I Didn't Realize Avila Beach Had Been Ruined By A Massive Oil Spill

I also didn't realize it had been cleaned up:

It had been a charmed Central Coast existence, with one disastrous exception: a massive leak from an oil tank farm that sent 400,000 gallons of petrochemicals oozing under the town.

This was not just any oil spill - it was an underground lake of muck that built up over decades, polluting Avila Beach so severely before it was discovered in 1989 that the town had to be destroyed, effectively, to be saved.

Much of Avila Beach, including its entire business district, had to be torn down and reconstructed, its iconoclastic, working-class character, many believe, lost in a thicket of bulldozers, lawyers and regulators.

Today, a final chapter to that saga is underway: An oil company wants to build a resort on the very piece of land where the spill originated.