A simple request led to a towns destruction

New book is the true story of a determined young lawyer who takes on an oil company to save a rustic California beach and its residents from environmental disaster. In a classic and, unfortunately by now, familiar tale of big-business greed versus small-town pride, Pulitzer Prize-nominee Wolcott presents a balanced expose of one companys arrogant response to an ecological and economic disaster and what one town and one man accomplished in the face of overwhelming odds."-Booklist

Dulles, VA (PRWEB) August 23, 2003 -- Ringed by mountains and nestled between Santa Barbara and Monterey, Avila Beach, California was an isolated little oil town of some four hundred aging hippies, scattered professionals, and active octogenarians. It was not a community of protestors. But that is exactly what it became when a massive oil spill was discovered in the town during the 1990s.

Pulitzer-prize nominee Barbara Wolcott tells the story of Avila Beach, a small town that has become a model of environmental rescue-and a model of what can go wrong with such an undertaking - in DAVID, GOLIATH, AND THE BEACH CLEANING MACHINE: How a Small California Town Fought an Oil Giant - And Won!, just released by Capital Books.

The story of Avila Beach began when a young attorney, Saro Rizzo, stumbled over some picnic debris during a morning run on the shore and decided to ask local oil giant Unocal to donate a beach-cleaning machine to the community. Instead of receiving a machine, Rizzo set off a series of events rich in deceit, controversy, and greed, during which a massive oil spill and an environmental disaster were exposed. DAVID, GOLIATH, AND THE BEACH CLEANING MACHINE details these events, using interviews with the key players, court documents, and media coverage of the events that took place from 1994 through 2001.

When Unocal ignored the request for the beach-cleaning machine, Rizzo, the son of immigrants and only two years out of law school, rallied the town of fierce independents to took on the corporate giant. He looked into a known oil spill that was under Avila Beach and essentially being ignored by the company. The trash hed been concerned about on top of the sand was nothing compared to what lurked below," Wolcott says. The danger it posed to the small town was formidable."

Rizzo filed the first of nearly sixty lawsuits (including some by Ed Masry of Erin Brockovich fame) that were brought against Unocal, citing Proposition 65, a California law that covered water contamination. Other lawsuits followed, state agencies got involved, and after several years of stalls and legal wranglings, Avila Beach residents won $18 million in damages as well as an estimated $100-200 million for clean-up. In her book, Wolcott follows the cases closely, identifying the key players, the outcomes, and the frustration and despair that the residents of Avila Beach and others felt while trying to save the town.

After the settlement, the cleanup of Avila Beach followed in short order, but required that the homes and businesses that sat directly above the leak be completely torn down or removed, then moved back again. Only two of the twenty-seven buildings were deemed historically significant and remain in their original locations.
The town is slowly rebuilding, but it has paid a terrible price," Wolcott says.

Residents used to love to be called funky, but no one could clearly define what that meant when it came to the task of replicating it. Restoration is under way, but while Unocal only had to shell out the money to do it, the people of Avila Beach had to surrender their spirit." DAVID, GOLIATH, AND THE BEACH CLEANING MACHINE explains the repercussions of the clean-up, including the skyrocketing property values and the loss of the towns charm.

The story of Avila Beach deserves to be told on its own merits," Wolcott says. But the reality is that it is destined to happened again in hundreds of other locations across the country, since there are 160,000 miles of pipelines in the U.S, and not all of them are in remote or rural places."

Barbara Wolcott is an award-winning freelance journalist whose work has appeared in a wide variety of national and international periodicals, journals, and books, including The Los Angeles Times Magazine, San Diego Family Magazine, Arizona Wildlife, and Mechanical Engineering Magazine.

She was nominated for a 2002 Pulitzer Prize, and has won awards from the California newspaper Publishers Association and the National Newspaper Association.

Wolcott holds a B.A. degree in Communications from California State University-Fullerton. She lives in San Luis Obispo, California, fifteen miles from Avila Beach.