O.C. Oil Spill: Cost Is Yet to Surface : Environment: As lawyers prepare to put a price tag on the disaster, residents hope its impact won’t ever be forgotten.

One year after horrified emergency workers huddled on the beach as a huge oil slick loomed offshore, the epilogue of the saga remains unwritten.

The final chapter of Orange County’s worst environmental crisis will be about comeuppance, a civilized revenge neatly wrapped in a 29-page lawsuit filed on behalf of the People of the State of California.

This week, as the first anniversary of the oil spill approaches, lawyers are about to begin haggling over the last unfinished business: How should the companies involved compensate the public for harming wildlife and fouling beaches? What’s the dollar value of the losses, from the hundreds of oiled birds that died to the temporary tarnishing of a famous surf town’s image?

An amicable settlement, not a messy trial, is expected by all sides. But amid the final wrangling, the people whose outlook changed forever when 400,000 gallons of crude oil gushed from a ruptured tanker offer one haunting message: Don’t forget Feb. 7, 1990.

There are lessons still to be remembered and precautions still to be taken, and those intimately acquainted with the weeks of hard work and emotional upheaval urge Southern Californians to remember that such a crisis could happen again.

Last year, everybody agrees, Orange County was lucky. The sandy beaches are now as clean as ever and tourism is up. The marine birds, fish and kelp off Huntington Beach might have suffered some insidious injury, but the region’s most sensitive resources escaped devastation.

Next time, however, the ecological damage could be far worse.

“The American Trader hitting its own anchor was the maritime equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot. And thousands of people had to deal with that one mistake,” said David Pryor, a state parks department supervisor who oversees two beaches where oil washed ashore. “It’s gone. It’s a done thing. But the people involved will never forget it.”

The spill’s biological toll has not yet been tallied. Marine biologists--some representing state agencies and some working for BP America Inc., which owned the spilled oil--are still gathering samples and studying the impact on wildlife.

BP America officials say their consultants have detected no lasting environmental damage. But state officials say they have evidence that shows the contrary.

Marine life off the coast has not returned to normal and probably won’t for years, said John Grant, an associate marine biologist for the California Department of Fish and Game who coordinated marine damage studies after the Huntington Beach spill. He refused to release details of the state’s findings because it is evidence in the pending lawsuit, but said there are lower populations of marine birds and fish in the area.

Most at risk from pollution, biologists say, are the kelp beds that are the vital lower link of the food chain.

“This spill is not over,” Grant said. “The ecosystem has not fully recovered and it won’t for some time.”

Orange County’s sensitive wetlands were spared major damage, but some oily residue seeped past rapidly erected berms into a 25-acre wetlands preserve near Brookhurst Street, said Gary Gorman, executive director of the Huntington Beach Wetlands Conservancy. The long-term effects on the preserve, created less than a year before the spill, will not be known for three or four more years, he said.

“We’re going to continue to monitor . . . but my gut feeling is that we were spared serious (long-term) harm,” said Gorman, a Huntington Beach resident and environmentalist.

One of the main lessons state officials learned was that injury to wildlife and resources cannot be avoided after a large spill, Grant said. Prevention is the only way to protect the animals because the plastic snakelike booms and skimmer vessels used to contain and clean up oil are inadequate, he said.

Favorable weather during the crisis--light winds and swells--kept damage to a minimum and allowed more oil to be recovered than in any previous spill in the United States. But the booms and skimmers can’t even be used when swells exceed 6 feet, and most oil cannot be contained when swells exceed 2 feet, which happens in Southern California 40% to 70% of the time, according to the California Coastal Commission.

“Oil spills are not controllable in a biological sense. Most of the spill will get away from you and impact resources,” Grant said. “We had a couple little oil spills a few weeks ago, in Long Beach and off Bolsa Chica, and the constant impact adds up. Oil spills, and sewage effluent and runoff are all insults to the environment.

“It’s sort of like being nibbled to death by moths,” he said. “It’s very gentle and very silent, but you end up dead anyway. That’s what’s happening to the Southern California marine ecosystem.”

At BP America Inc., the Cleveland-based oil company that coordinated the five-week cleanup that cost about $35 million and closed 15 miles of beaches, corporate officials said they haven’t forgotten the lessons of the Huntington Beach spill. In fact, they are teaching them.

