David, Goliath and the Beach Cleaning Machine: How a Small California Town Fought an Oil Giant and Won (Capital Currents)

During an early morning run, Saro Rizzo, a young attorney from Avila Beach, California, stumbled yet again over picnic debris, and determined to get his little town a beach-cleaning machine. Ringed by mountains and nestled between Santa Barbara and Monterey, Avila Beach was an isolated little oil town of some four hundred aging hippies, scattered professionals, and active octogenarians. It was not a community of protestors. Rizzo innocently began his crusade by requesting a donation from the local oil giant Unocal. Through a series of events rich in deceit, controversy, and greed, a massive oil spill and an environmental disaster were exposed. Written by Pulitzer-prize-nominee Barbara Wolcott, "David, Goliath and the Beach-Cleaning Machine" is the hard-charging story of this heroic quest started by a son of immigrants, only two years out of law school, who rallies his town of fierce independents to take on a corporate giant -- and win big to the tune of $18 million in damages as well as an estimated $100-200 million for clean-up. Rizzo’s suit was the first of nearly sixty, including some filed by Ed Masry of Erin Brockovich fame. As a result of the massive clean-up, beautiful Avila Beach has been almost totally leveled and the townspeople are fighting to save those buildings that represent their history and sense of place. Now that the town is in the spotlight as a model of environmental rescue, the beach-cleaning machine has arrived!

Barbara Wolcott is an award-winning freelance journalist whose work has appeared in a wide variety of national and international periodicals, journals and books, including the "Los Angeles Times Magazine," "San Diego Family Magazine," "Arizona Wildlife," and "Civil Engineering News." She was nominated for a 2002 Pulitzer Prize and has won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association and the National Newspaper Association. Barbara Wolcott holds a B.A. degree in Communications from California State University-Fullerton. She lives in San Luis Obispo, California, fifteen miles from Avila Beach.