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| Last Tuesday, an onshore pipeline belonging to the Texas-based oil company Plains All American burst, spewing roughly 105,000 gallons of crude down a storm drain and into an undeveloped stretch of coastline just north of Santa Barbara. Roughly a fifth of that oil made its way into open water. It may be the worst oil disaster the California coast has seen since a devastating 1969 spill in the very same region sparked a national wave of environmental legislation. This photo provided by the Santa Barbara County Fire Department shows an oil slick from the broken pipeline near Santa Barbara on Tuesday, May 19, 2015. Photo credit: Mike Eliason/Santa Barbara County Fire Department via AP —Gizmodo, May 24, 2015 |
The water
paints the shoreline
black.
No.
We did this to ourselves.
Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco lives in California's Central Valley. Her poetry has appeared in The New Verse News, The Kentucky Review, Paper Nautilus, The Tule Review, Right Hand Pointing and The Lake, among others.