Crews raced Sunday to contain the damage from a major oil spill off the Orange County coast that left crude spoiling beaches, killing fish and birds, and threatening local wetlands.

According to Yahoo News, The oil slick, first reported Saturday, originated from a broken pipeline less than three miles off the coast of Huntington Beach connected to an offshore oil platform known as Elly. The rupture has poured more than 126,000 gallons of crude into coastal waters and seeped into the Talbert Marsh, a 25-acre wetland in Huntington Beach, officials said.

By sunrise Sunday, oil had washed ashore in Huntington Beach with slicks visible in the ocean, prompting officials to close a stretch of sand from the pier to the Newport Beach city line. Dead birds and fish had begun to wash up on the shore, officials said.


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According to MSN News, Officials are warning of a potential ecological disaster from this spill. The leak was reported Saturday afternoon, with the U.S. Coast Guard stating that the slick was about three miles off Newport Beach, a popular beach destination in Orange County about 50 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles.

Huntington Beach officials said the spill amounted to 126,000 gallons and has been patched up but “not completely stopped.” “The spill has significantly affected Huntington Beach, with substantial ecological impacts,” city officials said in a Sunday news release. Katrina Foley, an Orange County supervisor, tweeted that the oil spilled from Platform Elly, operated by Beta Offshore, a Long Beach unit of Houston’s Amplify Energy.

She said that birds and fish had begun to wash ashore and that oil continued to spill from the rig. Huntington Beach officials said the slick measured an estimated 5.8 nautical miles, stretching from the Huntington Beach Pier to Newport Beach.

“We recognize the gravity of the situation,” state legislator Cottie Petrie-Norris said at a news conference on Saturday. “We are and will continue to fight this with all our collective resources to ensure that we avert this from becoming a major environmental disaster.”