By Camas Frank

As of June 7, unified joint command for the oil pipeline spill known as the “Refugio Incident,” in Santa Barbara County, reports, “cleanup goals have been met for several shorelines areas.”
A statement released by the joint command, led by the Coast Guard and Environmental Protection Agency, Santa Barbara County Emergency Management Department, California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Office of Spill Prevention, said that, “Shoreline Cleanup Assessment Technique [SCAT] teams at the Refugio Incident have assessed 96.5 miles of shoreline.”
And, “about 44 percent has met its cleanup goals. These areas are mostly sandy beaches with [stone or other material used to support shorelines and banks]. Most of these areas have only trace amounts oil on them which is less than 1 percent.”
The less than 1-percent figure is considered clean, but officials say they will continue to monitor the beaches in case of recontamination.
With no other wildlife being reported dead or oiled in the two days before the announcement, the count of dead and injured birds stands at 58 still living and 136 dead; and the marine mammal count at 43 living and 67 dead. Experts will conduct necropsies on the dead wildlife to determine the cause of death.
Fish and Wildlife does not consider the presence of oil in-and-of itself to be a cause of death without further examination.
Also on June 7, the unified command suspended nine booming and skimming vessels after no oil was found in the “on-water recovery area” since June 3. Eight vessels remained on the water to monitor and will do so until all cleanup operations are finished.
The command’s information center estimates that approximately “14,267 gallons of oily water mix” has been recovered since the beginning of the cleanup efforts.
Less than two weeks from the first spill on Refugio Beach, oil began leaking from an underground pipeline in Santa Maria also run by Phillips 66. The Phillips 66 command center managed to shut that line off with only a tiny percentage of the Refugio numbers lost, but investigations point to aging and uninspected lines as being culprits in both cases.
The Refugio Beach spill has energized opponents of a plan to bring crude oil to a Nipomo refinery on trains. While one spill cleanup is being brought to a close, the Coalition to Stop the Phillips 66 Oil Train Project, has been busy in both SLO and Santa Barbara counties.
They held a rally in SLO the day after the spill, highlighting the damage possible from the 2.4 million gallons a day the company wants to bring through the counties by tanker rail cars.
The San Luis Obispo County Planning Commission is expected to receive the Final Environmental Impact Report on the Phillips 66 rail project in July.