HUNTINGTON BEACH : Council Reaffirms Beaches Test Clean

The City Council has reaffirmed its belief that the city’s shores are completely clean of oil.

“Our beaches are cleaner than before” the Feb. 7 oil spill, said Mayor Thomas J. Mays during Monday night’s council meeting.

Mays was responding to a resident’s allegation that officials had opened the beaches prematurely. Mays and other council members said no part of the city’s eight miles of beaches was opened until an environmental testing company had spot-checked the sands. The inspections were then reviewed by state and federal agencies, as well as county health officials and city staff, according to Fire Chief Raymond C. Picard.

Picard, who was in charge of the city staff’s response to the oil spill, said: “Testing was conducted at 500-foot intervals along the beach, and there would always be three samples for each test. One sample would be at the waterline, one at the berm and one in the water itself.”

He said that water samples were checked for hydrocarbon parts per million and that no part of the beach was opened until hydrocarbon levels were deemed about normal.

Mays noted that hydrocarbon levels fluctuate in the ocean, even without a man-made spill. Some oil seepage occurs naturally on the ocean floor, and some becomes “tar balls,” Mays said.

In recent days, about 15 tar balls have been found on city beaches, Picard said. He added that they were chemically analyzed and that just two of the 15 tar balls were found to be from oil of the same kind that was leaked by the ruptured tanker, American Trader, on Feb. 7.

Picard said another natural-occurring ocean factor in recent days that some residents mistakenly believed was related to the spill was a “red tide” that hit parts of Huntington Beach and Newport Beach. That is the name given a mass of small sea life called plankton, which forms together and washes ashore.