WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Oil slicks have spread over nine miles through the Santa Barbara, California coast after a Tuesday’s pipeline rupture that caused nearly 21,000 gallons of crude oil to spill into the Pacific Ocean, US Coast Guard Captain Jennifer Williams stated at a press conference on Wednesday.
“The coast guard did an overflight this morning to ascertain where this spill has gone, we have basically 2 miles from shore a slick that is approximately 3.7 miles long, that goes along the shoreline heading east,” Williams said on the Refugio State Beach site of the spill.
Williams also said there is a slick offshore to the northeast that is 5.3 miles, which makes the total slick about 9 miles in length. “That is a little bit more than we anticipated last night,” she added.
Williams explained that a team of US federal, state and local responders is now focusing on containing and skimming the oil they could find, while contractors work to remove oil from the sand.
“Oil recovery tends to be a complicated process that involves a lot of manual labor, and taking environmental factors like wind currents and weather into consideration. It can be a slow process, but we want to make sure that we do it right so that we can get the beaches back to its pristine condition,” she said.
A Captain of the Department of Fish and Wildlife who is overseeing the spill response admitted the spill would be a challenge to contain, and will likely have environmental implications.
“Although the response is going as well as planned, the fact is the spilled oil is difficult to contain and collect once it is on the water,” the Captain said during the press conference on Wednesday.
“Therefore it is likely that there will be some environmental impacts including oiled birds and oiled shoreline.”
A team of responders from the US Coast Guard, the California Office of Emergency Services, the California Fish and Wildlife, numerous fire departments as well as Exxon Mobil continue to work at the site of the spill, while the investigation into the cause of the rupture continues, according to the US Coast Guard.
