Oil Beach: How Toxic Infrastructure Threatens Life in the Ports of Los Angeles and Beyond by Christina Dunbar-Hester (review)

Reviewed by:

• Oil Beach: How Toxic Infrastructure Threatens Life in the Ports of Los Angeles and Beyond by Christina Dunbar-Hester
• Michael Camp (bio)

Oil Beach: How Toxic Infrastructure Threatens Life in the Ports of Los Angeles and Beyond By Christina Dunbar-Hester. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2023. Pp. xiv + 252.

In an introduction, four body chapters, and a conclusion, Christina Dunbar-Hester offers an ecological and technological history of San Pedro Bay, the location of both the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach. Although each of the body chapters focuses on organic life—birds, bananas, sea otters, and whales and dolphins, respectively—key to Dunbar-Hester's analysis is the concept of infrastructural vitalism, or the belief of proponents of industrial infrastructures that the systems they managed were, in some sense, themselves "alive." This belief, according to Dunbar-Hester, came into violent conflict with the interests of genuine biological creatures. The magnitude of this clash intensified over time, for just as capitalism inexorably expands as broadly and deeply as it can, so do living beings reproduce and multiply. Dunbar-Hester's goal seems to be ultimately prescriptive, as she suggests at the end of the introduction that a deeper understanding of the historical relationships between industrial infrastructure and living creatures might help us create more sustainable and ecologically responsible forms of capitalism moving forward. Throughout the volume, abundant photographs help illustrate the subjects under consideration.

Dunbar-Hester's body chapters dive into more detail on how activities at the port implicated organic life. For example, leaks caused by oil drilling and transportation near the bay apparently became so prevalent that an oiled bird care facility arose to care for affected animals. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 2019 proposed several ideas for restoring rock habitat shoreline for birds whose living spaces were ruined by oil, although many area residents were disappointed that none of the plans went far enough to satisfy their concerns. Regarding bananas, Dunbar-Hester notes that the Port of Long Beach created an entire terminal for the sole purpose of managing imports of the fruit, which arrived on refrigerated ships and were then trucked out on highways to other areas of the Golden State, which obviously used fossil fuels. However, bananas were later received at smaller ports in the region, as the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports focused more and more over time on accommodating massive ships carrying large metal shipping containers, which usually did not contain perishable items. Historians of technology will likely find this chapter the most interesting, as it includes detailed descriptions of pumpjacks, petcoke facilities, and other innovations used in oil extraction and refining. This probably should have been the first body chapter, since it discusses an imported, nonsentient fruit emblematic [End Page 371] of the effect of industrial capitalism, while the other three chapters examine sentient organisms impacted by port activities.

As industrial activity threatened sea otters living off the California coast, Long Beach's Aquarium of the Pacific opened a new exhibit in 2010 featuring the animals. However, as Dunbar-Hester notes, otters' presence at this site ironically helped to highlight that none were naturally present in the bay itself; indeed, oil interferes with otter fur's warming and water-repelling properties, which can wreak havoc on the animals. Activity at the port has affected whales and dolphins as well. In addition to the harm caused by pollution, the huge amount of noise generated by industrial processes has interfered with echolocation, sonar, and other forms of communication. In the volume's conclusion, Dunbar-Hester is under no illusion that renewable forms of energy will replace petroleum anytime soon, but she does advocate for goods being produced closer to their intended sites of consumption in order to minimize the environmental impact of shipping and transportation.

Although the volume itself is rather slim, it should enjoy wide reading. Dunbar-Hester integrates environmental and technological histories to create a new and insightful analysis of the ecological effects of industrial capitalism. It might be productively read in graduate seminars alongside Teresa Sabol Spezio's Slick Policy (2018), which examines the lasting impact, for both scientific practice...