Oil Company Wants to Seize Land With Eminent Domain

••• “Santa Barbara’s seasonal anchorage area near Stearns Wharf soon will become a permit-only mooring area in an effort by the city’s Waterfront Department to improve safety for boats and underwater infrastructure. The area, locally known as Fools Anchorage, will get 17 large white mooring balls added to the expanded mooring area by the end of the summer.” Boaters used to be able to drop anchor for free April through October, but “under the new policy, boaters will have the option of paying $500 a month, $200 a week or $30 a night to use the mooring area.” One reason is to avoid boats washing up on shore, as in the above photo; another is surely revenue.—Noozhawk

••• “Oil producer Sable Offshore Corp. has urged the Department of Energy to seize land around its pipeline in California as part of a push to create a new West Coast strategic petroleum reserve,” reports Politico. And according to the Independent, “the letter reportedly asks the federal government to seize the three-mile stretch of state-owned submerged land off the coast of Santa Barbara; a large portion of Gaviota State Park, where approximately four miles of the pipelines traverse the coast; and a privately owned piece of undeveloped land that the pipelines cross north of Buellton.” Shameless.

••• Related: “In a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Sable reports 52 of the 77 wells on two of its offshore oil platforms are now in operation. The company says it expects to have more wells and its third platform online later this year.” —KCLU

••• “Sheila Lodge, the first woman elected mayor in Santa Barbara history and the mother of the city’s long-running political matriarchy, died Wednesday at the age of 97. […] Lodge served three terms as mayor—from 1981 to 1993—making her Santa Barbara’s longest-serving mayor in history, as well.” (Also, this is great: “Lodge was never one to sugarcoat things. ‘When I die,’ she said, ‘don’t say I passed. I hate that word. Passing to where? And to what? I am a non-religious person. Please don’t use that word.'”) —Independent

••• “El Capitán State Beach Reopens, Accepts Camping Reservations [….] The popular camping spot had closed in December 2024 due to construction.” —Noozhawk

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