13. The Gaviota Coast north of Santa Barbara is a special place. Its blue waters and beautiful coastline are home to an abundance of life, including critical populations of endangered Snowy Plovers, seals, migrating whales, and myriad fish. For those reasons, the area is often called North America’s Galapagos.  15. For example, a 2009 report by the California Department of Fish and Game found annual ex-vessel revenues for fishing vessels in Santa Barbara County of $6.5 million. That includes important near shore fisheries like crab, lobster, and sea urchin.  16. Now contamination by Defendant’s oil spill has undermined the health of the environment on which that economy depends.  17. Threats to the Gaviota Coast and Santa Barbara’s environment and economy from oil development are not new. In 1969, a blowout at Union Oil’s off- shore drill rig sent millions of gallons of oil into the waters and onto the beaches of Santa Barbara County. The blowout killed thousands of birds, dolphins, fish, and other marine life.  18. Despite that disaster, the oil industry has only continued to grow in and around Santa Barbara County. Today, however, governments and some companies have taken significant steps to make the production and transportation of crude safer and more reliable. Defendant, on the other hand, is notable for its track record of doing otherwise. B. The Failure of Plains All American Pipeline  19. Line 901, a 10-mile long, 24-inch wide pipeline owned and operated by Defendant, runs along the edge of the Pacific Ocean, transporting up to 6,300,000 gallons of oil a day between Gaviota and Las Flores. The route takes the pipeline past several state parks and beaches, including Refugio State Beach, carrying crude from offshore platforms inland, and from there to refineries.  21. As oil poured out of the ruptured pipe, neighbors and beachgoers began to be overwhelmed by the smell of oil. At approximately 11:30 a.m. the Santa Barbara County Fire Department responded to reports of the odors, and arrived to find oil flowing from the pipeline, through a storm drain under Highway 101, across the beach, and into the Pacific Ocean. Oil continued to leak from the pipeline until approximately 3 p.m.  22. Initially, the oil covered the beach and rocks just below the failed pipe. But once it reached the water, the oil spread quickly, travelling for miles out to sea. The oil fouled beaches for miles in each direction. As of May 28, the spill had impacted up to 28 miles of coastline.  23. While the precise timeline of events is still not known, it appears that Defendant did not promptly act to respond to signs of the pipeline failure or notify relevant government agencies. As California’s two United States senators stated in a letter to Defendant, “we are concerned that Plains Pipeline may not have detected this spill or reported it to federal officials as quickly as possible, and that these delays could have exacerbated the extent of the damage to the environment.” The senators called Defendant’s response “insufficient.”  24. Indeed, many witnesses who visited Refugio State Beach the night of the spill reported little or no response. Even the next day, as professional clean-up crews began to respond to Refugio State Beach, the response at other nearby beaches was left to volunteers with little or no training or protective equipment, using nothing but shovels and five-gallon buckets to try to remove thousands of gallons of crude from the sand and sea.  26. As the oils spreads, so do its terrible consequences. Numerous, fish, birds, and marine mammals have died after being covered in oil or exposed to the oil’s toxic compounds. Tar balls are washing up on beaches far to the south and east of Refugio. Frisbee-sized “oil pancakes” are drifting toward Channel Islands National Park. An oil-covered duck recently appeared at Alice Keck Park in downtown Santa Barbara, trying to clean itself in a decorative pond.  27. Those are the visible harms, relatively easy to see and tally. Beneath the ocean’s surface, however, a largely unseen catastrophe is unfolding. There, as the oil sinks and swirls in the tides and currents, it is likely suffocating sea grass, clinging to kelp beds, smothering reefs, and otherwise seeping into the aquatic food chain through shellfish and plankton. Dead bass, lobsters, crabs, octopi and other species that live beneath the surface offshore have already begun washing up on area beaches.  29. For example, state officials have closed these key coastal fishing areas from Canada de Alegeria to Coal Oil Point, including the shoreline and offshore areas between those points to 6 miles offshore. Even after that closure is lifted— and that could be months away—the spill’s impacts on those fisheries will continue far into the future. Also, the negative publicity from the spill has and will deter seafood buyers from seeking out Santa Barbara seafood.  30. The spill has also discouraged tourists from visiting businesses in Santa Barbara County, where tourism (along with agriculture and wine) accounts for roughly 15 percent of the workforce, or over 36,000 jobs. For example, one local kayaking company reported 25 cancellations following the spill, resulting in a loss of approximately $3,000. Two popular state beaches—Refugio and El Capitan—were closed during one of the busiest holiday weekends of the year, and are expected to remain closed until at least June 18.  31. Finally, the oil spill presents a serious risk to human life. The Santa Barbara County Health Department has recommended that residents avoid all areas affected by the spill, but a major highway runs through and adjacent to the spill area. Refugio Beach is considered a “Hazmat area,” the County said. The County also warned that direct contact with oil, inhalation of fumes, or ingestion of contaminated fish or shellfish can cause skin irritation, nausea, vomiting, and other illnesses.  33. While this spill is a disaster, it is not an accident. Defendant wantonly disregarded the health and safety of the people and environment by operating a pipeline it knew did not have proper safety systems in place.  34. In 1987, when Defendant constructed Line 901, Santa Barbara County’s Energy Division sought to ensure the pipeline was constructed properly by, among other thing, inspecting the welds on the pipeline using x-rays. The Division routinely inspected welds on new pipelines, as a way to ensure they had been done correctly to reduce the risk of failure. The Division also ordered Defendant to install an automatic shut-off valve system on the pipeline to ensure the pipeline would shut down swiftly, and without having to wait for human action, at the first sign of a problem in the pipeline.  35. Rather than agreeing to these commonplace and common-sense safety protocols, Defendant instead fought the County, suing it in U.S. District Court in 1987 and arguing it lacked jurisdiction to regulate its pipeline design and installation.  