Company officials have met with representatives from the nation’s main oil companies and small independent firms to share what they learned about rapidly mobilizing and training large cleanup teams, using equipment, and communicating with officials and the public. Many of the companies are developing or refining crisis management teams as a result of the spill.

The oil industry, along with federal agencies, also is working to refine its tools and develop new ones for handling slicks, including better booms and skimmers, oil-eating microbes and improved chemical dispersants.

“It was an extremely unfortunate event, but it has spawned an intense level of activity, and all of that has to benefit society in time,” said Chuck Webster, crisis manager for BP America.

“If I could talk to the people in Huntington Beach, it would be to assure them that the learning process continues and there is a great deal of pressure and commitment within all facets to learn more and be ready to apply more. But at the same time, the public’s concerns about preventing a recurrence are very much still on our minds too.”

The wake of the spill also reached the state Legislature, where lawmakers approved a bill last year that establishes a $100-million emergency cleanup fund and created new full-time teams of oil-spill wardens and biologists. The teams will be stationed at five sites throughout the state, including Long Beach and San Diego.

The wardens will investigate spills, while the biologists will analyze damage. Between spills, the teams, to be formed this year under the auspices of the Department of Fish and Game, will analyze marine life and train to prepare for managing the emergencies.

Also, Congress addressed a major spill-prevention issue last year by requiring all new tankers to be double-hulled beginning in 1995 and authorizing the Coast Guard to evaluate installing vessel radar systems in busy ports.

Environmentalists are pleased, but they are waiting to see how the new laws are enforced.

“Things are headed in the right direction, but nothing has been implemented yet. If the same thing happened tomorrow, we wouldn’t be any better off,” said Ann Notthoff, a senior planner in the San Francisco office of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a national environmental group.

Locally, the Coast Guard imposed new restrictions designed to prevent another accident at the Huntington Beach tanker terminal, which is operated by Golden West Refining, a Santa Fe Springs oil refinery.

Coast Guard investigators concluded that the American Trader sat on its anchor because of a combination of forces, including a near-zero tide, currents and improper positioning of the ship.

Golden West Refining had failed to conduct routine water-depth surveys and the Brandenburger Marine pilots who guide ships into the terminal paid insufficient attention to the depth and falsely assumed there was more of a cushion, Coast Guard officials said in their final report. The ship also was slightly out of position as it berthed, they said.

Among the new requirements are annual ocean-floor surveys conducted by Golden West and a limit on tanker size to maintain at least 6 feet of clearance between the ocean floor and the anchors, taking into account weather and sea conditions. BP America said it is being even more cautious by leaving an additional 5-foot cushion.

Eighteen tankers, unloading an estimated 300 million gallons of Alaskan crude oil, have used the Huntington Beach terminal since the accident. Coast Guard officials said there were no accidents or problems.

The Huntington Beach City Council, however, has asked the state to shut the mooring down by withdrawing Golden West’s lease, but the State Lands Commission has not yet ruled on the matter.

Capt. Jim Morris of the Coast Guard’s Marine Safety Office in Long Beach said the terminal is “as safe as it possibly can be.”

“With the new restrictions, under some weather and sea conditions, they can’t go in (to unload) at all,” Morris said.

Although the Coast Guard took no disciplinary action against any of the parties, the issue of liability remains unresolved for state officials.

Last month, the state attorney general filed a multimillion-dollar civil lawsuit against three key players in the Huntington Beach accident: BP America, Golden West Refining and Brandenburger Marine, which employs the ship pilots.

“I don’t know if anyone is concerned with pointing a finger,” said Deputy Atty. Gen. Dennis Eagan. “All the defendants are culpable for penalties . . . but they seem to want to settle and we seem to want to settle. The chances are this will not go to trial.”

The suit seeks compensation for loss of recreation, death of birds and grunion, long-term harm to wildlife and resources, and impact on the area’s tourism, businesses, sales tax receipts and other economic factors.

In addition, the lawsuit pursues fines for violations of water-pollution laws and payment of unreimbursed out-of-pocket expenses by governmental agencies.

The dollar amounts have not yet been calculated, although prosecutors predict it will be in the millions. Eagan declined to discuss what formulas will be used to determine the value of the various losses.

Negotiations should begin in a month to six weeks, and they could take a year, depending on how divisive the issues become, Eagan said.

