Beaches Still Closed for Repairs : Oil spill: Task force says cleanup could take another week. Public-private task force sets tough new standards that must be met before the public is allowed back in contaminated areas.

A task force of public and private officials said Saturday that it may take at least another week before beaches closed by the Feb. 7 oil spill can be reopened.

Although the task force reached agreement on what level of oil and other hydrocarbons found on the beaches will allow their reopening, officials said that water and ground testing probably will not begin until March 7, when the cleanup effort is expected to be completed.

Under new guidelines set by the task force, average concentrations of less than 100 parts per million total hydrocarbons taken from ground and water sampling must be met before officials will allow the beaches to reopen, said Huntington Beach Fire Battalion Chief Dennis Groat.

Officials agreed on those guidelines at a meeting of the interagency Post Clean-up and Health Risk Evaluation Committee, composed of representatives from city, county, and state agencies and British Petroleum.

“Once tests are conducted, we should know the results within 24 to 30 hours,” Huntington Beach Mayor Thomas J. Mays said.

The guidelines are based on a standard set by the Orange County health department, which allows hydrocarbons in a concentration of 100 parts per million in residential areas.

Chuck Webster, a spokesman for British Petroleum, the owner of the spilled oil, said company environmental officers who attended Saturday’s meeting agreed to the new guidelines, “which seemed reasonable, given the potential health risk involved.”

“I think we have arrived upon a system that will allow that type of testing to move forward. We were a part of the process from the beginning,” Webster said.

Cleanup costs for British Petroleum have increased to $13 million as a result of the 394,000-gallon spill from the ruptured tanker American Trader, Webster said.

About a 10-mile stretch of shoreline from Bolsa Chica State Beach to the Newport Pier still remains closed, frustrating many beach-goers.

Brent Moreland, 18, of Orange and his brother, Ron, 22, said they woke up Saturday, looked outside at the sunny day and immediately headed for Huntington Beach, forgetting about the spill.

After being turned away, as were others, Brent muttered: “Tell them to hurry up and fix the oil spill. I can’t believe it.”

In Huntington Beach, all city and state beach parking lots will be closed. The bike path, however, will be open from Warner Avenue near Bolsa Chica to Beach boulevards. But the path will remain closed from Beach Boulevard to the Santa Ana River jetties.

In Newport Beach, the pedestrian boardwalk will be open, but the beach side of the walkway will be cordoned off to prevent anyone from going onto the sand.

Ground and water tests by Med-Tox Associates, an Anaheim-based contractor hired by Huntington Beach and Newport Beach, were to be conducted Saturday. However, residual oil believed to have been loosened as a result of morning high tides forced postponement of the testing, Mays said.

“We were all set to get an answer today (Saturday), but we couldn’t even test,” Mays said.

Groat explained that immediately after the spill, “we had extremely high tides, depositing oil up high on Bolsa Chica rocks, the Huntington Beach Pier and Newport Beach jetties and pier. Even though it looked clean, recent high tides produced fluctuations again. So, all the rocky areas are now being cleaned and we have to get that washed free of oil before any testing can be done.”

As a result, part of the cleanup army of 450 people will spray rocky shorelines during the next week with the same high-pressure, hot-water cleansing machines used to clean up the oil-polluted shoreline in the Prince William Sound area in Alaska following the Exxon Valdez spill. Those areas will include the Santa Ana River jetty, Bolsa Chica bluffs, and the Newport Beach jetties

“The idea is to blast the oil from the rocks, then collect it and remove it from the environment,” British Petroleum’s Webster said. “We’ve had difficulty with removing oil from the Santa Ana jetties because of all the nooks and crannies.”

Webster said British Petroleum brought in eight of the high-pressure units, which shoot water heated to 170 degrees, from Alaska late Friday. Four of the units were in use Saturday at the mouth of the Santa Ana River, where biologists reported, for the first time, a sheen of oil residue had entered the Huntington Beach wetlands earlier in the week.

Although county officials have rebuilt a 15-foot-high earthen dike to block oil-fouled high tides from reaching the 25-acre marsh near the river mouth, about 100 feet of the marsh may have already been damaged.

Webster said county bulldozers were to blame for building the dike by dredging oil-soaked sand from the river bottom, but others involved in the cleanup noted that efforts to determine the source of the sheen has been inconclusive. County officials could not be reached for comment.

Cleanup crews are taking added precautions by lowering temperatures below 90 degrees on the pressurized hoses in the area of the Newport Beach jetties to protect crabs, starfish and other marine life among the rocks.

As a member of the intra-agency Post Cleanup and Health Risk Evaluation Committee that met Saturday, Battalion Chief Groat said that in the past, polluted beaches were reopened based on a “physical” rule of thumb.

“Past practice was just a physical and visual test,” Groat said. “If you can see it, feel it or smell it, then the beaches remained closed. There were no set guidelines, not in state law or federal regulations pertaining to the reopening of beaches.”

But after the meeting, Groat and other officials said they reached a standard of cleanliness that was based on other hydrocarbons and the toxic properties of crude oil.

Meanwhile, heavy surf that was expected to bring four- to five-foot breakers during the weekend failed to materialize and kept crowds to a minimum, said Steve Seim, a Huntington Beach marine safety officer.

“We’ve had only a few people come down to the beach, but if I were a surfer this would be the last place I would go out at,” Seim said.

Business was slow for Vickie Siemon, 36, of Huntington Beach, who was selling T-shirts emblazoned with a dead bird and the phrase “No Apology Accepted. Huntington Beach Oil Spill Feb. 7, 1990.”

Mike Sowden, 60, was visiting friends in Huntington Beach with his wife, Betty, also 60. The Pennsylvania natives learned of the oil spill when they were told of the beach ban while walking on the sands at the Huntington City Beach.

Gaynell Raynaud, 28, on the other hand, knew of the spill. The El Toro woman brought her two children, Jessica, 9, and Ryan, 6, to Huntington City Beach to educate them about environmental destruction.

“I just wanted to see the real thing,” Ryan said.

Staff writer Michael Ashcraft contributed to this report.