Farms join oil companies in soil cleanup - By Malia Spencer/Senior Staff Writer

Santa Maria Valley homeowners are not the only residents working with oil companies as they move through the area cleaning up past drilling sites.

Gold Coast Farms has been working with Chevron to clean up old oil sumps that are located under crop fields on the east side of Highway 101, between Stowell and Betteravia roads.

So far, three sump sites have been removed and filled with clean soil. The most recent work was completed this week.

Various oil companies have come back to the Santa Maria Valley, which has an extensive oilproduction history, to clean up sumps that were created next to oil wells and left after the wells were capped.

Sumps are areas dug near oil wells to hold water, mud and oily soil associated with drilling. When the wells were capped, many sumps were merely covered with dirt, which was enough to satisfy environmental standards at the time.

Using historical photos that show where oil wells were located, the companies are able to approximate where sumps might still exist. Tests are done to confirm a sump location, and then the contaminated material is removed and clean soil is backfilled.

Unlike this clean up, which was done in a farm field, some of the sump removal is occurring in neighborhoods and requires the demolition of homes.

"We are taking care of sumps and oil fields so that in the future, as the town grows, we don't have the problems we have in the neighborhoods," said Gonzalo Garcia, project manager with Chevron Environmental Management.

He added that clean up work in a field is not much different than in a neighborhood, except"we don't impact families and homes."

"The key thing is this is part of what we have been doing for years,” Garcia said. “Get in front of this before it becomes a problem for the community. If they ever do develop out there, we are not leaving any liability behind."

Oil officials maintain that the remediation is needed to abate a potential nuisance and not for health reasons.

The material being removed from the Gold Coast field lies 10 to 15 feet below the ground, Garcia said, so it does not affect the crops.

He added that the material is drilling mud and cuttings that do not yield high concentration of hydrocarbons.

Gold Coast, which farms 500 acres between Foxen Canyon and Guadalupe, was using this particular field for produce such as broccoli, cauliflower, cilantro, spinach and strawberries, said General Manager David Espinola.

He added that two more sumps are slated to be removed just south of the latest cleanup site.

The work was coordinated to take place between crop rotation to lessen the effect on the farm.

"It's worked out really great, from all the horror stories I have heard from other people," Espinola said.

Scheduling the work was a bit of burden, he acknowledged, but the contractor kept the cleanup to the 10 day timetable that was given.

The land is now being readied for planting cilantro, Espinola said.

The parcel is within the greenbelt that surrounds the city, which is considered prime farm land.

Though soil was removed, Espinola said he is not expecting it to be detrimental. The fill soil mix that was brought in met the growers specification, he added.

"I can't say that it's as good (as the soil that was removed) but it will be once we put the organic matter back in," Espinola said.

Looking at other areas that were remediated, Espinola said, it is difficult to tell what soil has been replaced and what soil is original.

Chevron officials estimate they have about 30 to 40 clean up locations left in the valley.

Malia Spencer can be reached at 739-2219 or mspencer@santamariatimes.com
May 7, 2007