Environmental catastrophe renews calls to ban offshore drilling in California

Ship’s anchor may have caused massive oil spill off the coast of Southern California. The spill originated from a pipeline running from the Port of Long Beach to an offshore oil platform known as Elly. In the days that followed, the spill has left crude along stretches of sand in Newport Beach, Laguna Beach and Huntington Beach, killing fish and birds. “The ecological and economic damage from this oil spill has the potential to reverberate for generations,” state Sen. Dave Min said in a statement. “The legislation after the Santa Barbara damage was meant to prevent this,” he said. “It really speaks to the need to get rid of these oil rigs.”. Anchored cargo ships continually move because of shifting winds and tides and an improperly set anchor weighing 10 tons (9 metric tons) or more can drag “whatever the anchor gets fouled on,” said Steven Browne, a professor of marine transportation at California State University Maritime Academy.