Newport Beach Gunk Was Just Kitchen Grease : Environment: Source of the mysterious spill that washed ashore has not been found.

The white gunk that washed ashore on Newport Beach last weekend causing officials to close a half-mile stretch was “long-chain fatty acid”--better known as kitchen grease, Orange County health officials said Wednesday.

But the source of the substance still remains a mystery, said Larry Honeybourne, a spokesman for the county Health Care Agency.

“We’ve been looking at a number of alternative sources,” Honeybourne said. “We do know that from the type of fecal bacteria found with the grease, that it came from a waste water origin. We don’t know from where.”

The gunk forced officials to close the Balboa Peninsula beach from 32nd to 48th streets for three days while the health agency determined whether the substance posed a threat to public safety. Although the substance contained fecal bacteria, it was well within safety standards, health officials said.

Some officials suspect a passing ship may have dumped the grease, while others believe discharge from a restaurant may have been the source.

Honeybourne has asked the Coast Guard in Long Beach to examine its incident log for three days before Aug. 3, when the gunk was found by two passersby who are members of Newport Beach’s Water Quality Committee.

Honeybourne said he hopes that something unusual may have been logged that could help explain the gunk’s origin. The Coast Guard has not finished its examination, Honeybourne said. If the boat or source is found, the Coast Guard can levy a fine of thousands of dollars, said Petty Officer John Luzader. Neither grease nor oil may be dumped in the sea, he said.

“Chances are pretty slim for us finding the boat, especially since it’s that kind of a substance,” Luzader said.

“If it was oil, we could check our logs of ships coming in and going out,” Luzader said, “and we could find out which vessel or vessels were carrying oil. But this is different.”

Honeybourne described the material that washed ashore in Newport Beach as similar to the small plastic foam pieces used to pack appliances, but with a hard shell on the outside and a nasty odor inside. It was dry and caked and cracked like a soda cracker, one official said.

Based on a gas chromatograph analysis at the Sanitation Districts of Orange County, the gunk was identified as a long-chain fatty acid, essentially a type of grease found in food, said Patrick McNelly, a sanitation district spokesman.

Based on lab tests, McNelly said the sanitation district ruled out the possibility that the grease flowed down the Santa Ana River and into the ocean at Newport Beach. McNelly also said the sanitation district’s outfall pipe, which is 4 1/2 miles offshore, was an unlikely source of the grease because the gunk would have dispersed on beaches further south and spread out over a wider area.

Also, grease and oil samples taken at the sanitation district’s two treatment plants contained a mixture of petroleum, and animal and food greases and oils. The gunk found on the beach had no petroleum, he said.

As for the Santa Ana River, observers found no evidence of grease particles on the river’s edge or at the high-tide mark.