37. Also as a result of its lawsuit against the County, today Defendant operates the only pipeline of its type in the County without an automatic shut-off valve system. For those reasons, it is the only pipeline that is capable of failing and discharging more than 100,000 of gallons of oil.  38. While Santa Barbara, its citizens, and environment bore the risk, and now reality, of a catastrophic pipeline failure, Defendant has reaped rising profits, estimated at roughly $389 million on over $2 billion in earnings. By avoiding the cost of safety equipment and systems, Defendant boosted its profits by transferring the cost of failure to people who live and work in Santa Barbara County.  39. The lax safety standards at Line 901 were not isolated incidents for Defendant. Since 2006 it has been cited for more than 175 violations of safety requirements, which have caused nearly $24 million in property damage. Eleven of those incidents were in California. Defendant is one of the top four most-cited pipeline operators in the country.  41. Last year, for example, a pipeline owned and operated by Defendant ruptured in a Los Angeles neighborhood, covering the streets, cars, houses, and businesses in oil. The cause: a poorly maintained pipeline. A few years ago, another poorly maintained Plains pipeline ruptured and sent oil into a drinking water reservoir for Los Angeles.  42. In 2010, pursuant to a Consent Decree filed by the U.S. EPA following numerous alleged violations of the Clean Water Act by Defendant in several states, Defendant represented that it would update its procedures such that the “first required action where there is an indication of an increase in flow-rate outside the steady-state range [would be] “If there is an unexplained increase in delivery flow-rate with corresponding decrease in pressure – SHUTDOWN the affected line segment.”  43. As part of that settlement, Defendant paid a $3.25 million penalty for 10 spills between June 2004 and September 2007 that discharged a total of roughly 273,420 gallons of crude oil into navigable waters or adjoining shorelines in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Kansas,  44. Defendant itself recently acknowledged in a disclosure report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it has “experienced (and likely will experience future) releases of hydrocarbon products into the environment from our pipeline . . . operations” that “may reach surface water bodies.” (Emphasis added).  45. In short, Defendant has an ugly tradition of operating pipelines that fail. The communities through which it transports oil suffer the consequences.  47. This lawsuit therefore seeks to compensate the victims of the spill and to ensure that Defendant is prevented from causing additional damage to Santa Barbara County’s economy and environment in the future. VI. 48. Plaintiff Cheverez, a resident of Santa Barbara, is an urchin diver and nearshore fisherman. He grew up on the beaches of Santa Barbara County, recreationally diving for the urchin, lobster, and other species that live just offshore.  49. After high school, he worked at a charter diving business at the Santa Barbara marina, rising from deckhand to a captain. After that, he decided to be a commercial fisherman. In 1989, he bought a permit to commercially harvest sea urchin in California, for which he pays an annual fee. He bought his first nearshore permit five years later. Today, he owns and maintains two boats: the 34-foot Florentia Marie M/V, which he uses for urchins and nearshore fishing, and a 16- foot outboard he uses to fish in the eelgrass beds close in to the surf.  51. Sea urchins—prickly, fist-sized invertebrate that cling to rocks and are prized for their roe—cannot avoid oiled areas, so urchins close to shore have likely also been impacted.  52. But for Defendant’s oil spill, Plaintiff Cheverez would have been or would presently be fishing the nearshore areas that are currently closed due to the spill.  53. Defendant’s acts and omissions have caused present injury to Plaintiff Cheverez as well as the concrete risk of imminent, additional injury. VII. 54. Plaintiff brings claims pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 on behalf of classes of similarly situated persons. Plaintiff proposes two classes: a Commercial Fishery Class and a Natural Resources-Based Businesses Class.  55. The Commercial Fishery Class is defined as follows: All persons who derive a significant portion of their income through the direct harvest of fish, shellfish, or other sea life in the marine waters adjacent to Santa Barbara County.  57. Both classes are ascertainable and have a well-defined community of interest among their members.  58. Ascertainability: Although the Classes are large, the precise number of members can be ascertained in at least two ways. First, because the members of the proposed Classes live in a geographically confined area, providing notice to them via newspapers, trade publications, and other routine avenues of communication will be easily accomplished. Third, Defendant’s records – such as logs of complaints from affected class members – will also serve to ascertain potential Class members.  59. Numerosity: The members of the Classes are so numerous that joinder of all members would be impractical. The proposed Classes likely contain hundreds of members.  60. Commonality: There are common questions of law and fact that predominate over any questions affecting only individual members of the Classes.  62. Typicality: The representative Plaintiff’s claims are typical of the claims of the members of the Classes. Plaintiff and all the members of the Classes have been injured by the same wrongful acts and omissions of Defendant. Plaintiff’s claims arise from the same practices and course of conduct that give rise to the claims of the members of the Classes and are based on the same legal theories.  63. Adequacy of Representation: Plaintiff is a representative who will fully and adequately assert and protect the interests of the Classes, and has retained class counsel who are experienced and qualified in prosecuting class actions. Neither Plaintiff nor his attorneys have any interests contrary to or in conflict with the Classes.  65. Rule 23(b)(2). Plaintiff also satisfies the requirements for maintaining a class action under Rule 23(b)(2). Defendant has acted or refused to act on grounds that apply generally to the proposed classes, making final declaratory or injunctive relief appropriate with respect to the proposed classes as a whole.  66. Rule 23(c)(4). Plaintiff also satisfies the requirements for maintaining a class action under Rule 23(c)(4). The claims of class members are composed of particular issues that are common to all class members and capable of class wide resolution that will significantly advance the litigation. A. The Gaviota Coast  A. Plaintiff Cheverez 