Oil Begins Fouling Shore at Newport, Huntington Beach : Environment: Wind that had kept the goo offshore finally shifts. Newport Harbor is closed for the first time in 31 years, as the cleanup accelerates.

After drifting for nearly a day off the coast, portions of a 300,000-gallon oil slick from a disabled tanker began washing up along several miles of prime Orange County shoreline Thursday night.

Officials in Huntington Beach and Newport Beach reported a brown oily foam appearing along the surf line in both cities about dusk. It continued washing ashore through the night. At first the oil appeared in brown droplets in the incoming surf, but within hours the water had turned to a thick, foamy, brown concentration that fouled half a mile of sand in Newport Beach and parts of Huntington Beach.

Fishermen who braved the advancing slick had to wipe the black goo from their lines, while gawkers who ventured to the water’s edge and scooped up handfuls of the muck struggled to clean their hands. Newport Beach’s mascot, Charlie the sea lion, swam through the muck near the Newport Pier.

Coast Guard officials said most of the two-mile-long slick of light Alaskan crude remained several miles off Huntington Beach, where it oozed from the tanker American Trader Wednesday. Efforts continued to scoop it up.

Until nightfall, Thursday had been a day of optimistic predictions that favorable weather conditions might keep the slick at sea long enough to be cleaned up. Then came a late-afternoon sea breeze that began to drive the oil ashore.

However, the wind shift may have spared a prized wildlife sanctuary serious damage, authorities said. The Bolsa Chica wetlands, home to several endangered species of birds, was threatened for a time early Thursday as the slick drifted northeast from the leaking 800-foot tanker, which apparently struck its own anchor as it attempted to moor off Huntington Beach.

But Thursday night, winds and shifting ocean currents carried the purplish slick--about 2 miles long and 4 1/2 miles wide--south toward Huntington State Beach and the densely populated Newport coast. As a precaution, Newport officials closed the famed harbor for the first time in 31 years.

“Hitting the beaches is obviously a disaster for us--oil up and down the beaches, the marinas, into the boats, just one thing after another,” said Newport Beach City Councilman Clarence J. Turner. “The whole area is critical.”

Earlier in the day, Peter Bontadelli, director of the state Department of Fish and Game, said: “We have been extremely lucky. The good weather and offshore breezes have saved us thus far.”

But the winds turned, so did the slick, as it took aim at Huntington and Newport beaches, two of the California’s most popular summer tourist spots.

Greg Person, like many outraged Newport residents, went to get a close look at the oily beach.

“This is terrible,” he said. “I feel bad for the birds. I’ve been surfing here for 32 years and I’ve seen nothing like this. It’s pretty devastating.”

Huntington Beach officials said they would wait until today to begin cleaning up the oil, but in Newport about a dozen workers in hard hats were raking the muck up as soon it washed ashore.

The main slick, officials said, is too large to encircle with a boom, so cleanup efforts Thursday focused on scooping up the light crude from the damaged tanker.

Federal officials had initially ruled out using chemical dispersants because they are toxic. But the Coast Guard then sought permission from the Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Fish and Game to use dispersants to break up the slick. A decision is expected sometime today.

Investigators zeroed in on one of the ship’s anchors as the apparent cause of the 7,000-barrel spill late Wednesday afternoon in relatively shallow coastal waters. The 21-year-old tanker was attempting to moor offshore when the port-side anchor apparently punctured the single-hulled vessel, the ship’s owner said.

Hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil poured through a three-foot gash before the leak stopped early Thursday. The tanker, in a routine maneuver, had been preparing to unload its cargo of crude oil through underwater pipelines leading to a Santa Fe Springs refinery.

The anchor theory was supported by Coast Guard officials. “It’s very likely the anchor,” Chief Warrant Officer Dan Dewell said. “Our investigators have seen the damage to the anchor.”

Another Coast Guard officer said, “The anchor is now bent like a banana.”

Owners of the tanker, American Trading Transportation Co. of New York, sent divers to assess the damage to the ship.

Although the cause of the spill remains under investigation, the ship’s owner said alcohol tests performed Wednesday night on the tanker’s captain, second mate and pilot were negative. The drug test results will not be known until Saturday. The tests were administered by Coast Guard officials in the presence of Navy investigators.

Mike Murphy, vice president of American Trading, said the company considers tanker skipper Robert La Ware to be “an able and experienced seaman.”

