California oil spill: Business owners frustrated and worried as oil spill forces them to close shop

Kaner is listed as a plaintiff in a class action lawsuit filed Thursday by companies against Houston-based Amplify Energy, the owner of the severed pipeline. The lawsuit accuses the company of failing to maintain the pipeline safely and failing to respond quickly. CNN has reached out to Amplify Energy for comment.

“It has devastated our California coastline in Orange County and is having a huge impact on our ecological reserves as well as our economy,” said Orange County supervisor Katrina Foley.

Coastal businesses depend on the ocean

Kaner’s business is “located at Ground Zero near the oil spill” in Huntington Beach, he said.

He said he closed his business on Sunday when he heard the news.

“We had planned a full, reserved day,” he said. “We canceled and refunded all clients, canceled Monday’s classes. It was pretty obvious we weren’t going to be able to operate.”

“I think people are depressed,” Kaner said. “Not only this prime time for business … if you ask any surfer, October is the best time to surf in California.”

The lawsuit he filed against Amplify said October was a prime time for surfing in California and expects a loss of up to $ 20,000 this month alone.

Donna Kalez is the owner of Dana Wharf Whale Watching, which has been operating in the Dana Point area for approximately 50 years.

She said Dana Point is about a two-hour boat ride and 30-minute drive from Huntington Beach, so her business and the area are generally unaffected by the problems in the north. His business has been closed since Monday.

“We tell our customers every day that this is a day to day situation,” she said. “We use water every day, so an oil spill is of great concern to us.”

It is difficult for her to say how much money she lost to the spill.

“We’ve had a lot of people canceling for the future just because of the nature of the media telling them there’s this oil spill,” she said. “They don’t want to come here.

Rustyn Moore, regional manager of Killer Dana Surf Shop, said no one had rented surfboards in recent days because of the spill. Dana Point and San Clemente are definitely “the holy mecca of surfing,” he said.

“Any day of the week at any time from 5 am to dusk there will be hundreds of people in the water surfing of all ages,” he said. “Now to see him exhausted and maybe a person or two there… it’s very unusual to see an empty range in one of our waves here because it’s such a great place to surf.”

The US Coast Guard has issued a complaint number that has been established for any person or business who feels they have been affected by the incident: (866) 985-8366 and Pipeline Reference P00547.

Spill adds stress from pandemic

Ahead of the Delta variant wave of late summer, California lifted most of its Covid-19 restrictions on June 15 ending capacity limits, physical distancing, and some mask requirements.

“It’s unfortunate that this is on the heels of, you know, the pandemic where we are just recovering and coming back and now we have to deal with this,” said Foley, the Orange County supervisor.

Kalez told CNN that she lost more than $ 200,000 in canceled trips during the 2020 shutdown, and that she was excited to resume whale watching. Now the spill worries him.

“We continue to wish and hope that we will receive this appeal which we can reopen,” she said.

Moore said the Killer Dana Surf Shop has closed twice during the pandemic: once for about two months in 2020, and then for two and a half weeks in 2021 after an employee contracted the virus. When businesses started reopening in May 2020, the only thing open was the ocean, so Moore said business was “stuck,” with high demand and low supply.

“We couldn’t get enough product,” he said.

Since no one is going in the water due to the recent oil spill, he says no one is renting surfboards.

“These are probably one of the biggest parts of our business, we didn’t have anyone to hire, which definitely put a halt to some of our sales in the last couple of days,” he said.

Kaner said his surf school does a lot of international business with tourists from Europe and Asia, but it has slowed down because of the pandemic.

“We have lost a lot of tourism through Covid. People just don’t travel that much,” he said, adding that he had lost tens of thousands of dollars due to the pandemic. His surf school reopened in June 2020, but things were different with fewer visitors.

For him, seeing yellow tape on closed beaches now hurts, he said.

“It’s heartbreaking, it’s like one thing after another,” Kaner said. “Any day you can paddle there and be greeted by swimming dolphins, we don’t see that for a while. ”