COUNTYWIDE : Valdez Experts to Study O.C. Spill

An environmental consulting company that compiled a comprehensive report about last year’s Exxon Valdez oil spill will conduct a similar study of the February spill off Huntington Beach.

Virginia-based Townsend Environmental will assess how well local agencies were prepared at the time of the Feb. 7 American Trader spill and the effectiveness of their emergency-response and cleanup efforts.

The report will also recommend procedures for preparing for and dealing with oil spills, and will analyze pending legislation concerning offshore mooring, disaster liability and related issues, officials said.

The $35,986 cost of the three-month study will be shared by Orange County and the cities of Huntington Beach and Newport Beach.

The U.S. Coast Guard and State Lands Commission have sponsored previous studies on certain aspects of the spill, and British Petroleum, owner of the spilled oil, is conducting its own investigation. But no complete report on the disaster has been compiled.

“We’d like to have someone outside of the (governmental) structure to look at the overall impact of the spill,” Newport Beach Fire Chief Jim Reed said. “Also, how was the response? Was it done in an organized way? What are the things we should’ve done and shouldn’t have done? What are the lessons to be learned and how can we be better prepared?”

Officials expect that the Townsend report will serve as a definitive document for local agencies in dealing with oil spills.

Huntington Beach Fire Chief Raymond Picard said that he consulted Townsend’s Valdez report throughout the American Trader disaster, in which the tanker dumped 396,000 gallons of oil into the ocean while moored about a mile and a half off the coast.

Although the Huntington Beach spill was smaller than the Valdez disaster, “we were following parallel lines,” Picard said.

The Valdez report gave a detailed case history of oil spills, a guide for acquiring speedy assistance from state and federal agencies and advice for coordinating local response efforts, he said.

In the American Trader report, Townsend will build upon its Valdez findings, incorporating analyses of unique aspects of the Huntington Beach disaster, officials said. Picard, for example, has been widely praised for his coordination of volunteers who cleaned up birds and other wildlife sullied by oil.

Reed said the spill’s effects at Newport Beach posed some unique problems, such as how to clean oil from the craggy beaches of Corona del Mar. “It’s relatively simple when you’re dealing with nice, sandy beaches,” he said. “But in tide pool areas like we have, there’s no way of cleaning them up satisfactorily.”

The study may also help in resolving the legal tangle the cities have encountered in trying to recover costs from British Petroleum for spill-related damage to the environment and wildlife, although that is not the goal, officials said.