美国国家公共电台 NPR How California's Worst Oil Spill Turned Beaches Black And The Nation Green

 

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Fifty years ago today, a damaged oil well off the coast of Santa Barbara, Calif., caused what was then the largest oil spill in the history of the United States. The public reaction helped to shape the modern environmental movement. It also led to restrictions¹ on offshore² drilling, restrictions the Trump³ administration is trying to roll back. Here's NPR's Jon Hamilton.

JON HAMILTON, BYLINE⁴: The disaster started here, about 6 miles from shore.

DOUGLAS MCCAULEY: You can see behind us here Platform A, the sign right there on the rig.

HAMILTON: I'm on a boat with Douglas McCauley, a marine⁵ biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. We're circling the oil rig known as Platform A. McCauley says back in 1969, it was owned by Union Oil, and workers were drilling a new well.

MCCAULEY: And then, 10:45 a.m. January 28, they ran into a problem.

HAMILTON: The drill hit a pocket of gas and oil under enormous pressure. The result - a blowout. McCauley says crude oil and natural gas began rocketing to the surface.

MCCAULEY: So they're taking these big drilling pipes and shoving them back down the hole and then these gigantic steel blocks on top of that to seal off this blowout.

HAMILTON: It worked, briefly⁶.

MCCAULEY: They had capped off the blowout successfully, but they created so much pressure at the bottom of this well that it actually broke open the seabed.

HAMILTON: Oil and gas began to pour through five separate fissures⁷. Eventually, that created an oil slick on the surface that was nearly the size of Chicago. It took a few days for the oil to reach the coast. Mark McGinnis, a lawyer, came down from San Francisco to take a look.

MARK MCGINNIS: I smelled it long before I saw it. It really stank⁸ around here. And when I looked at the oil on the beach, I cried.

HAMILTON: McGinnis left his job at a big law firm to help mount a legal response to the spill. He soon became a leader in the environmental movement. McGinnis says a few weeks after the blowout, President Richard Nixon arrived in a helicopter.

MCGINNIS: (Imitating helicopter blades slapping).

HAMILTON: McGinnis says Nixon surveyed the slick from the air, then visited an oil-soaked beach to show his concern.

MCGINNIS: It was a matter of walking around gingerly to make sure that one's shoes - if you were the president wearing those shoes - didn't step in this stuff.

HAMILTON: By this time, hundreds of oiled birds were arriving at the Santa Barbara Zoo. Nancy McToldridge, the zoo's director, says there was nowhere else for them to go.

NANCY MCTOLDRIDGE: So the zoo closed its doors and concentrated its time and energy and - to taking in these oiled birds, treating them and then rehabbing them back out into the wild.

HAMILTON: Most didn't make it. But photos of oil-coated gulls⁹ and grebes and brown pelicans¹⁰ got the public's attention, and Peter Alagona, a historian at UCSB, says 1969 marked a turning point for environmental activism.

PETER ALAGONA: The Santa Barbara oil spill really helped to take an issue that was growing and really converting it into legislative¹¹ action and a whole body of environmental law at the federal level and also at the state levels that we still have with us today.

HAMILTON: The first Earth Day took place just over a year later. Then the Environmental Protection Agency was formed, and Congress passed the Clean Water Act. Alagona says it probably helped that Santa Barbara was home to a lot of wealthy Republicans who had helped elect Nixon. He says Nixon himself was no environmentalist.

ALAGONA: But he realized, during a time when there were many other extremely controversial, divisive issues - like the Vietnam War, for instance - that as American public concern grew about damage to the environment - that this could potentially be a winning issue for him.

HAMILTON: Today, Santa Barbara is much better prepared for an oil spill. There's a 46-foot fast response vessel¹² in the harbor ready to deploy¹³ oil containment¹⁴ booms. And there's a statewide group called the Oiled Wildlife Care Network ready to help sickened animals. Julie Barnes is a veterinarian at the zoo. She says animal experts learned a lot from the 1969 spill here and even more from the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989 and the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf¹⁵ of Mexico.

JULIE BARNES: Many more animals survive now than they would have back in the '60s or '70s or even in the '80s. The care that we can find for them now is phenomenal compared to the care that would have been provided in, you know, those early years of oil spills.

HAMILTON: Douglas McCauley says the greatest danger from oil these days probably isn't another spill. It's the climate change caused by burning all that oil. He says a year ago, Santa Barbara got a preview of what that might mean. It came in the form of a mudslide.

MCCAULEY: Boulders¹⁶ and trees rushing through the community traveling at, like, 22 miles an hour down the street. It destroyed a hundred houses and killed 21 people.

HAMILTON: McCauley says the mudslide was caused by the sort of extreme weather that accompanies global warming.

MCCAULEY: I think of that as being the most insidious¹⁷, the worst thing that the oil industry has done to our community.

