1969 oil spill
Workers clean up after the 1969 oil spill in the Santa Barbara Channel. It was the largest oil spill in the U.S. waters at that time and is now third behind the 2010 Deepwater Horizon and 1989 Exxon Valdez spills. The Santa Barbara spill created a 35-mile long slick and spewed an estimated 3 million gallons of crude oil into the Pacific Ocean, killing thousands of birds, fish and sea mammals. Soon after the spill, President Richard Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act. In 1970, the California Environmental Quality Act was adopted, and the nation’s first Earth Day was celebrated. Afterward, laws were passed that regulated water and air pollution.
