1. 2007-12-07 – http://www.ksby.com/Global/story.asp?s=7510034
2. 2007-12-22 – http://www.ksby.com/Global/story.asp?s=7535638
3. 2008-01-05 – http://www.ksby.com/Global/story.asp?s=7583042
4. 2008-01-24
5. 2008-01-24
6. 2008-01-24   (four spills at separate facilities, one day)
7. 2008-01-24 – http://www.ksby.com/Global/story.asp?s=7771799
8. 2008-01-29 – http://www.ksby.com/Global/story.asp?s=7793474
9. 2008-03-02 – http://www.ksby.com/Global/story.asp?s=7983929
10. 2008-03-05 – http://www.ksby.com/Global/story.asp?s=7979098
11. 2008-04-22 – http://www.ksby.com/Global/story.asp?s=8209092
12. 2008-05-01 – http://www.ksby.com/Global/story.asp?s=8258940
13. 2008-05-29 – http://www.ksby.com/Global/story.asp?s=8404336
14. 2008-07-25 – http://www.ksby.com/Global/story.asp?s=8738731
15. 2008-08-14 – http://www.ksby.com/Global/story.asp?s=8844591
16. 2008-11-26 – http://www.ksby.com/Global/story.asp?s=9421141
17. 2008-12-26
18. 2008-12-27
19. 2008-12-28 – http://www.ksby.com/Global/story.asp?s=9588026

The Sierra Club reports over 41 spills this year by their count. Greka has also received over 250 citations over the last eight years or so. According to this article from the Oakland Tribune, “the Santa Barbara County Fire Department has responded at least 400 times [since 1999] to Greka oil spills and gas leaks”.

Why does this keep happening? How many times do they have to be so obviously negligent to make the proper authorities put an end to it?

I also love how the president of Greka, Andrew DeVegvar, thinks they are being “targeted” and “victimized”. Here are a couple of select quotes from the man himself from the past week or so:

“There are oil companies that are putting oil into the ocean, and there [are] other oil companies in Santa Barbara that are having oil spills and have had oil spills, and none of these companies are being victimized by stop work order.”

“We regret that this happened but it wasn’t because of our infrastructure, it wasn’t because of our operator procedures, it wasn’t because of the way we do business. It was because a human being made a mistake and that can happen anywhere.”

An occasional accident is one thing, a regular occurrence of the same issue is something completely different. None of the other companies are screwing up as often as Greka has been recently. If they were, they would be in the news as well.

The reference he made to human error was about the latest three spills over the holiday break. I disagree with him; I do believe it was because of the way that they do business, by cutting corners and not providing enough watchful eyes, especially when you have been under fire so much in the past. But that aside, there are 16 other spills over the last year that you can’t just attribute to human error (and even if you can, you obviously need to better train your employees). So I reject that argument. There is no excuse for a business to repeatedly mess up, especially when in this case the stakes are so high, posing a real danger to the surrounding environment and life.

At least there are some people in government who recognize this company is an utter failure and really should be shut down. Assemblymember Pedro Nava (D-35) has authored two bills (AB1960 and 2911) to enforce stricter penalties and to help cleanup efforts when there is a spill.  He even has a website devoted to keeping tabs on Greka. But there is still much progress to be made, as they are going to continue to have these spills until they are shut down permanently.

So where does it stand? Well, they were issued another stop-work order by the county after the most recent spills. That’s the fifth or sixth time that they have had an order issued. They are not allowed to open that specific facility until the state and county have conducted an investigation and have deemed the facility fit for operation. But here are other facilities and all of them have had these problems. It’s time to start putting pressure on the people towards the top to let them know that this kind of gross neglegence is intolerable. We can’t let Greka (or others in the future) continue to get away from being held accountable for cutting corners and their disregard of safety in order to fulfil the bottom line. Email the Governator, email Assemblymember Nava, email the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors. They are the ones who can force this to stop and as we’ve seen, as long as nothing is done, it surely won’t be long before there is another spill.