Walking along Goleta’s beaches yields more than just sand, rocks and driftwood.
Often peeking out from the ground are the bases of pier supports, metal beams and rotted wood bits.
The man-made scraps are relics of the area’s booming oil-production past, when piers and derricks extended off the shore, and regulations and oversight were yet to be developed.
The remnants along the now-environmentally-conscious city’s beaches are still being dug up, and the formal effort to remove them continues with excavation work this week by the State Lands Commission.
Goleta’s oil- and gas-production boom came in the early 20th century, and when the companies behind it packed up and departed, they left much of their infrastructure without much clean-up or disposal.
According to Goleta planning manager Anne Wells, what’s being pulled up by State Lands Commission crews are mostly metal and wood and are often sharp, including the metal beams that supported the piers, well heads and casings, steel piles, bars and pipes.
Their staging area has been by Haskell’s Beach in far-west Goleta by the Bacara Resort & Spa. The commission does this kind of hazardous materials clean-up along the California coast, and Wells said the SLC has been conducting it in Goleta most years for the past decade.
“We just happen to have a lot of hazards off the Goleta shoreline,” she said.
Crews methodically remove the dangerous pieces one by one.
“It’s a pretty unique operation because they have to be able to adjust to anything” they find, Wells said.
The combination of favorable tides, available funding and storms that exposed more remnants made now the ideal time to take up the work again, she added.
The Santa Barbara Channel is home to many abandoned oil wells from the early 20th century that have the potential to leak. The so-called Becker Well has been one of the worst offenders in Summerland, and petroleum odors and oil washing up on the beach have forced the beach’s closure at times.
Though a bill introduced last year by state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara) seeking to cap these wells was vetoed, a similar one by former Assemblyman Das Williams (D-Santa Barbara) succeeded.
The law increases idle oil and gas well fees and blanket indemnity bonds to discourage well operators from maintaining unused wells.
Nowadays, Goleta’s viable oil- and gas-production infrastructure consists of Platform Holly 2 miles off the coast, which extracts the product, and the Ellwood Onshore Facility, which processes it.
Both are operated by Venoco Inc., and have found themselves the target of criticism from City Hall and environmentally-minded residents eager to shut them down for good.
— Noozhawk staff writer Sam Goldman can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