“He has been with our company 30 years, and he’s an extremely experienced master on the West Coast,” Murphy said. “He has put this ship and many others on moorings many, many times.”

A stream of local and state politicians descended on Huntington Beach Thursday, staging press conferences to voice support for cleanup efforts and to raise questions about oil drilling and tanker movements off the Southern California coast.

“I hope this oil spill sends a strong message to Sacramento and Washington,” Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy said at a morning press conference on the beach overlooking the spill. “It was just pure dumb luck we didn’t have a tragedy. We shouldn’t be lulled into a false sense of security.”

In Washington, Transportation Secretary Samuel K. Skinner said he would meet with President Bush to brief him on the accident, adding that the oil company and owners of the tanker expressed their “commitment to me” to help in cleaning up the oil.

As the spill cleanup moved into its second day, protests grew from foes of offshore drilling.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental organization, said little comfort could be taken in the fact that the spill had remained offshore or that cleanup operations were under way.

“Even though the flow of oil has been stopped, the ability of the oil industry and the government to clean up the 300,000 gallons that were spilled into the Pacific Ocean is pathetic,” said an NRDC statement.

Lynne Edgerton of the council’s Los Angeles office said: “The spreading slick from the impaled American Trader presents an imminent threat to the ecologically important wetlands of Bolsa Chica, Anaheim Bay and Upper Newport, some of the healthiest wetlands left in Southern California.”

The National Ocean Industries Assn. issued a statement asserting that the spill should not be used as a reason to delay offshore leasing off the California coast or any other state.

The trade group said that since 1970, there have been just 10 oil spills of more than 1,000 barrels on the outer continental shelf. None of those spills caused “significant” environmental damage, it said.

“Critics of offshore energy development must not be allowed to confuse the facts in an effort to shut down one of the nation’s safest sources of future energy supplies,” the association said.

Officials said that the Huntington Beach spill’s initial environmental impact has been unusually light, but it is the worst California spill since the catastrophic 1969 Santa Barbara spill, when 3.2 million gallons of crude fouled beaches for months and killed thousands of shore birds.

“We got lucky; it could have been a lot worse,” said biologist Victor Leipzig, executive director of the Bolsa Chica Conservancy, a grass-roots environmental group.

Huntington Beach officials, who declared a state of emergency and planned to meet Thursday night to map out cleanup strategies for when the oil washes ashore, kept their fingers crossed that their shoreline would be spared major damage.

“We’ve been dodging bullets for 24 hours,” City Councilman Jim Silva said. “This is one of the most popular beaches in California. It would be a shame if we lost it.”

About a dozen oil-coated birds were picked up Thursday by volunteers and biologists, who set up a command post and wildlife treatment center on the sand south of the Huntington Beach Pier. In all, 25 oil-covered birds have reportedly been recovered, of which eight have died.

Fear persisted, however, that the oil could still wreak environmental havoc. “Clearly, if the wind and currents shift and it starts moving in, we’re going to have what we always said--significant shoreline impacts,” said Brian Baird, an oil spill expert with the California Coastal Commission.

Fish and Game chief Bontadelli said that if the oil hits the Bolsa Chica wetlands, Upper Newport Harbor and the mouth of the Santa Ana River, it would take 2 1/2 years for the ecosystem to recover. The Bolsa Chica wetlands, the focus of intense battles between environmentalists and developers, is home to dozens of bird species, including the light-footed clapper rail and the least tern, both endangered species.

“The wetlands are the key to all marine life, as well as shore birds and wintering waterfowl,” Bontadelli said.

Meanwhile, British Petroleum confirmed Thursday that the spilled oil was Alaskan North Slope crude, the same oil that gushed from the Exxon Valdez last March.

However, California’s warmer climate may cause the oil to dissipate sooner than it did in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, as well as make it appear lighter in color.

“With warmer water temperatures, the (more volatile components of the oil) would (dissipate) quicker,” said Charles Webster, BP’s manager of crisis management.

“As far as the persistence of what’s left, it’s probably not a great deal different (from Valdez), except it might remain more liquid than it would if it were in an extremely cold climate,” Webster said.

A federal emergency response team considered trying to clean up the oil by using chemical dispersants or setting the oil slick afire. But both options were ruled out because of health concerns, said Kathleen Shimmin of the EPA.

