LOCAL : Spilled Asphalt Poses Minimal Environmental Peril, State Says

Preliminary state tests released today show that a spill of liquid asphalt into a central Orange County flood control channel poses a minimal threat to the environment.

The tests revealed unharmful concentrations of petroleum hydrocarbons and a number of other toxic substances, said Bruce Paine, an engineering associate for the state Regional Water Quality Control Board at Riverside.

“We don’t think there is an imminent threat to the environment,” Paine said.

Paine said this morning that crews were working to keep the 10,000 gallons of spilled liquid asphalt from breaching a series of earthen dams built to contain it in the Santa Ana River flood control channel. The asphalt could contaminate the environmentally fragile Bolsa Chica wetlands about four miles downstream from the Garden Grove paving firm where the spill originated Thursday.

Paine noted that final tests had not yet been completed on any other biological threat the spill might pose. Those test results were anticipated later this afternoon.

The spill now covers a two-mile area of channel between Seal Black Co. Inc. in Garden Grove--where a vandal first turned the asphalt loose--and Euclid Avenue in Santa Ana.