The stretch of coastline from El Segundo to Redondo Beach that was closed since Wednesday due to tar balls washing up on shore was reopened Friday evening.
“We’d like to thank everybody for their patience, understanding and flexibility while we cleaned the beaches,” said Captain Charlene Downey from the U.S. Coast Guard at a press conference Friday night in Manhattan Beach.
“We completed a pretty significant task in a relatively short period of time,” she said. Downey estimated that around 41-42 cubic yards of tar were removed.
The Coast Guard will continue to monitor the area from Point Dume in Malibu to Redondo Beach through the weekend. Officials asked the public to call the National Response Center at 1-800-424-8802 if they see any tar.
Officials had announced Thursday afternoon that they would open the beaches at 6 a.m. Friday, but then said Thursday evening that they would keep them closed until further notice.
A spokesperson from the LA County Department of Public Health said Friday night that they’d “determined there was no longer a risk.”
Coast Guard Petty Officer Michael Anderson said they had “wanted to doublecheck everything, go over it with a fine-toothed comb” before opening the beaches.
Samples of the oil taken from the beaches were sent to two labs to determine where the oil came from. Downey said it could be a week to 10 days from the time that the samples arrived at the labs until they got results. She didn’t know if the samples had already arrived at the labs.
The Coast Guard asked the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration to calculate if it was possible that the tar came from the oil spill in Santa Barbara.
The Incident Operations Coordinator of the agency’s Emergency Response Division, Doug Helton, said Thursday that it was most likely that the oil had not come from Santa Barbara or one of the area’s many regular naturally occurring oil seeps, but that they had not yet ruled any possibilities out. ER
