John & Anne Wiley

While the Plains All American Pipeline is shut down for repair and spill cleanup, there seem to be many other repairs to the plumbing going on in the pix below. But first I’ll share this pic of Gaviota that I really like.

4577 Gaviota Beautiful

The wind and oil on the water add such texture & depth, if this were a Spring pic with green grasses and maybe wildflowers…

As for the plumbing, on the hill to the left of the pic above is this new dirt road with several pipe projects showing.

4574 Hill Pipe

At the bottom is a barrier fence to stop rocks that roll down from the dig you can just make out above. Just at the edge of the green there’s a blue water trailer you’ll see in another pic, and between these two features is a new looking pipe head sticking up that you can’t make out in this wide pic. First here’s a closer look at the dig just above this end of the road.

4570 Downhill Dig

Guess it was a weak spot in the pipe they dug up and repaired, and working on that steep slope must have made it fairly interesting. Here’s that pipe head I mentioned.

4556 Pipe Head

Someone on Edhat said there’s been lots of equipment and activity on this hill since well before the spill, so maybe this is a bypass line or they’ve shut down the whole pipeline occasionally to work on sections. Speaking of sections, next to that blue water trailer there’s this long section of pipe. Is it waiting to be installed, to be used as a bypass to a section in the ground, or maybe an old section they’ve pulled out and replaced already?

4551 Long Section

The smaller white pipe along the top of the road is apparently for water to the blue trailer tank, and it runs from another blue trailer at the bottom of the hill near the coast clear to the bottom barrier at the northern end. Along the coast East toward Santa Barbara there are two digs on the main pipeline next to Hwy.101. This one’s a little over half way from Gaviota to Refugio.

4545 Halfway Dig

Then about a mile toward Gaviota from Refugio there’s this one not far from the spill site.

4525 Pipe Repair

This one looks very much like a pipe repair, with the sun shade frame still there from when they were working on it. Maybe it’s awaiting pressure testing or inspection before they bury it again. Further along the coast below the refinery at Las Flores next to Hwy.101 this section of pipe is dug up.

4665 Las Flores Dig

This one’s perpendicular to the highway and the main pipeline. Maybe the refinery folks are adding or upgrading this pipe while everything’s shut down. It’s interesting to see all the work, especially since there’s been so little reporting on all this. I’m impressed with how organized and careful everything looks, in contrast with the apparent lack of attention and prevention that led to the spill and inadequate initial cleanup. What I’ve seen and read indicates that if the oil had been contained and removed from the water immediately, the strong winds wouldn’t have spread it across the Channel.

In response to a question in the comments on an “Rock Groups” Edhat item from me, here’s a pic of the work going on atop the hill above the old Gaviota settlement. This view is from offshore looking North where hwy.101 turns away from the coast, taken 5/27/2015.

2588 Gaviota Hill Work

The May 19, 2015 oil spill by Plains All American Pipeline near the Refugio Beach park is said to have spread more than a hundred miles along our beaches. The most obvious signs of it still visible from the air now are on beach rocks between Refugio and El Capitan.

4098 Rock Party

Rock cleaning parties like this are scattered along many beaches, as crews of white suited workers sprawl  chatting as they scrub tar off and bag it for disposal.

4072 Slow & Steady

Where there had been many boulders wearing dalmatian decorations of tar, now most have been cleaned nearly back to their pre-spill appearance. Thousands of bags filled with tar from boulders, beaches, and boats collecting it off the water are being trucked away.

4052 Bag Brigade

Even after all this work by hundreds of people, there’s still far more oil and tar on our local waters than we’ve seen before. Some or all of it may be due to increased natural seepage due to pressure buildup deep beneath the sea floor when oil production was shut down.

3920 6/15/2015 Tar Globs

A comment on yesterday’s Edhat post of my pix showing the aftermath of the May 19, 2015 Refugio oil spill got me thinking. I’d been looking for aerials from about the same angle and time of day taken before the spill, to compare with the black water color I’m seeing now. The commenter suggested comparing Google maps satellite views, but it can be difficult to determine the date those were taken and of course the angle is always pretty much straight down (from space). So I looked at it with Google Earth which tells you the image date and allows for adjusting the point of view to replicate what my aerials show. To some extent at least, because the 3D effect in gEarth is a rather pale comparison to reality. Anyway, here’s what I came up with showing my aerial on top and gEarth below it.

2797 Ellwood Oil

The oil in the water is quite obvious to me, compared with the sandy water below that has a bit of pulverized kelp and probably some natural seep oil mixed in. The color difference in the deeper water is because my camera actually was at the angle shown and thus reflecting some sunlight from the surface and the water column (the satellite is looking pretty much straight down). Here’s the same sort of thing, looking at the western beach along El Capitan.

2835 El Capitan Oil

Because there’s less reflection from the surface, the oil there shows up much more clearly in my aerial pic. Of course the vegetation in these pix differs considerably from what it was in the January sat views, but I’ve tried to approximate the water colors. It will be interesting to see how the spill evolves over time, but hopefully we’ll see the oil gradually dissipate and marine life return to normal.