healtheocean
By Heal the Ocean
From Hope Ranch to Rincon, black, thick tarballs are spread out, to the chagrin of beachgoers who get it stuck on feet, shoes – and worse, in the paws of their dogs.
Heal the Ocean (HTO) has been fielding many calls from concerned citizens, many who wonder if the State Lands Commission (SLC) capping of two leaking oil wells off Summerland Beach from now through next week has anything to do with it.
HTO Program Director Harry Rabin, who is working every day with SLC engineers 2H Offshore on the 2-week well-capping project, says the ocean currents suggest the tar is coming from Coal Oil Point. Nevertheless, Rabin came up with a brilliant idea of how HTO could clean up the beaches of this nasty black mess along most of the Santa Barbara coastline: enlist the help HTO’s Superstar Cleanup guru, Andrew Velikanje, whose company, Earthcomb, employs crews of homeless workers for regular cleanups of abandoned homeless camps, trash left by big city events, and litter in general.
Rabin realized that with Patriot Environmental on site for the Summerland well capping, it could take the beach tar, a hazardous material, for disposal. Patriot Environmental is a “first responder” at all oil spills, and is brought in by SLC during well-capping exercises, to capture any oil that might escape into the ocean.
Putting Earthcomb together with Patriot has achieved a miracle. The pictures, and video, tell the story. Velikanje is expanding his cleanup range all the way from Summerland to Goleta, and is in fact entertaining the idea of enrolling in a hazmat course, to be licensed to clean up oil and tar – any day and any time.
For more information, please call Harry Rabin at Heal the Ocean (805 965-7570; or Andrew Velikanje (805) 636-4779
tarballs and tar seepage along our coast has been happening for hundreds of years, way before we came here. Chumash used it, we cry about it. It’s not going to go away folks. Capping wells has nothing to do with it.
Here’s a paper about tar seepage in the SB channel.
https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2009/1225/of2009-1225_text.pdf
At 119 pages it is quite comprehensive. It’s the product of the USGS and Santa Barbara County. From what I’ve already read it’s very fascinating. Paste the link into your browser.
Here’s an article from UCSB’s Current publication discussing how the rate of natural gas seepage is reduced when gas was extracted by platform Holly. The hydrocarbons coming off the floor of the channel is a fascinating and dynamic situation.
https://www.news.ucsb.edu/2023/020863/adjusting-natural-seeps
I love running on beach barefoot… I found out by accident that walking through freshly mowed grass gets the tar off pretty easily… If it hasn’t been mowed it will still work but just takes longer.
When the off shore drilling was active, tarballs were more infrequent.. That NATURAL SEEPAGE resulting from underground PRESSURE has to go somewhere…
FALSE. As usual.
For thousands of years the local native inhabitants welcomed this valuable substance. Modern-day occupiers only see it as something terrible….something to be discarded as if it were nothing more than a Twinkie wrapper. Interesting, at least to me.
Pro Tip: A good way to get rid of tar from the bottom of your feet is to step in dry sand to coat the goo, grab a shell of two from and scrape the mess off your foot. Step back into the dry sand again to coat the goo and repeat the scraping with the sharp edge of a shell. Repeat until you get most of it off, then use baby oil to get the remainder off.
Babycakes- this substance was valuable for thousands of years until we became a 1st world civilization. They used to use shells as currency, go try using them to pay at Whole Foods.
Pro tip: if you want to make this substance valuable again, DRILL BABY DRILL
I’m sure everyone on here that points out that the tar is natural, that the Chumash used it, is right. It’s just that I myself am a fricking magnet for it. If someone is working to do away with some of it, fine by me – because most trips I take to the beaches here take a half-hour longer than other people… the half- hour I spend removing it from my feet?
Wondering if there are beach socks for dogs, sort of rain boots?
If you think it takes long to clean tar off your feet, multiply that time by 4 to get it out of from between the big furry paws of our beach loving Golden Retriever ! – A HUGE THANK YOU to Andrew and Earthcomb for your MANY clean up efforts !!! 🙂