Report Said County, Most Cities Had No Spill Plan

For residents of beach cities in Orange County, a massive oil spill was the realization of their worst fears.

For more than a decade, concern has mounted in these shoreline communities about the risk of an oil spill that would destroy marine life, force the closure of beaches and result in millions of lost tourist dollars.

“It’s always been an ongoing concern,” Laguna Beach City Manager Kenneth C. Frank said in an interview Thursday. “That’s why we’ve been so vigorous in opposing offshore oil drilling. This just goes to show you that no matter how much you try, it (a spill) happens.”

They had support for their fears. A 1989 study commissioned by a coalition of the county’s coastal cities warned that the risk of a spill was high, based on a prediction by the Department of the Interior that there was a better than 99% chance that Orange County offshore oil development would result in a spill of greater than 1,000 gallons within the next five years.

Further, the report stated, “of the coastal cities in the county, only Huntington Beach has an oil spill contingency plan.”

On Wednesday night, 300,000 gallons of oil gushed from a damaged tanker mooring off Huntington Beach. A little more than 24 hours later, oil was washing onto the sand in Huntington Beach and Newport Beach.

Laguna Beach officials foresaw the threat as early as 1979, when the city conducted a study that urged the development of a countywide contingency plan for a major disaster.

“Such plans will correct serious deficiencies that now exist in most communities,” the 1979 report said. “Because virtually all containment and cleanup equipment is located in the Long Beach/Los Angeles Harbor, Orange County beaches are even more vulnerable to a large spill than those of Los Angeles County.”

In the event of a spill, primary responsibility for cleanup falls on the oil company and the Coast Guard. However, “a massive oil spill would exceed the current capacity of both the (oil) industry’s cooperative and the Coast Guard to contain it,” the 1979 report said. “In this event, local governments will be required to become involved in cleanup operations.”

The study also recommended that each city set up specific storage locations for onshore containment equipment, establish “control centers” to act as clearinghouses of information for local response personnel, and determine the location of the most environmentally sensitive areas within their community.

“Currently, no countywide or local plans exist for the de-foulment of birds,” the 1979 report said. “It is therefore recommended that an animal cleaning center be established and stocked.”

The 11-year-old study also called for the state to establish a fund for cities that have environmentally sensitive areas. The money could be used for training, to purchase booms and other containment equipment and to cover planning costs.

A decade later, the county still was not properly prepared, the 1989 study said.

The later study was commissioned jointly by the cities of Huntington Beach, Laguna Beach, San Clemente, Newport Beach and the county to determine the risk of a spill if a new set of leases was awarded to oil companies for offshore drilling. At the time, the Department of the Interior was considering awarding about 1,300 leases off the coast between the Monterey-San Luis Obispo county line on the north and the Mexican border on the south.

A Virginia-based consultant, Townsend Environmental, conducted the $200,000 study on behalf of the beach cities and concluded that Orange County was in dire need of a preparedness plan, and that only Huntington Beach had an oil spill contingency plan.

The study called for the county to identify environmentally sensitive areas, purchase equipment capable of tracking the path of a massive oil slick, station containment equipment so that response time is two hours or less, and conduct underwater surveys to establish tide patterns.

As of Wednesday night, when a hole was punctured in the hull of a tanker off Orange County’s coast, none of those measures apparently had been enacted.