A new face at Goleta City Hall, and the new, safer face of the Goleta coastline were the focus of discussion and celebration Tuesday at a brief City Council meeting.

Mohammed Hill was sworn in as the new assistant city attorney. Formerly from the cities of San Jose and Alameda, Hill is a graduate of both UC Berkeley and the University of Virginia.

“He has a broad base of experience — planning, public works, housing, public safety and code enforcement,” City Attorney Tim Giles said. “So he’s really going to be able to give us a lot of relief in a lot of different areas and fit in to a lot of different functions that we need.”

Also on hand to receive recognition from the city were representatives of the California State Lands Commission and the Division of Oil, Gas & Geothermal Resources, as well as former Assemblyman Pedro Nava for their work on cleaning up the coastal areas of Goleta, specifically Ellwood Beach and Haskell’s Beach, both areas in the past that have seen massive oil and gas operations.

“It was a massive undertaking made to look quite simple,” Planning and Environmental Services Director Steve Chase said about the efforts to remove old oil- and gas-related infrastructure from the Ellwood Mesa as well as on the coast.

Additionally, three improperly abandoned wells on Ellwood Mesa have been properly plugged and abandoned, though, according to Chase, there is more work to be done to remove industrial hazards from the area.

Nava was also honored for the attention he paid to Goleta as chairman of the Assembly Committee on Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials by holding an oversight committee meeting a little more than a year ago in Goleta to examine the long-term environmental hazards of oil and gas production on the California coast. He is also credited with being instrumental in the beach hazards removal project.

— Noozhawk contributing writer Sonia Fernandez can be reached at sfernandez@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.