Thousands of Gallons of Oily Fluid Spill Into Ballona Creek

Thousands of gallons of diluted crude oil gushed from a broken pipeline and spilled into Ballona Creek for at least four hours Monday, but emergency crews apparently were able to stop the flow before it polluted the ocean.

The spill of oily waste was discovered on La Cienega Boulevard, near the Los Angeles-Culver City border, by a passerby about 1 p.m. About 5:30 p.m., the flow was stopped after fire officials asked two oil companies that operate three pipelines in the area to shut them off.

“The source has been shut down, the flow has stopped. What we’re seeing now is just residual oil,” said Los Angeles Fire Department Battalion Chief Ralph Ramirez.

Authorities had not learned by Monday night which pipeline was leaking, but the investigation was expected to continue today. Ramirez declined to name the oil companies that operate the pipelines.

By 5 p.m., booms were deployed downstream at Centinela Avenue and near Lincoln Boulevard to try to stop the oil from reaching the ocean. The devices do not stop all the oil, but can help to absorb much of it.

Ballona Creek is one of the region’s major storm water channels, carrying runoff and rainwater from Los Angeles and Culver City directly into Santa Monica Bay at Playa del Rey.

The oil will probably have little if any ecological effects because the 50-foot-wide, concrete-lined creek carries only contaminated runoff and is inhabited by few birds or other animals upstream from Centinela Avenue. If the oil slick had reached the coast, though, it could have jeopardized pelicans, gulls and other birds that feed in Santa Monica Bay. Crews late Monday were planning to set up more booms and use vacuum trucks through the night to suck the oil from the water.

Bill Bischoff, a spokesman for Culver City, said that for the first three hours the oily material was flowing out of the pipeline at an estimated 100 gallons per minute, but slowed to about 25 to 35 gallons per minute. It moved downstream slowly, with the creek flowing at only about 5 mph.

The slick was about 20 feet wide, a quarter of an inch deep and three to four miles long, Bischoff said. Bischoff estimated that several thousand gallons poured into the creek.

“It’s thicker than a refined product, so it’s probably crude,” said Bob Collis, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department.

The spilled substance, however, was most likely not pure crude oil. Instead, it might have been a diluted, oily material from oil companies called “produced water,” which is 2% to 5% crude oil, said Mitzy Taggart, a former oil company employee who is staff scientist for the environmental group Heal the Bay. The waste is water mixed with crude oil that is brought to the surface and then normally re-injected into wells via pipelines.

“It’s not a thousand gallons of crude oil. The creek would really be devastated if it was that much crude oil,” Taggart said.

The oily water spilled into Ballona Creek from a smaller tributary, flowing down the concrete walls like a waterfall.

Officials from many agencies--including the Coast Guard and state Department of Fish and Game--helped at the scene. Spilling oil into waterways is a violation of state and federal laws, and the responsible firm is likely to face fines.