Oil Cleanup Firm Says Job Is Over, but Cities Disagree

Under fire from some local officials for moving too quickly to abandon beach cleanup efforts after this month’s 394,000-gallon oil spill, the president of the company organizing most of the crews Tuesday defended the decision to cut back on workers, saying very little is left to do.

“We have completely wound down,” said Peter Leathard, president of VECO Inc., the same company that organized the cleanup of last year’s 11-million-gallon Exxon spill near Valdez, Alaska.

“I think the (Orange County) cleanup effort went very well overall,” he said, “and what’s left out there is really very small.”

By Tuesday, VECO had pulled its last worker off the beach. Just a few days earlier, it had deployed about 1,000 workers to comb the sands and swab up thick ribbons of oil with absorbent pads.

Crews had been reduced Monday to 200. Tuesday, after local officials complained, they were increased to more than 300, but none of the crews came from VECO. About 100 of the workers left on the shore Tuesday were from the California Conservation Corps. They are making minimum wage, as opposed to the $10 per hour that VECO paid its employees.

The rapid scale-down of the work force was suggested by British Petroleum, the overall supervisor of the cleanup and owner of the oil that was spilled, and approved by the state Department of Fish and Game and Coast Guard officials. BP and the Coast Guard said non-VECO crews will continue working on the beaches as long as some cleanup is needed, but neither would speculate about how much longer that would continue.

VECO’s action has not found much support among local officials, who say they still face formidable chores ahead.

Miles of coastline remain closed, and sections of city and state beaches in Huntington Beach and Newport Beach are being inspected to determine how much oil is trapped in pockets beneath the sand. As long as those conditions exist, officials in those areas said, it is inappropriate for cleanup crews to conclude their work.

“The people who are in charge should deploy sufficient numbers of people to get these beaches clean,” said Lt. Tim Newman of the Newport Beach Police Department. “We still have a problem out here.”

Bill Reed, public information officer for Huntington Beach, tentatively agreed. “I think the feeling of everyone is that the sooner all the oil is gone, the better. We’d like to make sure that there are going to be enough crews to handle that.”

Leathard agreed that “there really aren’t any scientific criteria” for determining when a spill has finally been cleaned up, but said that the situation on the beaches is well under control.

“You have to decide when you’re doing more harm than good,” he said. “That’s basically a judgment call that has to be made by all the people involved, and that’s what’s happened here.”