Trump moves to seize control of California's coast Play

The Trump Administration is taking the first big legal steps toward stripping California of any control over the Pacific Ocean more than three miles off the coast.

Taken to its logical conclusion, this could mean oil drilling rigs three miles off the Malibu coast, soon.

The Trump Administration has filed the paperwork to remove California control over federally-owned oceans further than three miles offshore. Under a federal law passed during the Nixon Administration, the federal government gave states the legal authority to control development of the oceans off their coastlines. This came after the 1969 Union Oil catastrophe just 30 miles up the coast from Malibu, which coated beaches with oil as far south as San Diego.

But the Coastal Zone Management Act has a clause allowing the feds to come back in and take over the coastlands if states fail to protect the environment. The Trump Administration is twisting that law to assert federal control because California is doing too much to protect its oceans.

To do that, the federal government has to file paperwork, hold one public hearing, and then wait 45 days to finish the job. That one public hearing will be in Santa Monica for four hours this afternoon.

Nothing said at the public hearing will matter. The head of the NOAA branch that is holding the hearing is a longtime Republican activist, one of thousands appointed by President Trump in his second term.

Right now, the Trump administration has proposed new offshore oil drilling in the Pacific from the Mexican border north to Big Sur. Earlier this year, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick proclaimed oil off the coast of California to be vital for national security. He said the state's efforts to block its extraction amount to "environmental extremism."

There are known oil deposits in Santa Monica Bay, and it is technologically easy for oil derricks to be installed three miles off the coast to drill at a slant under the state-controlled three mile limit. That's what the oil wells near Santa Barbara do.

No decision — a lot of noise but no decision — will come from today's public hearing in Santa Monica. It's from 2 to 6 at the Hilton Santa Monica on Fourth Street next to Santa Monica High School.