Some money in the settlement is expected to be used for environmental preservation in Huntington Beach, such as purchase of wetlands, which have virtually disappeared due to development.

One of the trickiest jobs is for state officials to figure out how much residents should be compensated for temporary loss of their beaches. Most of the shoreline and marinas were closed for less than a month, but some stretches were shut down for as long as five weeks.

“There was a good month and a half where people did not get to go down to their favorite beaches. They weren’t even allowed to walk on the sand,” said Pryor, who supervises lifeguards at Bolsa Chica, Crystal Cove and Huntington state beaches. “It’s hard to put a dollar figure on that.”

The impact, however, disappeared quickly with time. Lifeguards said there is no visible sign of oil and visitation at Bolsa Chica and Huntington state beaches was higher in 1990 than the previous year despite the spill.

“I remember talking to a number of people, trying to count up the complaints about oil on their feet or whatever,” Pryor said. “We got a couple complaints, and then they stopped. Then Easter spring break came, and then summer, and nobody even thought about it.”

Now, news of the enormous oil slick unleashed upon the Persian Gulf has reinforced the first-anniversary memories. Just like a year ago in Huntington Beach, haunting photographs of dying birds are flashing across television screens.

“The Huntington Beach spill taught people that tanker operations are not just occurring in some remote part of the world. They’re in your own back yard,” said Notthoff of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “And the potential for what happened a year ago is always there.”

BLACK WEDNESDAY: THE HUNTINGTON BEACH OIL SPILL

On Feb. 7, 1990, 400,000 gallons of Alaskan crude oil spilled into the sea off Huntington Beach after the American Trader struck its own anchor while mooring at an offshore pumping terminal. In the next week, the spill blackened beaches and killed wildlife. Now that the beaches are pristine again, the focus is on recovering money from the companies responsible for damages and preventing future spills.

COMPANIES INVOLVED IN THE SPILL:

BP America Inc.: Cleveland-based company that owned the oil.

Golden West Refining Co.: Santa Fe Springs refinery that operates the Huntington Beach tanker terminal.

Brandenburger Marine: Employer of the ship’s mooring pilots.

American Trading Transportation Co.: Owner of American Trader, the ship in the spill. Not named in the lawsuit because of a federal injunction but could be added.

LAWSUIT: The state attorney general’s office expects to negotiate a multimillion-dollar settlement of a lawsuit it filed in January against key players in the spill. The suit seeks compensation for ecological, economic and recreational losses, as well as punitive damages.

LEGISLATION: After the spill, the state established a $100-million emergency cleanup fund and created five full-time teams of oil spill wardens and biologists to investigate and assess spill damage. One team is stationed in Long Beach. Also, the federal government passed a law requiring all new tankers to be double-hulled, beginning in 1995.

HUNTINGTON BEACH WETLANDS: A small amount of oil washed into this sensitive, 25-acre bog, once known as Talbert Marsh. A state report shows that populations of bubble snails are up, perhaps indicating their natural predators were killed by the spill, which could indicate possible long-term ecological damage. Studies will continue over the next four years.

CLEANUP: BP America Inc. spent $35 million on the cleanup and has been largely reimbursed by the insurer of the tanker American Trader. The amount includes $775,000 paid to Huntington Beach and Newport Beach but does not include $325,000 in county costs and an unknown amount of state costs. The oil industry’s spill response team from this region will have more than doubled its skimming capability by the end of 1991.

TANKER TRAFFIC: Tankers now maintain 11 feet of clearance from the sea floor, more than what is mandated by regulations created after the accident. To comply, tankers carry less oil and use the mooring more frequently. Since the spill, 18 tankers have unloaded about 300 million gallons of oil. Huntington Beach has asked the state to shut the mooring down.

WILDLIFE: More than 1,000 birds and millions of tiny marine creatures were killed. Biologists say it will take several years for shrimp, clams and other small sand-dwelling species to recover. Bird and fish populations are lower, state research shows, but details from studies of long-term effects are being withheld, pending litigation.

ECOLOGY: Beaches are clean now, but long-term ocean effects remain unknown. About 15 miles of shoreline from Sunset Beach to Crystal Cove were touched by oil. Some stretches were closed for up to five weeks. The spill did not get into the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve, though.