Cleanup continues on California oil spill, residents claim delayed response

Officials in California began their workweek continuing to clean up a massive oil spill from over the weekend. The video above shows some of those cleanup efforts. The spill was one of the largest oil spills in the state’s history.

According to the president and CEO of Amplify Energy, the oil spill was spotted Saturday. “We notified the Coast Guard Saturday morning when we were doing a line inspection and we noticed the sheen in the water,” Martyn Willsher said Sunday.

However, people who live and work in the area said they noticed the sheen as well as a heavy petroleum smell from the oil spill Friday evening.

“People were emailing, and the neighbors were asking, ‘Do you smell that?’,” Blue Star Yacht Charter owner Rick Torgerson said. According to Torgerson, boats were returning to the marina with their hulls covered in oil by the time Amplify said it noticed the spill.

Despite noticing the oil spill in the morning, it took until the afternoon for the Coast Guard to establish a unified command and the evening for Beta Operating Co. to shut down operations.

“We will continue to work with Unified Command to ensure that this recovery effort is just concluded as quickly as possible,” Willsher said Sunday. “We’re all deeply impacted and concerned about the impact on not just the environment, but the fish and wildlife as well. We will do everything in our power to ensure that this is recovered as quickly as possible.”

On Sunday, booms were deployed on the ocean surface to try to contain the roughly 126,000 gallons of oil while divers sought to determine where and why the spill occurred. On land, there was a race to find animals harmed by the oil and keep the spill from harming any more sensitive marshland.

“It’s just bad you know. It really is bad,” cleanup volunteer Scott White said Sunday. “I don’t know what else to say but it’s just a bad thing – that’s for sure.”

The city and state beaches at Huntington Beach were closed over the weekend. Huntington Beach Mayor Kim Carr said the beaches could remain closed for weeks or even months. Late Sunday, the city of Laguna Beach said its beaches were also closed.