Agency Created to Avert, Respond to State Oil Spills : Emergencies: California uses team approach to cope with such accidents as one off Huntington Beach.

When brown waves of crude oil surged ashore in Huntington Beach last year, the state of California dispatched its entire oil-spill team: two people.

Now, in the wake of lessons learned from that emergency, the state is assembling a full-time crew of biologists, game wardens, lawyers, technicians and financial analysts to protect California’s 1,100-mile coastline from oil spills.

By fall, this specialized team--the new state Office of Oil Spill Prevention and Response--will have 111 members. Created by the Legislature in September in reaction to tanker accidents in Huntington Beach and Alaska, the office is the only one in the nation devoted exclusively to avoiding and responding to oil spills.

“We’re the first to have a program of this nature and magnitude in the country,” said Edward Willis, a top administrator with the state Department of Fish and Game who is coordinating the start-up of the new agency. “But others will probably follow. California quite often is on the forefront.”

Already, 37 new employees are in place, including five in Southern California, and a mobile animal rescue trailer has been stationed in Carpinteria south of Santa Barbara, where it can be hauled anywhere in the state to aid injured birds and sea mammals.

Quick-response teams are being stationed in several locations along the coast, including Long Beach, so they can be dispatched to spills to guide cleanup crews and try to protect wildlife and natural resources.

On-scene emergency work is just one small role of the office, called OSPR, which is under the auspices of the Department of Fish and Game. When they aren’t responding to spills, the employees will be working full time to prevent them.

They also will be refining skills and studying ways to limit a slick’s damage to resources and improve techniques for oil cleanup and animal rehabilitation, as well as adding up the economic and environmental toll of spills and suing polluters, if necessary, to recover damages and costs.

Although the new office is hailed as a major step forward, state officials and environmentalists agree it isn’t a cure-all. They know that no matter how large a team they assemble, they cannot prevent all spills, and once one occurs, damage to the coastline is inevitable because, at best, only 20% of the oil can be recovered.

“We’re still putting a program in place and we’re not really sure how effective it will be yet,” said Willis, the agency’s acting deputy administrator. “But one thing’s for sure. Anything we do is more than we have done in the past.”

While many state agencies are struggling to maintain their operations in an era of budget cuts, this newly created office is on a hiring spree. Funded by a new 4-cents-per-barrel tax on crude oil, the office’s $15-million budget for the next year cannot be touched by budget negotiators. Another 25-cent-per-barrel fee has created a $100-million trust fund to pay for emergency cleanups.

By fall, a total of 15 spill team members will operate out of offices in Long Beach, Los Angeles, San Diego and Santa Barbara. Five environmental specialists will help wildlife and assess damage, seven wardens will work on prevention and take the lead during spills, and three technical experts will direct oil containment and cleanup. Twelve are expected to be at work by mid-July.

Fifteen others will be stationed at Northern California’s coast, while the rest will work out of Sacramento.

A team of 111 may sound small for tackling major spills. But Willis stressed that is just the permanent staff for coordinating work, not performing the actual physical labor of skimming oil from the ocean and cleansing beaches.

Hiring those cleanup workers, which numbered 1,000 for the Huntington Beach spill, remains the responsibility of the oil company involved.

Environmental groups are pleased by creation of the new office, although some environmentalists and several legislators have criticized Gov. Pete Wilson for not yet naming its administrator, who will be subject to Senate confirmation.

“We really are a bit behind in California in our capacity to respond to spills, so this is a chance to catch up,” said Bob Sulnick, executive director of the American Oceans Campaign, an environmental group based in Santa Monica.

But, Sulnick added, he worries that Californians will become complacent, assuming that the threat is now over.

“The job they have is almost impossible,” Sulnick said. “They can set up processes to prevent oil spills and that is great, but as long as there are tankers on the water and new oil fields, there’s a 95% chance of having an oil spill. And once you have one, no team can really clean it up. At best you mitigate the damage.”

State officials agree that if a major spill like the Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska occurs in California, they will be unable to prevent damage to extensive beaches, wildlife and other natural resources. But they say they will be much better prepared to quickly react and contain a slick and minimize the damage of smaller spills like the one off Huntington Beach.

Although responding to spills is their most dramatic job, prevention will be their main task.

To start, the more than 200 companies that operate a marine terminal or oil vessel must provide an oil-spill contingency plan by July 31.

Orange County has one marine terminal for oil tankers, operated by Golden West Refining. It was there that the American Trader ran aground on its own anchor and spilled 400,000 gallons of crude as it tried to moor in February, 1990.

The new oil company plans must outline training, operations and steps taken to prevent and handle spills. Failing to comply can bring criminal fines up to $250,000 a day.

Also, the OSPR office requires all harbors to develop a safety plan by Dec. 31, and vessel operators must prove they have at least $500 million in liability insurance by Jan. 1.

Because of the high stakes involved, the petroleum industry fought hard against parts of the legislation. But many oil company representatives believe that the new office is a good idea, despite its new fees and regulations, since it consolidates energy.

“Once you have a central point, then everybody can do their job better because you know who’s in charge. I believe the up side in this outweighs the down side,” said Denny Samuel, a spokesman for Chevron Corp.’s governmental affairs office in Sacramento.

The special office means the Fish and Game Department no longer has to “steal” workers from its other divisions to handle oil emergencies. Because the agency had only two employees designated for handling offshore spills, many had to be pulled off other tasks during last year’s Huntington Beach spill, and other crucial work stopped for over a month.

Although the office is not yet in full swing, it has already seen some action. Nine of the team members were dispatched to El Segundo in March when fuel leaked from a Chevron pipeline in Santa Monica Bay, and training has included a simulated spill in San Francisco Bay.

“We are ready to go,” said Mary Gale, a spokeswoman for OSPR. “We are fully capable should a spill occur. All these people have been involved in oil spill activity for years.”