County Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer plans to hold a community meeting Thursday evening about the Trump administration's proposal to drill for oil off California’s coast.
“It would be a disaster for public health,” she said. "It would threaten our local environment, our clean beaches, our clean coastlines."
Lawson-Remer's district covers much of San Diego County's coastline. She still remembers seeing images of animals being covered in oil from the 2015 Santa Barbara oil spill. Thousands of gallons of crude oil spilled into the Pacific Ocean when a pipeline ruptured.
Walter Allan, who has lived in San Diego all his life, remembers another Santa Barbara spill, in 1969. That spill gave momentum to the modern environmental movement.
“When I was a kid, there was big splotches of oil on the beach here,” Allan said. He remembers being covered in tar from surfing at Mission Beach.
“You would come out and you'd have big blotches of black tar on your surfboard and all over your feet, just little circles of tar,” he said.
Allan doesn't support offshore drilling, saying he wants the environment to remain protected.
Last month, the Trump administration announced a plan to sell new offshore drilling leases in California and Florida for the first time in decades. Lawson-Remer said the administration didn’t seek public comments before releasing the plan. But the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is taking public comments online until January 23, 2026.
Lawson-Remer said renewing offshore drilling would reverse decades of environmental work in California toward clean, renewable energy.
“I surf, right?" she said. And so I talk to people on the water and, making sure that we have a clean beach and a healthy environment and that you can go in the ocean without risking getting meningitis or, like, worse, dying from cancer.”
But not everyone sees it that way. Osama Earthking was visting Mission Beach Wednesday, and said he supports offshore drilling to shore up the country’s oil supplies, amid the conflict between the United States and Venezuela.
"So I'm pretty sure they've done the studies that this is going to be our best move to do (offshore drilling) here,” he said.
Lawson-Remer, however, said she doesn’t think the administration has the people’s interest at heart.
“The Trump administration has a long track record of breaking laws, of disregarding judges, and disregarding the will and the needs of communities, particularly communities that he doesn't like and he wants to target,” she said.
Her town hall is scheduled for 6 p.m. at the Encinitas Community Center, 1140 Oakcrest Park Drive.
