Major oil spill off Southern California sullies beaches, kills wildlife, cancels Pacific Airshow

Cleanup crews struggled Sunday to contain a major oil spill off the Southern California coastline that has sullied beaches with dead wildlife and oil — and threatened sensitive wetland areas.

The spill, equal to about 126,000 gallons of postproduction crude, leaked from a pipeline about 5 miles offshore from Huntington Beach, Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley said in a tweet.

“The spill has significantly affected Huntington Beach, with substantial ecological impacts occurring at the beach and at the Huntington Beach Wetlands,” the city of Huntington Beach said in a statement.

Cleanup contractors deploy skimmers and floating barriers known as booms to try to stop further oil crude incursion into the Wetlands Talbert Marsh in Huntington Beach, Calif., Sunday, Oct. 3, 2021. One of the largest oil spills in recent Southern California history fouled popular beaches and killed wildlife while crews scrambled Sunday to contain the crude before it spread further into protected wetlands. (Ringo H.W. Chiu/)

Huntington Beach Mayor Kim Carr called the spill, discovered Saturday, a “potential ecological disaster,” CNN reported, as dead fish and birds, along with oil, washed up along the beaches.

The city’s popular beach was closed from Huntington Beach Pier to the Santa Ana River jetty, a stretch of about 4 miles, The Associated Press reported. In addition, the third day of the Pacific Airshow was canceled as crews needed “complete and unfettered access to the marine environment,” the city said.

About 199,000 people live in Huntington Beach, about 30 miles south of downtown Los Angeles. The Pacific Airshow features flyovers by the Navy Blue Angels and the Air Force Thunderbirds and normally would have drawn thousands of spectators.

Newport Beach Mayor Brad Avery checked out the oil slick Saturday while in a boat traveling back to the mainland from Santa Catalina Island, according to Foley. “He saw dolphins swimming thru the oil,” she tweeted, noting the stench of petroleum permeated everywhere. “You get the taste in the mouth just from the vapors in the air.”

It was one of the largest spills in recent California history, coming three decades after a massive oil leak hit the same stretch of Orange County coast.

On Feb. 7, 1990, the oil tanker American Trader ran over its anchor off Huntington Beach, spilling nearly 417,000 gallons of crude, killing fish and about 3,400 birds. In 2015, a ruptured pipeline north of Santa Barbara sent 143,000 gallons of crude oil gushing onto Refugio State Beach.

By late Sunday afternoon the leak had appeared to stop, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The problematic pipeline is connected to an oil rig called Elly, Foley said. Elly is connected by walkway to another platform, Ellen, located just over 8.5 miles off Long Beach and operated by Beta Operating Co., AP reported. Beta and its parent company, Houston-based Amplify Energy Corp., didn’t immediately return phone messages and emails seeking comment.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Coast Guard was leading crews used skimmers and floating barriers known as booms to protect wetlands.

“Minimizing damage and impacts to our city’s sensitive wetlands and marine environment are of the utmost importance,” the city said in a statement. “Skimming equipment and booms were deployed to prevent the inflow of oil into the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve and Huntington Beach Wetlands.”

The cleanup efforts came too late for some wildlife and their habitats, Foley said.

“We’ve started to find dead birds and fish washing up on the shore,” Foley told CNN, noting the slick had also made its way into a 25-acre wetland known as Talbert Marsh. “The oil has infiltrated the entirety of the wetlands. There’s significant impacts to wildlife there.”

She bemoaned the loss of years of work to fortify precious habitat.

“These are wetlands that we’ve been working with the Army Corps of Engineers, with the Land Trust, with all the community wildlife partners to make sure to create this beautiful, natural habitat for decades,” Foley told CNN. “And now in just a day, it’s completely destroyed.”

With News Wire Services