OIL FIRM TO PAY MILLIONS : BERRY PETROLEUM SETTLES IN 1993 MCGRATH SPILL.Byline: Michael Coit Daily News Staff Writer The company pumping crude oil from a vast field near McGrath State Beach McGrath State Beach is a protected beach located in the city of Oxnard, California. McGrath State Beach is one of the best bird-watching areas in California, with the lush riverbanks of the Santa Clara River and sand dunes along the shore. settled a lawsuit with state and federal regulators Thursday over a 1993 spill that soiled seven miles of beach and killed more than 160 birds, agreeing to pay $3.1 million in penalties and cleanup costs. Berry Petroleum Co., based in Taft, Calif., did not admit wrongdoing wrong·do·er n. One who does wrong, especially morally or ethically. wrong  do for the Dec. 23, 1993, incident. More than 87,000 gallons of crude oil spilled from a pipeline near Harbor Boulevard Harbor Boulevard is a major divided street in central Orange County. It runs from Costa Mesa through Santa Ana, Anaheim and La Habra before it ends at Fullerton Road in Rowland Heights just over the Los Angeles County border. and poured into McGrath Lake - the only remaining dune lake in Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, , officials said. The settlement, known as a consent decree A settlement of a lawsuit or criminal case in which a person or company agrees to take specific actions without admitting fault or guilt for the situation that led to the lawsuit. A consent decree is a settlement that is contained in a court order. , was filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Thursday. Parties to the agreement include Berry Petroleum, the California Department of Fish and Game's Office of Oil Spill Prevention and Response, the state Department of Parks and Recreation, and the Regional Water Quality Control Board, in Los Angeles. Jerry Hoffman, president of Berry Petroleum, said the company wanted to settle and avoid mounting costs that already have exceeded some $11 million in cleanup costs and fines. Hoffman noted that state law governing oil spills assigns strict liability to the company for the spill. ``Because it was our oil, it was our responsibility,'' Hoffman said. ``We wanted to recognize our responsibility. We wanted to put this unfortunate incident behind us, and so we settled.'' State officials said the settlement and monetary damages are needed to restore sensitive wetland and dune habitat. Several federally threatened and endangered species endangered species, any plant or animal species whose ability to survive and reproduce has been jeopardized by human activities. In 1999 the U.S. government, in accordance with the U.S. call the McGrath area home, including the nesting western snowy plover, California least tern The California Least Tern, Sternula antillarum brownii, is a subspecies of Least Tern that breeds primarily in bays of the Pacific Ocean within a very limited range of Southern California, in San Francisco Bay and in and extreme northern Mexico. This migratorybird is a U.S. and wintering American peregrine falcons. ``We are looking forward to healing the area,'' said Steve Treanor, superintendent for the state park's department's Channel Coast District. ``We are happy to participate in the restoration process, which will preserve the resources for future generations.'' The spill occurred when crude oil poured from a ruptured underground pipeline used to carry oil between the Montalvo Oil Field and tank farms on the east side of Harbor Boulevard. An investigation found the pipeline was an abandoned gas line not equipped to carry the high pressures needed to pump crude oil, prosecutors said. |
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