GOLETA, Calif. (AP) - The latest oil spill on the Santa Barbara coast is just a drop in the bucket compared with the area's catastrophic blowout in 1969, but it has become a new rallying point for environmentalists in their battle against drilling and fossil fuels.
No one expects damage on the order of the "69 disaster, which helped give rise to the modern environmental movement and led to passage of some of the nation's most important environmental laws.
Nevertheless, the new spill from a ruptured underground pipe is being held up as another reason to oppose such things as fracking, the Keystone XL pipeline that would run from Canada to Texas, the moving of crude by train, and drilling in far-flung places.
"What we see from this event is that the industry still poses enormous risks to an area we cannot afford to lose," said Joel Reynolds of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The timing of the leak - days after a federal agency approved Shell's plan for drilling in the Arctic, and while the Obama administration considers opening the Atlantic to exploration - could work to the advantage of environmental groups.
Closer to home, it could galvanize opposition to plans for new drilling in the Santa Barbara Channel, where Union Oil's oil platform blew out 46 years ago, spewing an estimated 3 million gallons of crude along 30 miles of coast. Some 9,000 birds died.
Tuesday's spill involved an estimated 105,000 gallons of crude; about 21,000 is believed to have made it to the sea and split into slicks that stretched 9 miles along the same stretch of coast fouled in 1969. A 23-mile by 7-mile area was closed to fishing.
As of Thursday, more than 8,300 gallons had been raked, skimmed and vacuumed up, officials said.
The thick, powerful-smelling crude coated rocks and sand, but only five oil-coated pelicans and one juvenile sea lion had been rescued.
There was no estimate on the cost of the cleanup or how long it might take.