Unintended Consequence

Normally when I say those two words it is when discussing some governmental policy that has consequences unintended from the original idea.  For a broad example take an idea like welfare – intended to help people who are in dire straits and need a life line – but which many times appears to cause people to come to rely on that help, and to thus never pull themselves out of the hole that required the welfare in the first place.

Well I am happy to share this report about a circumstance that appears to have a positive, and completely accidental, consequence.  Yesterday The Press Telegram reported on the condition of oil rig leggings left in the ocean floor.  According to the article, state law mandates that oil companies completely remove the remnants of an oil rig platform which is costly ($250 million) and requires large amounts of explosives to remove.  So what is the good part of this?  Well it appears that the legs of the platforms many times become de facto reefs for fish, and that a thriving sea life has formed around the pillars:

Although originally foreign to the marine environment, since their installation, the oil platforms have been co-opted by species of fish who have made the rigs their habitat, even preferring it in some cases to a natural reef, according to Chris Lowe, a CSULB marine biology professor.

“It’s basically like a high-rise building for fish, and each level actually provides another level of sea-floor habitat,” he said.

One of the reasons for the boon in fish is a moratorium on fishing near the oil rigs, which makes it about as near a preserve as you can get.  So not only do the fish have a habitat that is fairly well protected, but there is also the matter of the $250 million.  An option the article points out (and that is practiced by the Gulf states) is to strike a deal where the companies are allowed to leave the pilings and a portion of the money that would have been used to remove them are diverted to an alternate fund, usually in an environmental focus.

I like this idea.  The money is already accounted for by the oil company in their original valuation of the project, so they aren’t losing extra cash (in fact if a deal is struck it sounds as if they save money), an artificial reef is maintained, and the state gets a lump o’ cash… which if you haven’t heard, California NEEDS!

This article here paints a more nuanced picture of the idea.  Environmentalists believe that this keeps fish from properly habituating in natural reefs that are available.  The article states that pending legislation for this idea fell through in 2006 because of these concerns.  Don’t know if a debate has resurfaced in legislature or not… but it does seem that the debate is odd on the environmentalists part because as the Telegram article points out, when you dynamite the posts to remove them you kill everything living there.