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One of the largest oil spills in Southern California’s recent history tainted popular beaches and killed wildlife as crews rushed Sunday to contain the crude before it spread further into protected wetlands.
At least 126,000 gallons (572,807 liters) of oil have spilled into the waters off Orange County, according to a statement from the town of Huntington Beach.
“The spill significantly affected Huntington Beach, with substantial ecological impacts on the beach and in the wetlands of Huntington Beach,” the statement said.
The oil sparked miles wide in the ocean and washed up on the shore in sticky black blood cells with dead birds and fish. Crews led by the U.S. Coast Guard have deployed skimmers and floating barriers called booms in an attempt to stop further incursions into the wetlands and Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve.
The closure stretched from the Huntington Beach Pier nearly four miles south to the Santa Ana River Pier in the midst of summery weather that would have brought beachgoers to the Broad Beach for the volleyball, swimming and surfing.
Authorities canceled the last day of the annual Pacific Air Show, which typically draws thousands of spectators to Huntington Beach, a town of about 199,000 residents about 30 miles south of downtown Los Angeles.
The oil slick came from a broken pipeline connected to an offshore oil rig known as Elly, Orange County supervisor Katrina Foley said on Twitter.
Foley said Newport Beach Mayor Brad Avery told him he encountered the oil slick while in a boat returning to the mainland from Santa Catalina Island. “He saw dolphins swimming in the oil,” Foley tweeted.
The spill comes three decades after a massive oil spill hit the same part of the Orange County coast. On February 7, 1990, the tanker American Trader crashed its anchor off Huntington Beach, spilling nearly 417,000 gallons of crude. Fish and approximately 3,400 birds were killed.
In 2015, a ruptured pipeline north of Santa Barbara sent 143,000 gallons of crude oil gushing out onto Refugio State Beach.
Huntington State Beach is home to a number of bird species, including gulls, willets, long-billed fletchers, sleek teens and reddish egrets, which are a rarity on the West Coast, according to Ben Smith, biologist and environmental consultant for Orange. county.
Smith took to the beach on Sunday to spot wildlife ahead of a planned construction project at the mouth of the Santa Ana River, which empties into the ocean on the border of Huntington State Beach and Newport Beach.
“There is tar everywhere,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “You think now we would have figured out how to stop this kind of thing from happening, but I guess not. ”
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