Worries Over Pollution at Oil Field Near Ventura Rise : Resources: Officials say risk to people is minimal as they monitor the extent of contamination at Texaco site and continue cleanup efforts.

VENTURA —  Deep in the hills north of Ventura, a team of oil field workers, cleanup crews and state investigators is tracking what could prove to be one of Ventura County’s worst environmental messes, The Times has learned.

Years of oil production and dumping have left behind dozens of waste sites--many of them abandoned sumps filled with crude oil and mud--now buried throughout the Topa Topa Mountains.

But even though the contamination may be extensive, health officials say the risk to humans is minimal.

The discoveries began one October day last year when, a decade after Texaco acquired the site from Getty Oil, work crews reported a sheen of oil permeating a creek running through Hall Canyon.

State investigators noted the report, and Texaco workers mopped up what residue they could find around the diminishing oil field looming above Ventura.

But after heavy winter rains pelted Ventura County, oil company workers again found samples of what looked to them like crude oil fouling Hall Canyon Creek.

They notified state regulators in January that more evidence of toxic waste had been found. They have been cleaning it up and crossing their fingers ever since.

“There is the possibility of a sizable contamination,” Texaco area manager Gerry Oviatt said. “But the risk factor [to the environment] is very low.”

Meanwhile, Texaco is still pumping more than 4,000 barrels of new crude from the field every day.

The presence of petroleum byproducts in a creek that winds through the canyon, underneath Ventura and out to the ocean has state Fish and Game inspectors concerned.

Department of Fish and Game agents are supervising what is proving to be a multimillion-dollar cleanup by Texaco contractors, but they are no closer to pinning down its source.

“There are safety precautions put in place, and there’s been a dam built,” said Warden Robert Puccinelli, who is monitoring the Hall Canyon cleanup.

“We’re trying to contain the contaminants in one area,” Puccinelli said. “That works pretty good, but we’ve had some problems when it rains and a lot of water comes down there.”

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This is not the first time Texaco has had problems in the county.

Two weeks ago, the company settled a civil lawsuit filed by the Ventura County district attorney’s office that alleges that Texaco is responsible for nine other spills in the area between 1993 and last year.

Company executives agreed to pay $195,000 to end the case, but admitted no wrongdoing.

Texaco also is under investigation for allegedly leaking 370,000 gallons of gas condensate in School Canyon, another oil field about two miles northwest of the Hall Canyon site.

No charges have been filed in that case, although investigators are still reviewing thousands of pages of documents seized in a March, 1994, raid on Texaco offices in Ventura.

Ventura County prosecutors say that if the Hall Canyon contamination is the result of years-old operations, Texaco probably will not be charged. But the company is nonetheless liable for the cleanup, Deputy Dist. Atty. Gregory Brose said.

Once the full extent of the new contamination is determined, the oil company will be required to excavate tons of tainted earth or restore the creek bed through biological means.

“The problem will be there for months,” Puccinelli said. “The cleanup is in the planning stage right now, but it’s a slow process.”

Texaco officials say the byproducts probably are the leftovers from a decades-old sump exposed only after fierce rains swept millions of gallons of rainwater through Hall Canyon in January.

“When this occurred, we looked through our files and found a report from the 1950s that said that [Hall Canyon] was a dumping ground for drilling mud,” Oviatt said.

Floodwaters “just cut through the sedimentation and uncovered the old sump site,” he said.

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Although state inspectors are not yet certain how bad the damage may be, Puccinelli said the Hall Canyon release could be the tip of a major underground wasteland.

“That’s one angle we’re working on,” he said. “I know there was one sump in the west fork of Hall Canyon Creek, but the location is unknown.

“We can’t prove or disprove anything.”

Two miles up Hall Canyon Road, a badly paved, winding street north of Ventura High School, cleanup crews have set up shop to minimize damage to the creek and its wildlife.

For several months beginning in January, Texaco paid a crew of 45 workers for 24-hour containment and cleanup. Only in the spring did the company reduce the crew to eight-hour shifts, and last week it downsized the response team to a handful of workers.

“What we’re doing is trying to define the scope--the width, length and depth,” Texaco spokesman Phil Blackburn said. “We don’t have that completed yet.”

Not far from where the creek splits into east and west forks, workers in May constructed a dam to divert water from the contamination site.

Huge pipes collect any rain and creek water, then funnel it to an area below the hazard zone, a quarter-mile stretch of polluted landscape teeming with native brush and habitat.

At Catch Basin No. 2, which traps runoff from the contamination area, bright orange oil-absorbing booms lie atop a thick pond. A foot-wide pipe from the diversion system dribbles into a pot of ugly pea-colored water.

Padlocks, barbed wire and warning signs fend off unwelcome visitors.

Alongside dying scrub weeds, an orange-red compound lines the edges of the basin, about 15 feet by 20 feet and at least eight feet deep.

Texaco officials say the amount of oil being caught by the booms has declined over the past several weeks. But they also say that when the oil byproduct stops collecting in the pit, the costly remediation plan will begin.

“We would like to bio-remediate,” Oviatt said. “If we have to take it someplace else, can you imagine what this would look like?”

Although the canyon cuts deep into private property, it attracts a sizable number of hikers, joggers and mountain bikers.

But Greg Smith, a specialist with Ventura County Environmental Health, said the risk to visitors appears relatively low.

“If it’s an old operation, they weren’t using real exotic chemicals,” Smith said. “They were just pounding down holes and sucking up oil.

“Usually these sumps don’t have much besides crude oil waste and drilling muds,” he said. “It’s more environmental degradation rather than a threat to public health.”

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Sunset Drive resident Steve Blum, who teaches physical education at Buena High School, is not so certain. He said he worries about the creek because it drains through the city and into the ocean.

“Hopefully they’re taking care of it,” he said. “But I’m never confident that oil companies take care of anything that’s not profit-motivated. I hope someone besides the oil company is checking on it.”

Bob Reynolds, another nearby resident who jogs and hikes in the area, said he has wondered about the crews in white jumpsuits that have scampered up and down Hall Canyon Road in recent months.

He said he wants to make sure the problem is fully addressed.

“I would be very interested in getting some kind of citizens group together to force them to clean up the mess and look for other sumps that have been covered up,” Reynolds said.

To date, very little of the oil-soaked mud has been removed. Rather, inspectors are analyzing dirt samples from 20 or more holes they have dug around the contamination.

But company officials said they have dug no deeper than 25 feet.

“The samplings told me that there are petroleum hydrocarbons present,” said Puccinelli, the Fish and Game warden. “But some areas come back [reading low], and some areas come back with high concentrations.”

Texaco manager Oviatt said he thinks the contamination is limited to the area already cordoned off. And he said that even though the contaminants may go quite deep, they will probably not spread through nearby aquifers.

“The mud could be blocking it,” he said. “Clay is really impermeable.”

Company spokesman Blackburn said that Texaco is more than willing to accept responsibility for its own mishaps as well as those left behind by old-time oil producers.

“Environmental remediation is part of the cost of doing business,” he said. “But over the years, it’s become an increasing capital cost.”