Bradley Wants Plan to Handle Oil Spill

Citing the destructive oil spill in Alaska earlier this year, Mayor Tom Bradley has directed the city’s Harbor Department to update plans for containing a similar massive spill in the city’s harbor at San Pedro Bay.

The mayor this week ordered Ezunial Burts, director of the Harbor Department, to report back within 45 days.

“The wreck of the Exxon Valdez demonstrates the vast ecological damage that a single, catastrophic spill can do,” Bradley said. “We cannot afford to say, ‘It can’t happen here,’ and then watch the environment of San Pedro Bay (be) permanently altered. . . .”

Bradley said a new harbor plan, updating one prepared in 1986, should be drafted in cooperation with the city of Long Beach, oil firms and the U.S. Navy.