HAMILTON: McCauley says an end to offshore drilling could slow down climate change by reducing the supply of oil. But the Trump administration seems headed in the opposite direction. It's preparing a five-year plan to encourage offshore drilling in federally controlled waters, including those off the coast of Santa Barbara. Jon Hamilton, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF MECCA:83'S "2AM SAMBA")

1 restrictions   

约束( restriction的名词复数 )； 管制； 制约因素； 带限制性的条件（或规则）

参考例句：

• I found the restrictions irksome. 我对那些限制感到很烦。
• a snaggle of restrictions 杂乱无章的种种限制

2 offshore   

adj.海面的，吹向海面的；adv.向海面

参考例句：

• A big program of oil exploration has begun offshore.一个大规模的石油勘探计划正在近海展开。
• A gentle current carried them slowly offshore.和缓的潮流慢慢地把他们带离了海岸。

3 trump   

n.王牌，法宝；v.打出王牌，吹喇叭

参考例句：

• He was never able to trump up the courage to have a showdown.他始终鼓不起勇气摊牌。
• The coach saved his star player for a trump card.教练保留他的明星选手，作为他的王牌。

4 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

5 marine   

adj.海的；海生的；航海的；海事的；n.水兵

参考例句：

• Marine creatures are those which live in the sea. 海洋生物是生存在海里的生物。
• When the war broke out,he volunteered for the Marine Corps.战争爆发时，他自愿参加了海军陆战队。

6 briefly   

adv.简单地，简短地

参考例句：

• I want to touch briefly on another aspect of the problem.我想简单地谈一下这个问题的另一方面。
• He was kidnapped and briefly detained by a terrorist group.他被一个恐怖组织绑架并短暂拘禁。

7 fissures   

n.狭长裂缝或裂隙( fissure的名词复数 )；裂伤；分歧；分裂v.裂开( fissure的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Rising molten rock flows out on the ocean floor and caps the fissures, trapping the water. 上升熔岩流到海底并堵住了裂隙，结果把海水封在里面。 来自辞典例句
• The French have held two colloquia and an international symposium on rock fissures. 法国已经开了两次岩石裂缝方面的报告会和一个国际会议。 来自辞典例句

8 stank   

n. (英)坝，堰，池塘 动词stink的过去式

参考例句：

• Her breath stank of garlic. 她嘴里有股大蒜味。
• The place stank of decayed fish. 那地方有烂鱼的臭味。

9 gulls   

n.鸥( gull的名词复数 )v.欺骗某人( gull的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• A flock of sea gulls are hovering over the deck. 一群海鸥在甲板上空飞翔。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• The gulls which haunted the outlying rocks in a prodigious number. 数不清的海鸥在遥远的岩石上栖息。 来自辞典例句

10 pelicans   

n.鹈鹕( pelican的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Kurt watched the Pelicans fire their jets and scorch the grass. 库尔特看着鹈鹕运兵船点火，它们的喷焰把草烧焦。 来自互联网
• The Pelican Feeding Officers present an educational talk while feeding the pelicans. 那个正在喂鹈鹕的工作人员会边喂鹈鹕边给它上一节教育课。 来自互联网

11 legislative   

n.立法机构，立法权；adj.立法的，有立法权的

参考例句：

• Congress is the legislative branch of the U.S. government.国会是美国政府的立法部门。
• Today's hearing was just the first step in the legislative process.今天的听证会只是展开立法程序的第一步。

12 vessel   

n.船舶；容器，器皿；管，导管，血管

参考例句：

• The vessel is fully loaded with cargo for Shanghai.这艘船满载货物驶往上海。
• You should put the water into a vessel.你应该把水装入容器中。

13 deploy   

v.（军）散开成战斗队形，布置，展开

参考例句：

• The infantry began to deploy at dawn.步兵黎明时开始进入战斗位置。
• The president said he had no intention of deploying ground troops.总统称并不打算部署地面部队。

14 containment   

n.阻止，遏制；容量

参考例句：

• Your list might include such things as cost containment,quality,or customer satisfaction.你的清单上应列有诸如成本控制、产品质量、客户满意程度等内容。
• Insularity and self-containment,it is argued,go hand in hand.他们争论说，心胸狭窄和自我封闭是并存的。

15 gulf   

n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂

参考例句：

• The gulf between the two leaders cannot be bridged.两位领导人之间的鸿沟难以跨越。
• There is a gulf between the two cities.这两座城市间有个海湾。

16 boulders   

n.卵石( boulder的名词复数 )；巨砾；（受水或天气侵蚀而成的）巨石；漂砾

参考例句：

• Seals basked on boulders in a flat calm. 海面风平浪静，海豹在巨石上晒太阳。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The river takes a headlong plunge into a maelstrom of rocks and boulders. 河水急流而下，入一个漂砾的漩涡中。 来自《简明英汉词典》

17 insidious   

adj.阴险的，隐匿的，暗中为害的，（疾病）不知不觉之间加剧

参考例句：

• That insidious man bad-mouthed me to almost everyone else.那个阴险的家伙几乎见人便说我的坏话。
• Organized crime has an insidious influence on all who come into contact with it.所有和集团犯罪有关的人都会不知不觉地受坏影响。