By Joan Albion
The Washington Post recently posted an article about small towns taking a stand against the cruise ship industry and Santa Barbara should take note.
Small port towns from Yorktown, Virginia, to Bar Harbor, Maine, and up to Juneau, Alaska, are rallying against the burgeoning cruise ship presence dumping thousands of tourists into their historic streets.
Yorktown residents recently opposed a plan by Princess Cruises to anchor large vessels and shuttle visitors en masse to the town. The citizenry’s resistance prompted the cruise line to retreat, marking a significant win for the local community.
In 2022, Bar Harbor residents voted to cap the number of cruise visitors, setting a threshold that reflects the town’s capacity to handle tourism responsibly. This reflected a growing sentiment that while tourism is welcome, it must not come at the cost of the community’s well-being or the environment.
This same grassroots activism can be seen abroad in Venice, Amsterdam, and Barcelona. Legal restrictions and bans are being introduced to keep sizeable cruise ships, and overall tourism, from overwhelming small districts and pricing out local residents. Measures range from limiting ship sizes and passenger numbers to enforcing environmental regulations.
Environmental and quality-of-life concerns resonate with most people in these towns, Santa Barbara is no different. We’ve all seen a dramatic increase in pollution and a decrease in living standards on days when cruise ships dock. The inundation of tourists disrupts daily life, strains local infrastructure, and contributes to ecological damage.
This extends beyond local inconvenience as the cruise industry’s economic benefits are skewed, with the bulk of profits going to the cruise lines rather than small communities.
Preserving the integrity of the Santa Barbara community and environment should take precedence over the allure of short-term financial gains from mass tourism.
So what will Santa Barbara do?
Op-Ed’s are written by community members, not representatives of edhat. The views and opinions expressed in Op-Ed articles are those of the author’s.
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I would rather see the city take a stand against the state forcing Santa Barbara to build, build, build with no thought of the consequences.
Replace the cruise ship concerns with our forced population increase concerns:
Environmental and quality-of-life concerns resonate with most people in these towns, Santa Barbara is no different. We’ve all seen a dramatic increase in pollution and a decrease in living standards with the State’s eradication of our town’s long honored commitment to quality planning, zoning and preservation. The increased high-density units and uncontrolled population disrupts daily life, strains local infrastructure, and contributes to ecological damage.
EL BARB – I’m with you on this. Banning cruise ships costs our local merchants. We need to be encouraging economic growth with our local businesses, not taking it away. We should be focusing on things that are actually damaging our way of life – out of control building of high end hotels as opposed to low income housing for the thousands of low income workers our city relies on, ridiculous over regulation of public activities that harm no one, and the overall catering to only the rich at the expense of the rest of our community.
The City of SB has a real priority problem.
So don’t vote for Newsom then next time.
BASIC – good golly Miss Molly, you have got to get Newsom out of your head, you’re absolutely obsessed with this guy. Hey, tell me really quick, I forget….. is Newsom running the City of SB? You sure seem to think so LOL
Yeah it’s really horrible that our governor is focused on decreasing the cost of housing in the state. What’s next, increasing our wages and quality of life? Bah humbug!
You don’t see what’s happening in reality dude. Say this say that, politicians do all that, all day. It’s all about HOW they actually can or can’t do it. Politics 101.
I feel dumber for having read this comment……
Sac – How is this possible?
DOLLY – good one. I’ll give you that.
Says the dude who regurgitates MAGA talking points on edhat every day.
Not even. I just don’t like cruise ships and more and more building in SB to make it look like LA.
And its not like the discharged passengers can find much of interest walking around State Street. They should just stay on board and drink where it is cheaper.
Ban cruiseships. Santa Barbara already has enough problems with its air quality. This morning’s AQI (air quality index) was up around 56. Deplorable. Likely due to the Franklin Fire (Malibu) affecting our air quality. Plus we don’t need those filthy polluting ships dumping their sewage and gray water anywhere near our channel.
There’s a good reason why cities all around the world that get hit by giant cruise ships are getting tired of it. Pollution is probably at the top of the list. I don’t believe the economic benefit some claim for local businesses justifies having this much toxicity in our waterfront. No thanks cruisers – keep on going…..
Last year it was reported that Santa Barbara had approx. 6,500,000 tourists, https://www.edhat.com/news/visitors-spent-2-24-billion-in-santa-barbara-south-coast-last-year/
I think Santa Barbara had 18 cruise ships last year and maybe they had 3,000 passengers each, so maybe 50,000 tourists by cruise ships, or about 8 tenths of a percent of all tourists,
Facts vs emotions.
As was noted below, the economic impact of these ships is really overstated compared to the overall tourism ledger. 6.5M visitors last year, $2.24B. https://www.edhat.com/news/visitors-spent-2-24-billion-in-santa-barbara-south-coast-last-year/. 50k tourists will spend, maybe $300 max each over the 5 hrs they’re here? $15M into $2.24B is 0.66%.
Thus, the financial impact is pretty much nil. Sure, allow smaller, more eco-friendly cruises, I’m for that. Folks want to see our wonderful city. We just don’t need the 5k/trip type ships. The affluent that can afford these smaller trips might spend a little more, so maybe they cut the total financial loss to 0.3%. That is a small price to pay for eco-polluters to leave this area. Remember, we founded Earth Day. We should look the part.