SPILLOVER : THE FUTURE : McGrath Leak Reveals Holes in Response Efforts

A week after state and federal teams responded with textbook efficiency to Ventura County’s worst oil spill in decades, officials at three government levels are deciding how to patch holes the leak exposed in local emergency procedures and in oil-field regulations.

While cleanup crews skimmed the remains of 84,000 gallons of crude oil from a lake at McGrath State Beach in Oxnard, state and federal lawmakers joined county officials in vowing that the lessons of last week are not quickly forgotten.

“One of the problems--and it’s been a problem for years in the beach area--is confusion about jurisdictional responsibility,” said Oxnard-area county Supervisor John K. Flynn. “We need to make sure the (county) fire chief knows that an emergency is an emergency and--regardless of where it is--we have to respond.”

A top county Fire Department official admitted last week that oil continued to leak from a Bush Oil Co. pipeline an extra day because fire dispatchers botched their response to a beachcomber’s spill report Christmas Eve morning.

But at least six other local agencies also failed to dispatch investigators, including the city of Oxnard, in whose jurisdiction most of the spilled oil was discovered. Oxnard officials said Friday that they had not completed their review to determine responsibility.

U.S. Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) said he plans to call a meeting of city and county officials within three weeks to review local response to oil spills. An elaborate countywide plan for responding to toxic hazards was apparently ignored after the Christmas Eve sighting.

At the state level, Assembly Speaker Pro Tem Jack O’Connell (D-Carpinteria) said he will sponsor legislation needed to strengthen oil field regulations and to clarify which state agencies are responsible for the safety of tens of thousands of miles of oil pipeline in California--on and off oil fields.

“We have an aging infrastructure (of) pipeline transportation,” O’Connell said. “And the concern here is that with the aging network, more spills could occur.”

The chairman of the Assembly Natural Resources committee has agreed to hold fact-finding hearings in Ventura County if local officials want them, O’Connell said.

Authorities estimate that Ventura County, which produces 4% of the state’s oil, has hundreds of miles of large transportation pipelines. The county’s 37 oil fields contain thousands of miles more of low-pressure lines, including the ruptured Bush Oil pipeline. The locations of many of those pipelines are unmapped, officials said.

Recognizing the threat posed by old pipelines, the state oil and gas agency is drafting rules to force pressure tests and anti-corrosion devices on many buried oil field pipelines.

Such lines, including the ruptured Oxnard line, are supposed to be operated at low pressures and now are virtually unregulated. The new regulations should be in place within a year, officials said.

Officials at the division of oil and gas in the state Department of Conservation have also requested an attorney general’s opinion about whether the broken Oxnard line qualifies as a low-pressure oil field gathering line or should be considered a transportation line and more stringently regulated.

In the aftermath of the Oxnard oil spill, government officials said numerous changes should result.

* Assistant County Fire Chief David Festerling said his agency, which runs the principal hazardous materials unit in the county, will change its procedures to guarantee that every reported spill is responded to, regardless of jurisdiction.

* The county Fire Department will begin reporting all oil spill sightings promptly to the state Office of Emergency Services in Sacramento by calling a 24-hour hot line, Festerling said. All local agencies are required by law to make such calls, but none did on Christmas Eve.

* Oxnard Police Chief Harold Hurtt, whose police and fire dispatchers thought another agency was responding to the early oil sighting at McGrath Lake, said he will resolve any confusion over Oxnard’s jurisdiction and make sure the state hot line is called. His dispatchers said last week that they did not have the hot line number. They also said that McGrath Lake was outside their jurisdiction--an assertion other agencies disputed.

* A top state parks official, in response to a McGrath State Park ranger’s failure to check out another early spill tip, said his agency will now require rangers to telephone emergency agencies with such tips. Rangers will also be required to notify any nearby oil company.

* Several state officials, including the state’s top oil-spill response officer, have pledged to press Gov. Pete Wilson and the Legislature for new regulations to make sure pipeline-testing responsibilities are clear and that oil-field operators are forced to more carefully account for oil transferred through pipelines.

A key question in the week-old oil-spill investigation is why Bush Oil Co. failed to detect a leak of about 600 barrels of crude oil per day for at least three days. Company officials have said they measured the amount of oil pumped through the ruptured line from one storage tank to another each day.

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Pete Bontadelli, administrator of state Fish and Game’s oil spill prevention and response unit, said he will push to make such daily accounting a state requirement.

Beyond lessons learned and solutions proposed, the Oxnard spill showed how effectively state and federal governments can respond to a major coastal oil spill--especially when luck is on their side.

“It seems to me to be a textbook response,” said O’Connell who walked along the spill site two days after the spill’s official discovery on Christmas Day. “And it couldn’t have happened on a worse day.”

Following procedures established in 1991 in response to a new federal law on marine oil spills, state Fish and Game’s special oil spill unit was the lead agency in Oxnard. It joined the U.S. Coast Guard, the federal government’s principal representative, to map strategies for response and cleanup.

Both agencies are conducting investigations into the cause of the spill and responsibility for it.

They have been joined by more than a dozen other state, federal and local agencies with responsibilities in areas of emergency services, public health, fish and wildlife, tideland leases, wetlands restoration, ground water, ocean mammals and oil field supervision.

Along with Bush Oil parent company Berry Petroleum, whose insurance is responsible for the estimated $10-million cleanup, the Coast Guard and state Fish and Game have contracted with private companies to clean the ocean, shovel tar from seven miles of beach, skim oil from McGrath Lake and chop soiled reeds and willows in the brushy marshland.

Bush officials said Saturday that 138 birds had died in the spill, and an additional 48 were injured.

By all accounts, state and federal response and cleanup have gone well.

