Oil Cleanup to Last Another Day

Dozens of workers are expected today to complete the messy job of mopping up a spill that poured more than 8,000 gallons of crude oil through several miles of irrigation ditches south of Fillmore over the weekend.

On Sunday, the day after the spill, more than 30 members of a Torrance-based cleanup crew scrambled to remove tons of tainted dirt and flush away oil from concrete ditches.

Officials say there is little environmental damage from the spill, and it is unclear whether government agencies will impose any fines on the operator of the pipeline.

Plans to finish the cleanup operation by Sunday morning were hampered by problems removing oil from the dirt ditches along Sespe Street, but officials said the job should be finished by today.

“We’re in the final stages,” said Pete Rathbun, who supervised workers from Ecology Control Inc. of Torrance, the company in charge of most of the oil-removal efforts.

What remains, Rathbun said, is to “basically mop up. And the last stage is quality assurance, where we go back over everything.”

The spill occurred after a 4-inch underground pipe owned by Torch Operating Co. broke early Saturday in the Bardsdale area, about 1 1/2 miles south of Fillmore. At the south end of Santa Paula Street, a quarter-size hole on the underside of an aging pipeline allowed oil to leak into underground irrigation systems for about a half a mile to the north.

In a final tally Sunday, company officials said 8,400 gallons of oil flowed from the broken pipe.

The concrete ditches along Los Angeles Avenue that helped contain the spilled oil were repeatedly flushed with fresh water Sunday and successfully cleaned out. But it proved more difficult to remove all the tainted dirt from the irrigation ditches along Sespe Street.

“We were trying to wash the oil out of the sand and leave the sand behind--to generate less waste,” said Torch spokesman John Deacon. “But we figured it wasn’t the best way to go, because too much oil was left behind.”

So crews brought excavators to unearth about 3 feet of soil along the length of the ditch. Workers then used absorbent pads to mop the remaining oil from the soil by hand.

The excavated dirt will be temporarily stored in large holding tanks in Fillmore until the company decides whether to move the dirt to a disposal site or to try treating the dirt to remove the petroleum, Deacon said.

Officials from the county Environmental Health Agency and state Department of Fish and Game are monitoring the Bardsdale area until the cleanup efforts are over.

County Fish and Game Warden Bob Farrell walked up and down Los Angeles Avenue and San Cayetano and Sespe streets Sunday to check for any damage to wildlife, and was encouraged that he found none.

“There’s been no impact that I’ve seen,” Farrell said. “No damage to any birds. Nothing. It’s worked out all right.”

There was never any danger of the spill leaking into the Santa Clara River, according to Farrell. The oil was contained by an earthen dam erected in a ditch alongside San Cayetano Street, which is about a mile away from the river.

Chris Taylor, senior vice president of Limoneira Co., the county’s largest citrus grower, said Sunday that he would not be worried if he owned any of the orange groves next to the oil spill.

“I’m real familiar with that area,” Taylor said. “There’s no roots in that drainage ditch. It’s not like the spill was in the middle of the grove.

“I’ve had oil spills around my trees in the past. It’s usually cleaned up so quickly it doesn’t get far enough to burn the roots.”

Taylor added that it was unlikely there was any ground water contamination from the spill, because there is so little water running underground in the area, which is adjacent to the hills.

The oil spill occurred about 2 a.m. Saturday, according to a Torch maintenance planner. The spill wasn’t discovered until 8:52 a.m., however, when a worker made his regular rounds.

It then took workers about an hour to locate the source of the leak in the pipe, which could be as much as 50 years old. Company officials said they had already planned to remove the pipe, which is used to transport crude oil from four wells in Bardsdale to a holding facility a mile away.

Crews have been working around the clock since Saturday morning to eliminate the results of the spill.

Company officials have not determined the exact cost of the cleanup operation, but said they expected to have a better idea today.

It also was unknown Sunday evening whether the spill would lead to any fines or penalties against the company. Officials from the Ventura County Fire Department and the county’s Environmental Health Agency could not be reached for comment.

But Deacon of Torch Operating Co. said, “We don’t anticipate there would be any fines associated with it. Usually, agencies look to see you’re diligent, and we’ve been responsible about all this.”

Correspondent Robert Gammon contributed to this story.