Workers Fan Out to Begin Oil Spill Cleanup : Environment: The 300 emergency crew members focus efforts on McGrath Lake wetlands and seven miles of coastline polluted by heavy crude.

Cleanup workers armed with rakes and shovels fanned out along miles of coastline Monday as Bush Oil Co. executives admitted that their ruptured pipeline had unleashed far more heavy crude than first reported.

Emergency crews numbering 300 or more are focusing cleanup efforts on two fronts--the McGrath Lake wetlands and seven miles of coastline stretching from the Pierpont area in Ventura south to Channel Islands Harbor.

Heidi Stogstad, a state Department of Fish and Game biologist, said the wetlands cleanup will be far more difficult than the effort on the beach.

“It’s a fine-grain sandy beach, so it cleans up fairly well,” she said. “But wetlands are another issue. They are very hard to clean up. We’re talking decades.”

The U. S. Coast Guard on Monday declared the offshore spill--estimated at about 84,000 gallons--mostly contained, but not before thousands of globs of tar oil were washed ashore along miles of beaches by early morning currents.

“What little oil is left there (offshore) just can’t be effectively cleaned up,” said James Rutkovsky, a Coast Guard operations chief.

State park officials Monday, however, warned people to stay out of the water because thick lumps of oil dot most of the beaches and the ocean still is somewhat contaminated with oil.

The heavy crude reached the ocean only after an automated drainage pump in McGrath Lake was activated by the rising level of water and oil. The pump then pushed the oil into a slough that drains to the ocean.

Officials use a variety of methods in the oil cleanup, but none are as technologically advanced as the oil-pumping stations that transport the heavy crude.

“It’s like trying to do surgery with an ax,” said Frank Cowan of the state Office of Emergency Services. “Their main concern is to clean up the area without harming the environment.”

On Monday, the beating blades of a helicopter hovering as low as 20 feet above McGrath Lake attempted to blow clumps of oil from the brush-lined shores into open water. Small boats equipped with floating booms corralled the loosened oil and dragged it toward vacuum hoses that sucked up thousands of gallons of oil and water.

Meanwhile, wildlife rescuers marched through sensitive wetlands habitat surrounding McGrath Lake in search of dead or injured wildlife.

Volunteer Susan Venegas said that tromping through the wetlands is far less environmentally damaging than letting the oil-soaked birds die.

“Those birds won’t be back unless they get some help, so I think we can afford to step on a few plants,” Venegas said.

Thousands of gallons of thick oil stuck in the slough are slowly being vacuumed up by contract workers using six-inch hoses to transport the crude to waiting tanker trucks that store 5,000 gallons each.

The water and oil gleaned from the slough and lake are being taken to a Bush Oil storage tank a mile from the spill site so that company officials can measure how much oil they have recovered and use what is salvageable, company Vice President Raymond Hatch said.

One worker operating the vacuum in the slough Monday said that he had been there all morning and that the level of oil had dipped only inches.

Another several feet of thick crude remains to be cleared from the slough, which runs hundreds of yards between McGrath Lake and the ocean.

Despite the concentrated effort, Bush Oil officials could not say Monday when initial wetlands cleanup will be completed.

“We’re unable to give any kind of target date at this time,” said Ron Klarc, operations manager for Berry Petroleum, which owns Bush Oil.

But even when most of the oil is scooped from McGrath Lake, wildlife experts said they expect that it will be years before the habitat returns to its natural state.

“There’s going to be some ground cleanup weeks or months after Sunday,” Rutkovsky said.

Clearing the beachfront between the Ventura and Channel Islands harbors will also take the better part of a month, according to some of those hired to do the work. Bulldozers pushed tainted sand away from the ocean to prevent it from being spread by ocean currents.

“We’ll be here three weeks, maybe more,” said Al Aguilar of the Santa Maria-based cleanup firm RMR Inc. “They may say not as long, but it depends on how many people you’ve got on the beach.”

Aguilar was supervising a crew of about 20 men, who spent all day Sunday and Monday raking the beach for tar balls ranging in size from marbles to basketballs.

“I was out here for 13 hours yesterday, and I expect it’ll be that long today,” Rick Prescott said Monday as he worked with a squeegee along Mandalay State Beach.

“It’s time-consuming, but it works,” he said. “It’s really the only way there is to do it. We covered a half-mile so far today, and we’re being paid very well to walk the beach.”

A convoy of eight tractors waits behind the beach rakers, rolling thick adhesive across the raked sand to absorb the smaller chunks of tar and oil.

“After we get the big stuff--two inches or bigger--they’ll come up behind us and pick it up with the rollers,” Aguilar said.

But Aguilar, who said he has cleaned up oil spills for more than 20 years, said he thinks that his crew will have to rake his section of beach up to 10 times to rid the beach of most of the oil.

“It’s so spread out,” he said. “Tomorrow morning, we’ll start all over again. We’ll probably have to do it eight or 10 times to get it done.”

Although state officials recommended that people steer clear of the beach waters through the week, word of the potential hazard had not spread along the coastline to some beachcombers Monday.

A mother visiting Mandalay Beach said her four children got covered in tar and oil when they first reached the oceanfront, which was being scoured by cleanup crews dressed in white jumpsuits.

“They had gotten it all over their hands, feet and legs,” Jill Stain said. “We came back, but now we’re just watching them clean it up.”

Times staff writer Joanna M. Miller contributed to this story.

* RELATED STORY: Estimates of spilled oil increase eightfold. A3