ABSTRACT
Underneath an isolated oil field on California’s windswept central coast sits the second largest petroleum spill in the U.S. history. At more than 20 (or more) million gallons, the Guadalupe Dunes spill was recognized in 1990 after 38 years of spillage; it was a known yet unacknowledged problem for much of that time. Unlike the massive oil spills that ensconce it on a list of the U.S.’s largest—the Deepwater Horizon platform blowout and the Exxon Valdez tanker spill—the Guadalupe Dunes spill is little known because it was neither acute nor dramatic (Beamish 2002a: 3). Dubbed the “Silent Spill” in local press accounts, the ongoing spillage was familiar to the oil field workers where it originated, to regulators who frequented the Dunes, and locals who visited the adjacent ocean beach, even though it went unadmitted as an “oil spill.” Until the late 1980s, the common petroleum sheens that formed on the nearby Santa Maria River and the Pacific Ocean raised little concern (Beamish 2002b). An oil field worker’s call would set the state’s regulatory apparatus in motion. Yet, response to the spill would soon become an interorganizational headache for 18 federal, state, and local regulators; a $300 million-dollar problem for Unocal Corporation (the spiller); and a sore spot for community members who no longer trusted any of the involved organizations—government or industry—to protect them from harm (Beamish 2001). The Guadalupe Dunes spill represented a clear case of organizational failure on a grand scale.
