HUNTINGTON BEACH : Oil Cleanup Crew Scrubs Bluff Area

Work crews hired by British Petroleum began steam-cleaning rocky areas at the Huntington Beach Bluffs Tuesday afternoon in an effort to clean up oil residue left after last month’s oil spill, city officials said.

Officials earlier this week found oil at the site near Golden West Street and Pacific Coast Highway. In addition, about a half-mile stretch of beach was contaminated with an oily “brown froth,” officials reported.

The exact cause of the new oil contamination will not be known until the Coast Guard gets results of chemical tests of the oil discovered on the beach over the weekend. Those tests are expected to take about a week. In the meantime, British Petroleum, which assumed responsibility for the 394,000-gallon spill, is paying the bill in the latest cleanup effort.

Steve Seim, a marine safety officer for the city, said Tuesday afternoon that work was proceeding smoothly on cleaning up the newly damaged half-mile section of beach at the bluffs area.

“It looks very much like our theory is correct that some of the oil from the spill had collected in those rocks and has just been released by the high tides,” Seim said.