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OC Oil Spill Update

eAlert File
2021-10-04 AD74 OilSpill_2.htm

Over the weekend, we saw our worst fears come to life with the catastrophic oil spill off our coastline. I live in Laguna Beach and I am personally devastated by this news. And as your representative, I’m working to ensure that all of our resources are being used to fight this. I just joined the U.S. Coast Guard for an aerial tour of the oil spill site (VIDEO) and want to share as much information with you as possible. 

Here’s what we know so far:

  • On Saturday morning, the U.S. Coast Guard, California state officials, Orange County Harbor Patrol and Huntington Beach Marine Safety Division responded to reports of an oil spill approximately 13 square miles in size, located about three miles from the Newport Beach coast.
  • The oil spill involves approximately 144,000 gallons of oil. The responsible parties are cooperating with the U.S. Coast Guard and the incident management team to repair the leak, clean up the spill and protect the environment from greater impacts.
  • As of Sunday, a total of 3,150 gallons of oily water mixture have been recovered, nine boats were dispatched for oil spill recovery operations, three shoreline assessment teams dispatched and 5,360 feet of boom deployed.
  • The Orange County Health Care Agency issued a health advisory for residents exposed to oil contaminants. You can read the advisory here.
  • There has been a significant amount of ecological impact, including the loss of birds & fish which have been reported as washing up onto shore.
  • Fisheries in the impacted area are now closed to give time to investigate any impacts to fish in the impacted area. You can read the closure notice here.
  • Newport Harbor has been temporarily closed to vessel traffic. You can read the release here.

A unified command has been established - bringing together federal, state, county and city agencies. We are working around the clock to protect our marine life and mitigate ecological disaster. Our top priority is the health and safety of our community. As a result, at this time, the County of Orange and the Cities of Laguna Beach, Huntington Beach, and Newport Beach have closed their beaches.

This is devastating for our local economy, particularly our small businesses. Anyone who has experienced revenue loss from their business or damage to their property from this disaster is encouraged to call (866) 985-8366, which is a hotline set up by Amplify and their partners to help impacted parties file claims and to also give out general information.

How you can help:

Many of you have reached out asking about how you can help. For your safety and the safety of the animals, the public is asked to not attempt to capture oiled animals. The California Department of Fish & Wildlife has set up a hotline for individuals to call if anyone sees wildlife impacted from the oil. In such instances, you can call (877) 823-6926.

In addition, at some point, we will need volunteers to help with beach clean-up efforts, and to help coordinate that effort, the City of Huntington Beach has partnered with the Surfrider Foundation. Anyone interested in helping on that front should visit www.cleanups.surfrider.org.

As this crisis continues to unfold, I am committed to providing consistent and reliable information for the community. If you would like to receive updates from my team, please sign up here (LINK).

Additionally, my office is updating on Facebook (LINK) and Twitter (LINK) daily.

For additional updates from our local, county and state partners, visit:

If you have questions or need more information, do not hesitate to contact my office https://a74.asmdc.org/contact or by phone: (949) 251-0074.