Unusual Number of Tar Balls Hit Shores

Government investigators inspected Orange County’s beaches Friday after residents reported an unusually large number of gooey, oily balls washing up in the surf.

Federal and state officials confirmed that they are investigating whether tar balls found from Huntington Beach south to Dana Point are linked to the now-closed leaky oil pipeline that forced the shutdown of the large offshore Platform Eureka a week ago.

A spokeswoman for platform operator Aera Energy LLC said it seems unlikely that the pipeline leak caused the tar balls, but the company will work with investigators.

“We are on standby,” spokeswoman Susan Hersberger said.

Though the tar balls do not pose a human health hazard, beach goers should avoid them, said Robert Hughes, a spokesman at the California Department of Fish and Game spill response office in Sacramento. The sticky black goo can cling to shoes and clothes and stain rugs and furniture. It can be cleaned from hands and feet with baby oil, officials said.

Birds and other wildlife can be harmed if they swallow gooey tar balls, and people should report any ailing animals they might see, state officials said. No cleanup of the tar balls is planned, because they are relatively harmless and have not been found in major clusters.

The tar balls, many as small as dimes, are scattered sparsely along the shore rather than in a contiguous slick, said officials at the U.S. Coast Guard and the state Fish and Game spill response unit.

They called the large number of tar balls atypical for Orange County, which unlike some coastal areas farther north is not known for such situations or for natural offshore oil seepage.

“There are a lot more out there than normal, according to lifeguards,” said Luther Greer at the U.S. Coast Guard station at Long Beach. A Bolsa Chica State Beach lifeguard reported a number of flatter balls 1 inch to 2 inches wide at the popular Huntington Beach surfing site.

“Normally, there’s not a great occurrence of tar balls along the Southern California coast, especially Huntington Beach, Laguna Beach,” said Bill Castle, supervisor of the petroleum chemistry laboratory for the Fish and Game spill response unit in Sacramento. “If there are a lot of tar balls coming ashore, than you’ve got to think there’s something happening somewhere that’s not normal.”

Tar ball samples collected this week will be tested to see if the oil “fingerprint” matches that from the platform off the Huntington Beach shore. They will also be matched with samples of oil spilled in mid-May off the coast of Rosarito, Mexico, where a pipeline broke as a tanker pumped oil to the shore. Some of that oil may have drifted north, investigators said.

Some of the tar balls found in Orange County are hard, while others are sticky, said Michael McDermott, warden for the state Fish and Game spill response unit. He estimated that the balls had been in the water for one to three weeks.

Platform Eureka and its leaky pipeline 700 feet underwater remained closed Friday amid an ongoing probe into what caused the escape of an estimated barrel or less of oil into ocean waters. The oil formed a thin sheen 2 miles long and 20 yards to 100 yards wide, the Coast Guard reported last week. Tests this week found seven small leaks along 3,500 feet of the 1.8-mile-long pipeline.

Experts say that oil sheens can produce tar balls when exposed to the right mix of temperature, wind, sun and other factors. The oil’s volatile ingredients evaporate, leaving more solid material, said Castle.