Refinery Agrees to Settlement : Environment: Tenby Inc., without admitting wrongdoing, will pay $90,000 to various agencies to settle civil suit over 1993 pipeline leak.

Two years after an oil spill that endangered ecologically sensitive wetlands, an Oxnard refinery has agreed to pay $90,000 to settle a civil lawsuit filed by the district attorney in connection with the pipeline leak.

Without admitting any wrongdoing, Tenby Inc., which operates Oxnard Refinery and Chase Production Co., agreed to the settlement to avoid paying further legal costs, Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher Harman said.

“It’s a very good settlement for our purposes,” Harman said. “We got full-cost recovery for Fish and Game’s cleanup and injunctive relief that will prevent this from happening again.”

The settlement requires that Tenby pay a total of $47,000 to local and state wildlife preservation funds. The company must also pay $39,000 to the state Department of Fish and Game to cover initial response and cleanup costs, and an additional $4,000 to the district attorney’s office for legal fees.

“I view this settlement with the district attorney as a compromise by both sides,” Tenby President Morley Chase said in a prepared statement.

The lawsuit was brought against Tenby, a producer of asphalt products, in response to a March, 1993, pipeline leak.

Although the company admitted no wrongdoing in its settlement, a Tenby spokeswoman said Thursday that about 200 gallons of petroleum had leaked from a pipeline into a nearby drainage ditch.

“We did have a leak from a pipeline that had been in the ground about five years,” Julie Chase said. “It was a small release. It’s estimated [that] 200 gallons leaked out.”

The Department of Fish and Game began investigating Tenby in 1993 after someone reported seeing oil sheens leading to Mugu Lagoon, a sensitive saltwater habitat about six miles away.

But there was no evidence that the spill ever reached the lagoon, Julie Chase said, adding that the leaking pipeline was repaired and the resulting spill cleaned up.

“None of the oil that was released had any significant impact on the environment,” she said.

Harman said traces of the spilled oil were found two miles from the refinery, so it may have reached the lagoon. He said it was never determined how much oil spilled from the broken pipeline, but “our complaint was not based on a 200-gallon leak but more extensive contamination.”

A joint state and federal investigation found that thousands of gallons of oil had leaked into the drainage canal over the years, possibly from earlier pipeline leaks, said Dan Shane, an official with the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Western regional office in San Francisco.

The exact source of the leaks was never determined, but in March, 1994, Tenby signed an agreement with the EPA to conduct a long-term cleanup plan and take steps to prevent further leaks or spills.

Julie Chase said the company is continuing with the cleanup, which the EPA is overseeing. She said Tenby has installed several dams and taken other measures to keep oil from getting into irrigation drains or ground water.

But she said Tenby is not solely responsible for the larger contamination, noting that the Oxnard Plain was once home to several oil companies.

“We’re the last refinery in the county,” she said.

Meanwhile, Shane said the state’s Regional Water Quality Control Board will assume responsibility for overseeing Tenby’s ongoing cleanup operations next month. Before that happens, he said, Tenby will receive a bill for about $100,000 to cover the cost of the EPA’s oversight.