Crews Start Excavation of Leaking Pipeline : Oxnard: Bush Oil had delayed the digging for more than a week while cleanup of the 84,000-gallon spill was under way. The actual rupture had not been found by sunset Sunday.

As Sunday drivers motored up and down Harbor Boulevard in Oxnard, excavation crews began digging up a pipeline that leaked 84,000 gallons of heavy crude for three days before being discovered Christmas morning.

It is a dirty job that Bush Oil Co. officials have delayed for more than a week while cleanup of Ventura County’s worst pipeline break in decades was in high gear.

But the excavation, which investigators hope will tell them exactly what caused the aging eight-inch pipe to rupture, was not expected to be completed before today.

By late Sunday, workers had carved a 30-foot-long ditch, about 10 feet wide and 10 feet deep, that exposed the metal casing that surrounds the pipeline. But crews working next to a roped-off patch of broccoli still had not located the actual break in the oil line by sunset.

“It’s going to be a couple of days, I think, before they get to the point where they can pull this thing out,” said Stephen L. Sawyer, a staff attorney with the state Department of Fish and Game’s oil spill prevention and response team.

Company officials said Sunday that almost three-quarters of the 2,000 barrels of oil had been recovered by cleanup crews working the McGrath Lake wetlands habitat and the beaches.

But the latest estimate of recovered oil was revised over the weekend to 1,499 barrels, down from the 1,535 barrels reportedly recovered earlier.

Meanwhile, the death toll for wildlife increased Sunday to 138 migratory and shorebirds, with another 28 oil-soaked birds near death. One oil-covered dog was treated and returned to its owner, officials said.

Four miles of shoreline between Channel Islands Harbor and the Santa Clara River remained closed Sunday. Another three miles of beach between Ventura Pier and the Santa Clara River has remained open and is now classified as clean.

The oil company is still unable to explain how crews working over the Christmas holiday failed to notice the missing crude oil.

A number of factors are slowing the dig.

Officials said a thick brushy marsh along the west side of Harbor Boulevard must be cleared to make way for bulldozers. By late Sunday, workers had cut a wide swath through the thick patches of reeds.

On Sunday, crews in white jumpsuits dug up tons of oil-soaked earth just north of the Harbor Boulevard-Gonzales Road intersection to make room for earthmovers and other heavy equipment.

Many were grateful for the work.

“A few birds were killed, but this (oil spill) sure has put a lot of guys to work at a time they really needed it,” said one worker, who would not give his name.

A network of uncharted oil pipelines buried near the Bush Oil line has also slowed the excavation. Experts from Arco and Unocal were on hand to advise digging crews exactly where the companies’ pipelines are buried along Harbor Boulevard.

Sunday afternoon, excavation crew members working on the east side of Harbor Boulevard discovered more crude leaking from a casing surrounding the broken pipeline.

“It’s hard to say what’s causing it,” U. S. Coast Guard Cmdr. James Rutkovsky said. “It’s just a few gallons oozing out from the casing. The environmental guys are looking at it.”

Investigators at the scene first thought that they had located the source of the 84,000-gallon spill, but it proved to be a false alarm.

“The rupture might be 25 feet, it might be 50 feet away from that (broken casing),” said Verne Josey, an investigator with Fish and Game’s oil spill prevention and response unit. “There’s no way of knowing.”

It is doubtful that parts of Harbor Boulevard will have to be dug up to reach the broken line, officials said.

Workers hired to excavate the ruptured pipeline most likely would be able to clamp one end of the pipe, which runs underneath the road toward McGrath Lake, and drag it out from under the roadway.

The street remained open during the excavation Sunday, although motorists were being cautioned to slow down.

The chief financial officer for Berry Petroleum, which owns Bush Oil, said an earlier report citing cleanup costs at $10 million was high.

“I’m going to try and get some estimates later this week, but the invoices are still coming in,” Ralph Goehring said. “It would take a crew like this working three months to get up in that ($10 million) range.”