The oil company responsible for the May 19 spill in Santa Barbara County has agreed to pay for damage to a sail done by tar drifting in the water off of Redondo Beach, over 100 miles away.
Robert Cole, a member of the King Harbor Yacht Club, submitted a claim for about $2,100 to Plains All American Pipeline, L.P. on June 9. Cole had been racing his 30-foot boat Priorities a couple miles offshore on May 26, the day before tar washed up in the South Bay, when a glob of oil got on the bag containing his spinnaker sail.
No official cause has been given for the oil in the South Bay and federal and state agencies have said they are still testing samples to determine their origin.
But Cole, who is a senior engineering specialist at the Aerospace Corporation, was convinced that the oil came from the spill and filed a claim with Plains. The Texas-based oil company sent him an email on June 16 saying it would pay him. He declined to provide a copy of the email to Easy Reader because it was marked confidential, but said it contained no admission of fault. It required him to sign an agreement saying he wouldn’t sue the company, he said.
The company sent a statement to Easy Reader Tuesday in response to questions about Cole’s claim and if any others had been received from the South Bay.
“Plains All American Pipeline is actively addressing all claims related to the Refugio incident,” wrote Communications Manager Meredith Matthews. “All valid claims will be addressed and every claimant has been contacted to date. Additionally, we meet one-on one with each claimant. Claims are confidential so we are unable to address specifics about the claims and/or claimants.”
Cole sails every Tuesday and Thursday and is familiar with the natural oil seep off of Redondo Beach.
“I sail through it every Thursday night,” he said. “It’s like the finest vegetable oil you can find.”
The tar that washed up on his boat was “nothing like it,” he said. Instead, it was the “consistency of honey.”
“There’s no way it’s not from the Santa Barbara oil spill,” he said. “I’ve been out here sailing for 35 years and never seen anything like that.”
He took the sail to North Sails in Marina del Rey to be cleaned, but they told him the chemicals would ruin the fabric.
Tanya Rodriguez, who has lived on her boat in King Harbor since 2008, was racing her vessel on the same evening as Cole and also noticed globs of oil in the water, one as big as three softballs and covered in straw. Like Cole, she is convinced it came from up north, in part because of the straw, which is sometimes used to soak up oil spills.
“It’s kind of obvious,” said Rodriguez. “When I saw the glob, it was the first thought that came to my mind: This stuff is from Santa Barbara.”
An expert from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and a U.S. Coast Guard spokesperson said on May 28 that it was unlikely that the oil came from the spill, but they didn’t rule it out.
Due to the area’s underwater canyons, Rodriguez, who grew up surfing in the South Bay, said it would “make perfect sense” that the oil was “sucked out” by the ocean and then deposited in the Santa Monica Bay.
Like some other locals, she said she had never seen a similar amount of tar wash up on shore.
“Nothing like that ever happened here to that degree,” she said.
Cole writes contracts for companies that hire the Aerospace Corporation to test materials including oil. He is skeptical that the involved agencies still haven’t found the source. He offered to write up such a contract for Plains All American Pipeline, but they declined, he said.
Both the Coast Guard and California Department of Fish and Wildlife are testing samples in their labs. On Monday, the site for the Coast Guard’s Marine Safety Lab in Connecticut said it could test samples in three days, or in cases of emergency, in 24 hours. On Tuesday, the time frame was no longer posted.
On Friday, a Coast Guard spokesperson said they were still waiting on results.
“Part of it is double checking so it can withstand legal tests in a court of law,” said Petty Officer Michael Anderson. This didn’t mean they had a possible suspect, he said.
The Department of Fish and Wildlife sent a text Monday in response to questions saying, “At this time we do not have results from the testing.”
On Tuesday, a spokesperson with the Coast Guard’s Los Angeles/Long Beach office said that the information center set up in response to the South Bay oil incident had been dissolved and any questions regarding oil in the area south of Santa Barbara County should be directed to the joint information center for the Refugio spill.
When asked if they had a cause for the oil in the South Bay, a public information officer there said, “Out of an abundance of caution, we’re responding to the oil in the area as if it were from the ruptured pipeline.”
He said this was “from a response perspective,” however, and that they still didn’t have a cause.
“I wish I knew as well,” said Rusty Harris-Bishop from the Environmental Protection Agency.
As to what was taking so long, he said, “We’re working on getting a better answer.”
“There are multiple agencies, samples, methodologies,” he said. “We’re still working on comparing the data.”
Harris-Bishop said he didn’t know if any straw had been used in the Refugio cleanup effort, which is ongoing. On June 10, the Associated Press reported that the response had cost $69 million so far and that 76 percent of the area had been cleaned. ER
