CREWS CLEANING HILLSIDE OIL SPILL.

Byline: Daily News

NEWHALL - Crews expect to work 12-hour days through the week to clean up a messy 200-gallon oil spill in heavy brush in Newhall.

Patriot Environmental was hired to clean up the spill that ran three or four blocks through a neighborhood tucked into a downhill slope north of oak-lined Newhall Creek.

State and federal officials found no environmental damage from Tuesday's spill.

The hillside pipeline, possibly undermined by the winter's heavy rain, had been leaking slowly for some time, but the flow gave way and the stream of oil briefly threatened the natural creek bed. A berm constructed in the winter when the creek was cleared of debris to ease flooding in the area kept the oil out of the waterway, but the crude, workers said, was tough to clean from the heavy underbrush lining the creek.

An industrial pumping company helped draw some of the oil from a contained area at the end of a cul-de-sac on Oak Forest Lane, but one worker said about 90 percent of the cleanup would be by hand because of the heavy brush.

Crews devised a way to allow water runoff from the neighborhood to continue flowing through storm drains while keeping the oil from spreading. Residents were urged to avoid excessive outdoor watering to ease the chore.