Newport Beach Opens Another Mile of Beach

Authorities opened another mile of Orange County beach Tuesday, pronouncing it sufficiently purged of the crude oil that spilled from a punctured tanker two weeks ago.

Most of the affected shoreline, however, remained closed as crews continued to clean seaside jetties and unearth hidden pockets of oil-stained sand.

About three miles of beach are open now in Newport Beach. A stretch of nearly four miles of shoreline on the north half of the city remained closed. All of the oceanfront in Huntington Beach is closed while cleanup efforts continue there.

“Now we’re playing hide and seek with sections of oily sand,” said Jim Marino, a spokesman for British Petroleum, the firm that owns the oil spilled Feb. 7 from the tanker American Trader. “Our pledge is the same as it’s always been. We’ll be here as long as the oil is.”

Meanwhile, the investigation into the accident continued, focusing on how the ship impaled itself on its own anchor while trying to moor at an offshore pipeline berth about 1 1/3 miles off Huntington Beach. Some authorities have speculated that the ocean in the area may be shallower than indicated on navigation charts, causing the ship to hit the anchor as it rested on the sea bottom.

Officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Tuesday completed their first full day of a survey to measure the ocean depth at the site of the spill.

The navigational charts, which show a minimum ocean depth of 51 feet in the vicinity, have not been updated since 1975. Lt. Cmdr. Samuel P. DeBow Jr. of the NOAA said a number of factors, including unreported boat wrecks and shifting sand, could have created underwater obstructions since that time.

The NOAA survey is to be completed Friday, but then the data will have to be adjusted for tidal patterns before being submitted to Coast Guard officials investigating the spill.

As areas tainted by the oil spill continued to diminish Tuesday, Newport Beach city officials decided to open the beach south of the Newport Harbor jetty through the city limits in Corona Del Mar, Pendleton said.

Officials on Monday had opened a stretch of sand between the west harbor jetty and 15th Street, the first to open since the spill closed 14 miles of shoreline between Seal Beach and Laguna Beach.