Carpinteria-based contractor Clean Seas was mobilized within an hour after a U.S. Minerals Management Service helicopter spotted an oil slick of McGrath State Beach at 7:30 Christmas morning.

Minerals Management employees contacted both the state Office of Emergency Services and Fish and Game’s oil spill unit by 9:20 and the Coast Guard by 9:40.

Clean Seas began corralling oil slicks off McGrath beach by 10 a.m. and Bush Oil employees--notified at 9:30 a.m.--closed down the broken line by 10:15, shut off a lake-leveling pump that was funneling oil to the ocean by 10:45 and began cleanup by 11 o’clock.

By 3 p.m., eight boats and 80 workers were on the scene.

Ocean cleanup lasted two days, and the beach cleanup is nearing completion. About 63,000 of the 84,000 gallons that spilled had been recovered by Saturday.

Coast Guard Cmdr. Jim Rutkovsky, chief of port operations in a five-county Los Angeles region, said fate had a hand in how well the cleanup has gone. Nearly all of the leaked oil flowed down a farmland drainage channel to McGrath Lake, he said.

“I haven’t dealt with a spill before that had a containment lake waiting for it,” Rutkovsky said. “It is good luck. (Otherwise) we would probably have 40 or 50 miles of beach to deal with rather than seven or eight.”

Rutkovsky said there have been minor glitches in cleanup, but he wouldn’t cite any.

“Given the fact we have had to respond in almost every environment--some ocean skimming, beach cleanup, the lake contamination, a marsh and a creek and some hydrological impacts, I’m very happy,” he said. “It’s gone very well.”

Rutkovsky said he still expects estimates of the amount of oil leaked to rise somewhat. “My gut keeps telling me there’s got to be a higher number,” he said.

The Coast Guard’s work at the spill site will be done in a week or two, Rutkovsky said. But first his investigators must be sure that oil is no longer a threat to navigable waters, that all surface oil is removed from the water and that the source of the spill has been positively identified and any further threat eliminated.

On Saturday, white-suited workers cleared brush along the west side of Harbor Boulevard, just north of Gonzales Road, in preparation for excavation of the ruptured pipeline, scheduled to begin today. State officials have said corrosion is the most likely cause of the break in the pipeline, which is 30 to 40 years old.

State Fish and Game officials will stay on much longer, continuing to clean and test marshland and McGrath Lake and plotting a strategy for long-term restoration of wetlands once rich in birds.

The bottom of McGrath Lake may have to be mechanically scraped if contamination is severe. The lake was home to egrets, sandpipers and the endangered California brown pelican and snowy plover. It is also a wintering spot to as many as 30 species of ducks.

Fish and Game lawyers also must decide whether to ask the district attorney’s office to file criminal negligence charges against Bush Oil or its employees.

In addition, Fish and Game lawyers could seek civil penalties of up to $250,000 through the state attorney general. The company might also be charged an administrative penalty of $10 for each gallon of oil spilled and not recovered. State water quality control officials said they may also seek stiff fines under different laws.

As state and federal officials continued to investigate the spill, local officials said they plan to shore up their end of the statewide emergency network.

Ventura County spent years charting plans and procedures for responding to hazardous material spills, even establishing a four-person office of emergency services as a liaison in the Sheriff’s Department.

Wendy Haddock, the office’s assistant director, said the plans would have worked had they been followed.

“It sounds like everybody and their mother was notified,” Haddock said, “so it’s just a question of, ‘Are you going to send somebody out?’ ”

At least seven local public safety agencies were contacted about a beachcomber’s report of an oil spill a day before the formal alarm was sounded Christmas morning.

None sent an investigator to check out the report, allowing hundreds more barrels of oil to escape. The U.S. Coast Guard, which was also in the loop, dispatched a ship, but seamen saw no oil on the ocean.

According to officials, the local response was botched because each agency assumed--or was told--that another agency would follow up.

Ventura electrician Bruce Fincher, whose dog walked into oily McGrath Lake just north of the Edison power plant, said he called the Channel Islands Harbor Patrol about 10 a.m. Christmas Eve day.

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Fincher said he was referred to a sheriff’s dispatcher, who subsequently notified an Oxnard police and fire dispatcher and the California Highway Patrol. The CHP serves as state Fish and Game’s dispatcher on holidays. However, Christmas Eve was not a Fish and Game holiday, so the call could have gone directly to Fish and Game, officials said.

The Oxnard dispatcher said she was told that the sheriff’s dispatcher was calling as a courtesy because the spill was near Oxnard but that Fish and Game would respond to it. As it turned out, the oil spill was in both Oxnard and county jurisdictions, and apparently no one ever reached a Fish and Game representative.

The CHP dispatcher, meanwhile, notified the county Fire Department, as is routine when that agency discovers toxic spills. The county Fire Department dispatcher notified the Coast Guard and dispatchers in Port Hueneme and Oxnard.

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Assistant County Fire Chief Festerling said his dispatchers assumed Oxnard would cover the call, because McGrath Lake is their jurisdiction. Still, Festerling said his agency should have made sure Oxnard was responding.

Oxnard police routinely respond to calls from the McGrath State Beach campground, and an officer patrols the beach itself, which is only about 100 yards from McGrath Lake.

Oxnard officials said Friday that they were not certain about jurisdiction. But both an Oxnard dispatcher and a police watch commander said Friday that they are still convinced McGrath Lake is not their jurisdiction. However, maps show that nearly all of the soiled lake is within the city of Oxnard.

“What we have to do is make it very clear who is responsible for what and to make sure it gets done,” Oxnard Mayor Manuel Lopez said late Friday.

“We will do whatever we can to prevent this sort of thing from ever occurring again,” Lopez said.

Times staff writer Fred Alvarez contributed to this story.