Local leaders survey oil spill cleanup at Talbert Marsh in Huntington Beach
Local elected officials took a tour of the oil-spill-affected Talbert Marsh in Huntington Beach on Wednesday, as the cleanup continues.
Workers from Patriot Environmental Services, based in Wilmington, used rakes and large white bags to remove oil from the area near the rocks by the shore. The oil was then deposited in a dumpster at the marsh, located south of Brookhurst Street off Pacific Coast Highway.
“They’ve been doing a phenomenal job of cleaning up the Talbert Marsh so far,” said John Villa, executive director of the nonprofit Huntington Beach Wetlands Conservancy. “They have still some more to do on Talbert Marsh, then eventually they’ll be working on Brookhurst Marsh and Magnolia Marsh.”
Villa said 127 acres in total have been affected, but the water quality has seen a steady improvement over the last two days.
Villa led a tour Wednesday for elected officials including state Senators Dave Min and Tom Umberg, Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris, Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley and Huntington Beach Mayor Kim Carr.
Foley said volunteers are being sought for the cleanup effort. Registration is required at apps.wildlife.ca.gov/OSPRVolunteerForm, and she said volunteers would need to undergo a four-hour training session via Zoom.
“We’re hoping that thousands of people sign up and register in advance,” Foley said. “The faster we clean this up, the faster we can all get back to going to the beach. Our businesses can get open, our harbors open, and we can reduce the damage that this has caused.”
Meanwhile, Carr announced that the city of Huntington Beach has launched a webpage, huntingtonbeachca.gov/oilspillresponse, for updates on the spill.
She said city staff is conducting twice-daily flyovers, utilizing Huntington Beach Police Department helicopters. Surf City beaches remain partially open, with the area from the lifeguard towers to the water closed.
“We are still seeing significant quantities of oil off the coast of Huntington Beach,” Carr said.
The inlet from the ocean to the Talbert Marsh was covered by a sand berm by Sunday at 1:30 p.m., Villa said, to stop any new contamination from coming in. Yellow booms for containment and white booms for oil absorption are also set up.
Villa said the Wetlands Conservancy did a drill about nine months ago, conducted with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Office of Spill Prevention and Response, which helped with a quick response time over the weekend.
“It could have been a lot worse for us, as we saw in 1990 with the American Trader spill, but we were able to close off and control things a lot faster this time around,” Villa said, referencing the spill 31 years ago off the coast of Huntington Beach that emptied nearly 417,000 gallons of crude oil along the Orange County coast and killed fish and about 3,400 birds.
Up to 144,000 gallons were spilled in this month’s incident.
Min, whose 37th District includes Newport Beach, Laguna Beach and part of Huntington Beach, said he plans to introduce legislation in January that would end all drilling — not just new drilling — on state waters up and down the coastline.
“All of the spills we’ve had recently have come from leases that go back 40 or 50 years,” Min said. “These are not new leases, and we need to end that problem. Our coastline is too beautiful, too valuable and too precious — and too important to our economy, frankly — for us to keep running this risk of causing oil spills, which is endemic to oil exploration and drilling offshore.”
All the latest on Orange County from Orange County.
Get our free TimesOC newsletter.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Daily Pilot.
