TROOPS MAY FIGHT OIL

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31908, 8 February 1969, Page 13

TROOPS MAY FIGHT OIL

(N.Z. Press Assn. —Copyright; SANTA BARBARA (California), Feb. 7. Stormy seas washed a massive oil slick southward across more Southern California beaches today and President Nixon ordered use of Federal troops if necessary to battle it. Winds from the storm rushed smelly crude oil on to

previously uncontaminated beaches in Ventura County and the slick moved closer to the Los Angeles area Mr Nixon made Federal troops and equipment available after he was told by a member of the House of Representatives, Mr Charles M. Teague, who represents Santa Barbara, that the economic loss from the slick “could run into hundreds of millions of dollars and equal that of the San Francisco fire and earthquake of 1906.” a Mr Nixon also was considj ering declaring the devastat-

ed section of coast a disaster area. A film of oil rolled into Ventura Harbour on Thursday despite log booms across its entrance. At Muscle Shoals beach, the oil surged across the sand up to property lines, and a woman resident described the stench as horrible. Another 20 miles of once glistening white beaches extending in both directions from this resort were turned into a long strip of tar from the slick, bubbling up at the rate of 21,000 gallons a day from a Union Oil Company

• well six miles offshore in the Santa Barbara channel. i Winds from the storm, esti- - mated at 30 miles an hour ; offshore, churned up the sea, making it too rough for worki men to jam hundreds of I thousands of gallons of seali ing mud into the well in a I desperate effort to staunch the flow. ! Meanwhile, the California ■ Attorney-General's Office an- > nounced it would seek a FedI eral Court order to force the > Interior Secretary (Mr Walter s Hickel) to tighten Federal r controls on offshore oil drillr ing along the state’s coast