Oil Seeps Into Creek From Leaking Pipe

A small amount of oil that leaked from an old pipeline north of Fillmore seeped into the Sespe Creek on Friday afternoon, but the oil was quickly cleaned up by crews from the Ventura County Fire Department.

A homeowner near the leased property on Goodenough Road reported the leak about 1 p.m. and firefighters were able to plug the dripping pipeline, which had leaked about 25 gallons onto the ground, said Jackie Noel, a Fire Department spokeswoman.

A “minuscule amount of that oil then seeped into neighboring Sespe Creek, requiring firefighters to dike off the creek and skim the oil off the water’s surface,” Noel said.

Department of Fish and Game officials did not respond to the scene, saying the amount of oil in the water was too small to cause any perceptible damage.

Meanwhile, fire officials tried to determine Friday afternoon who owned the pipeline. Although the pipeline cuts across land leased for oil operations, it was unclear who owned the pipeline.

About three years ago, a break in an aging, unregulated pipeline caused one of Ventura County’s worst oil spills at McGrath Lake. That spill led to an effort to map the old and unregulated pipelines that form a lattice-work pattern across much of the county.

But a recent Times report showed that the study was incomplete at best, with only about 500 miles of the many thousands of miles of old pipelines mapped.