CALIFORNIA ALBUM : Small Oil Spill, a Big Cleanup : Avila Beach struggles to remove crude that leaked from underground pipeline and flowed into the ocean, where it settled into kelp beds. Sacred Chumash Indian grounds are affected.

Very quietly, during the dog days of summer, this seaside town has been working around the clock to help clean up one of the most troublesome oil spills ever to mar California’s coast.

“I’ll tell you, it will blow your mind to understand what we’ve been doing in the last few weeks,” said William Gengler, spokesman for the Office of Oil Spill Prevention and Response in the California Department of Fish and Game.

Unocal Oil spilled 150 barrels of oil on the evening of Aug. 3 while transporting it by underground pipe from the San Joaquin Valley to its tank farm above Avila Beach, a coastal town of about 1,017 people.

Although the crude oil spill is considered relatively small by industry standards, its cleanup has taken nearly three weeks and is incomplete. The accident, which covered a 1 1/2-mile area in San Luis Bay, is unusual because the oil leaked from land into the ocean, rather than from an offshore site into the sea and onto the coastline, which is more common.

The spill occurred after a 20-year-old underground pipeline sprung a leak about six inches in diameter. Oil gurgled up through the ground, flowed over the bluffs and trickled down to the rocky crags and tide pools below.

“Because of where and how the spill happened, you just can’t clean it up easily,” said Janet McClintock, spokeswoman for Unocal. “If it were in the open sea, we’d have finished in a few days.”

The cleanup has been complicated because the spill occurred on sacred Chumash Indian grounds. At the time of the accident, a group of tribal elders was planning to perform a religious ceremony at the site.

It wasn’t until the next afternoon that they were told why they had been barred from entering their ceremonial grounds, said Pilulaw Klus, a Chumash elder.

“To me, this has been a very painful experience,” Klus said of being blocked from the sacred ground and later viewing the destruction of wildlife there.

More than 60 birds died as a result of the spill. Another 21 oiled birds have survived. Six dead sea otters were found, although four were determined to have died from other causes.

“That seems like a high mortality rate to me, but they tell me it’s lower than they expected,” said Klus, who joined other Indians in blessing the dead animals that were found.

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In the wake of the oil spill, a quagmire of environmental, physical and cultural factors has taught residents in this one-highway town a few things about their unique coastline. It’s also taught corporate officials, the Chumash and their neighbors plenty about one another.

“It’s been an educational process for everyone involved,” said Michael Klus, son of Pilulaw Klus, both of whom are advising Unocal’s cleanup efforts. Unocal officials have learned to consult with the Chumash before bringing in helicopters, booms and other equipment that may damage their land.

The Indian grounds, a state-registered archeological site, have long been marred by the obtrusive oil tanks that sit atop the bluff overlooking Avila Beach.

Because the accident occurred at sunset when visibility was low, Unocal didn’t immediately send cleanup equipment to the site. “They moved in a 1,800-foot boom to contain the oil that night, but couldn’t do much else,” said Gengler.

By the next day, the oil had started collecting in huge fields of kelp that lap the shoreline. In time, the oil had coated otters and brown pelicans--both listed as endangered species--as well as sea gulls, cormorants and murres.

The San Luis Obispo County Health Department closed the beach for 10 days. That move cut tourism business by about 40%, said Kathy Allen, manager of Avila Groceries.

“When you close the beach, this place becomes a ghost town,” Allen said.

The cleaning equipment brought into San Luis Bay shortly after the spill sucked up as much as 90 barrels of oil from the water’s surface offshore. However, the equipment couldn’t reach oil that had collected near the shallow shoreline, where depths measure 16 feet and less.

Complicating matters was the kelp, which “rocked to and fro against the shoreline,” McClintock said, trapping oil under the water’s surface. Every time the surf broke, the beds of kelp dispersed more oil.

Gengler said inexperience with the type of spill caused crews to use the “wrong mixture of cleanup vessels early on.”

Within three days Unocal hired skiffs. Working in pairs, the skiffs’ skippers pulled booms around the cove and skimmed oil from the water’s surface, slow-moving work that continued through the next week.

By the second week, when the job still wasn’t finished, Unocal hired divers to clip the fast-growing kelp lawns by a foot a day. “We’ve cut more than 100 tons of kelp,” said McClintock.

By the third week, the bulk of the cleanup lay close to shore. At low tide twice a day, Unocal lowered workers in baskets down the 50-foot cliff, where they used rags to polish rocks clean.

At the height of the operation, 445 people worked alongside 55 boats and skiffs; last week about 200 Unocal workers and contractors remained. The sudden influx of workers provided a boost for local merchants, who provided meals and motel rooms.

To reimburse merchants whose tourist-oriented business had declined after the accident, the company set up a claims department. “So far, we’ve settled about 160 claims,” said McClintock.

Unocal won’t disclose the amount of money it has spent on the cleanup. But Gengler estimated “it’s safe to say it’s in the millions.”

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For centuries, generations of Chumash have lived along these beach shores. Michael Klus said the area is one of the oldest recorded Indian sites in Central California.

Later, white settlers sailed schooners into this cove, using rope ladders to scramble up the cliffs. Eventually, pirates discovered the caves that scallop this coastline. Some hid their stolen booty at places called Moonstone Beach, Whale’s Landing and Robbers Cave.

Avila Beach was named after Miquel Avila, a mission guard who in 1824 was almost excommunicated from the Catholic Church for talking with a Chumash Indian.

Since then, it seems, the Indians and the Anglos have coexisted in a precarious balance. In 1906, Unocal built its tank farm--right atop the Indians’ ceremonial grounds.

“The reason we are here (advising Unocal) right now is we are trying to preserve what’s left of our culture,” said Michael Klus.

“Unocal has been better than other companies in cooperating with us, but we still have a ways to go,” he said.

The incident has also enlightened state officials concerned with beach conservation. “The next time this happens, we’ll know the right way to clean up a land-based ocean spill,” Gengler said.