“It’s too close to land,” Shimmin said. “We would never consider using dispersement if mechanical cleanup is working, and in this case it’s working. . . . We’d use putting toxic chemicals into the environment and posing a potential hazard to the wildlife to clean up a spill as a last step.”

The use of chemical dispersants is controversial because they are toxic to marine life and because their effectiveness is uneven, according to the National Academy of Sciences. State Fish and Game officials said if dispersants are used, the chemicals would probably injure snails, halibut and other bottom-dwelling creatures. It could also kill fish larvae in the spill area.

“That’s the trade-off for not hitting sensitive coastal areas,” Fish and Game spokesman Curt Taucher said.

Ecological experts and environmentalists who visited the scene said the oil slick threatens to sicken or kill species all through the marine food chain--from the microscopic plankton that float in seawater, through mussels and anchovies and sardines, up to sea lions whose fur can be matted by the oil, leaving them vulnerable to the cold.

Cleanup efforts centered around several large skimming vessels that tried to scoop up the oil. Booms were placed around the front of the tanker to contain spilled oil near the hole in the hull, but the size of the larger slick made the use of skimmers necessary.

Shortly after dawn Thursday, about 150 spectators and volunteers gathered near the Huntington Beach Pier to watch the tanker wallowing offshore and look for oil on the beach.

“I have lived in Huntington Beach all my life,” Sam Cracchiolo said, “but never in a million years did I think this would happen here.”

Residents as far as two miles inland said they could smell the spilled oil. Police dispatchers said they received several dozen calls from concerned residents.

Assemblyman Ted Lempert (D-San Mateo), chairman of the Assembly Select Committee on Spill Prevention, said that the American Trader’s ruptured tanks contained about 20,000 barrels of crude and that about 7,000 barrels were lost.

“The amount of oil spilled from the American Trader is about 3% of what was spilled in the Exxon Valdez tragedy,” Lempert said.

In Sacramento, the chairman of a task force that studied the Valdez spill in Alaska warned state lawmakers that they cannot rely on a private company alone to clean up a spill as large as the one off Huntington Beach and that cleanup costs will skyrocket if the oil hits the sandy shore.

Contributing to the stories on the massive oil spill off Huntington Beach were Times staff writers Eric Bailey, Bill Billiter, Jim Carlton, Steven R. Churm, Gregory Crouch, Tammerlin Drummond, Sonni Efron, Steve Emmons, George Frank, Shelby Grad, Ted Johnson, Lanie Jones, Matt Lait, Dave Lesher, Eric Lichtblau, Kristina Lindgren, Maria Newman, Rose Ellen O’Connor, Dana Parsons, Carla Rivera, Rick VanderKnyff, Jonathan Weber, Chris Woodyard and Nancy Wride in Orange County; John Balzar, Lee Dye, John Hurst, Patrick Lee, Michael Parrish, William C. Rempel, Larry B. Stammer and Amy Wallace in Los Angeles; Ralph Frammolino in Sacramento; and Rudy Abramson, Sam Fulwood III, Michael Ross and Robert W. Stewart in Washington.

What Went Wrong? About 30 times a year an oil tanker pulls up to the mooring off Huntington Beach to off-load oil for the Golden West Refining Co. On Wednesday, riding in heavy swells, the American Trader spilled about 300, 000 gallons of crude oil while attempting to anchor there. Normal Berthing Seven “anchor” buoys mark the mooring for Golden West Refining Offshore Mooring. To berth, a tanker travels north, parallel to the shore. The tanker backs into the mooring. After lining up and being secured to the seven anchor buoys, the tanker connects with an underwater pipeline. Wednesday’s Approach As the American Trader moved past the seven buoys, it dropped its port-side anchor first (A). As the tanker moved past the mouth of the berth, it dropped its starboard anchor (B). After its anchors were set, it began the berthing maneuver. Backing In Pulling on its anchors and using its engines, the American Trader began the complicated maneuver of turning and moving its stern toward the shore. the accident occurred sometime during this maneuver. Normally, the tanker would be secured to the buoys. Hose Buoy The hose buoy holds a 12-inch rubberized hose connected to the underwater pipeline. Oil is piped through it to Golden West refinery on land. Did it Hit Bottom? The tanker, sitting in roughly 60 feet of water, had only about 20 feet of water below its keel. The president of American Trading Transport Co. has speculated that the loaded tanker hit bottom and ruptured its hull on its own anchor. By late Thursday, 300,000-gallon spill from American Trader had spread to Newport Beach.