James M. Ryerson, who received his BA in Geography at UCSB in 1971 and who helped change federal law by demanding cleaner air on oil platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel, died in his sleep on Sunday, September 27, at the age of 59.
Upon graduating from UCSB, Mr. Ryerson worked as an environmental planner at the California Department of Transportation and, later, as an air pollution specialist with the state Air Resources Board. He became Director of the state Coastal Commission’s regional office in 1981, became a policy advisor for the Environmental Protection Agency in San Francisco in 1986, and was the Director of the Santa Barbara County Air Pollution Control District from 1987 to 1993.
Under the leadership of Mr. Ryerson, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors challenged Exxon’s use of diesel on its oil platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel and demanded jurisdiction in federal waters, arguing that the air pollution from the platforms would drift onto land. The board demanded that Exxon operate its future platforms with electricity instead of diesel fuel. When Exxon ignored the demand, Santa Barbara County sued and won, resulting in the 1990 amendment of the federal Clean Air Act that gave cities, counties, states, and the EPA jurisdiction over air quality on oil platforms in federal waters.
In 1994, Mr. Ryerson founded an air quality and environmental safety consulting firm in Santa Barbara that worked with government agencies and private firms to solve pollution problems, and, in recent years, he assisted the U.S. Postal Service with their purchase of 500 electric vehicles in Southern California and the installation of charging stations for them—the largest deployment of electric vehicles in the country.
(Adapted from Santa Barbara News Press article by Melinda Burns, 9/27/05, p. B2)
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