High Oil Cleanup Costs for Santa Barbara Beaches

Clean-up costs associated with an oil pipeline rupture that dumped as much as 2,400 barrels of crude have exceeded $60 million. Plains All American Pipeline that owned the pipeline to cover clean-up costs

Cleanup costs hit a peak of about $3 million a day after a ruptured pipe spilled as much as 101,000 gallons of oil along the Gaviota coast in Santa Barbara County last month, said Meredith Mathews, a spokeswoman for Plains All American Pipeline, which owns the broken pipeline.

The company is paying to deploy more than 1,000 workers, skimming boats, ecological monitors and other resources along a 96.5-mile stretch of coast from Gaviota to Point Mugu near Oxnard. State and federal agencies responding to the spill will also bill the company for their costs.

The $60 million only accounts for cleanup costs. It does not include financial damage claims from people and businesses that might have been affected by the spill, Mathews said.

Santa Barbara fisherman Stace Cheverez filed a lawsuit against Plains last week. He is seeking damages because the spill led to a ban on fishing in a 138-mile zone off the coast. A dozen other fishermen and local businesses have met with lawyers and may join the case, said Daniel Mensher, one of Cheverez's attorneys.

The spill could also result in fines against the company under the Clean Water Act.

Workers have cleaned up 76% of the damaged stretch of beach, mostly sandy areas that had only trace amounts of oil, officials said.

"Initially, you see a lot of progress upfront, in the first week or two, where you get the really gross oil off the water and the gross oil off the beach," said U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Jennifer Williams, a federal on-scene coordinator of the spill response. "We accomplished that. Now we are at a stage where we are doing a lot more tedious work."

Source: LA Times

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