week. The film is one hour long, and a panel discussion of oil pipeline and other environmental issues, featuring a call-in from the film’s director, will follow.
Admission will be free. Six other local organizations are cosponsoring the event: The Aldo Leopold Audubon Society, The Frame Presbyterian Church Green Team, The Interfaith Community for the Earth, The North Central Conservancy Trust, The Point Fellowship – A Unitarian Universalist Congregation and The Stevens Point Citizens’ Climate Lobby Chapter.
“These local organizations are interested because according to the Portage County Hazard Mitigation Plan, (p. 86) we are host to a petroleum pipeline and a natural gas pipeline which together run 89.5 miles through the heart of Portage County, passing within about 5 miles of downtown Stevens Point. Between 1990 and 1997, Portage County experienced three pipeline leaks.”
Broke, released in 2018, highlights the aftermath of an oil pipeline break that killed hundreds of seabirds and marine mammals, sickened local ranch workers, shut 2 state parks, devastated the local fishing industry, and sent an oil production company into bankruptcy. The Broke crew started filming at Refugio, California, State Park the afternoon that the pipeline burst on May 19, 2015, spilling 140,000 gallons of crude oil onto the Gaviota coast and into the ocean at Refugio State Beach.
Crude oil tumbled in the surf, sent toxic fumes in the air, and stained the rocks and sand as the Coast Guard struggled to respond. The film also shows the reaction of citizens who came together in protest marches and healing ceremonies, rescued birds and marine mammals, cleaned the oil off their beaches, and demanded more stringent spill prevention and a more effective spill response plan.
The community’s actions stand in stark contrast to the insensitivity of the oil industry and particularly Plains All-American Pipeline, Ltd. Plains still faces both criminal and civil lawsuits.
Broke is an environmental story with a peek back at the Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969 that helped launch the environmental movement, including the US Environmental Protection Agency, and numerous clean air and water laws, as well as Earth Day.
Denis Hayes, who was asked by Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson to organize the first Earth Day in 1970, has said that Senator Nelson was inspired to create Earth Day when he viewed the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill from the air. Broke also features a look forward toward a fossil free future. For more information on the film, and a brief trailer, visit the film website at www.broketheoilspillfilm.com