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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Oil spill clean-up grinds to a halt as La Brea residents demand more $$

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20131220

Oil spill clean-up ef­forts in La Brea ground to a halt yes­ter­day, af­ter an­gry res­i­dents de­mand­ed an in­crease in the hourly rate they were be­ing paid to as­sist in mop­ping-up op­er­a­tions.Armed Coast Guard and po­lice of­fi­cers de­scend­ed on Cof­fee Beach, La Brea, as the res­i­dents, most of whom were dressed in oil-stained white plas­tic body suits and rub­ber boots, reg­is­tered their dis­ap­proval over the $35 hourly rate Petrotrin was pay­ing them.

The sit­u­a­tion threat­ened to ig­nite as res­i­dents con­front­ed em­ploy­ees of con­trac­tors Tiger Tanks and Petrotrin Health, Safe­ty and En­vi­ron­ment (HSE) of­fi­cers.Se­nior Supt David Lewis, who is in charge of South West­ern Di­vi­sion, vis­it­ed the area and spoke with res­i­dents in or­der to quell the sit­u­a­tion.Yes­ter­day, Carl­ton Plen­ty, spokesman for the res­i­dents of Cof­fee Beach, said Petrotrin was not giv­ing the res­i­dents a fair deal.

"We in­tend to shut down the work. We have to stop the work for a lit­tle while un­til they give us a lit­tle ac­com­mo­da­tion. We need this mon­ey too. This is oil we are in here," he said.Plen­ty said res­i­dents will not have a bright Christ­mas be­cause of Petrotrin and they de­served a bet­ter rate. He said the res­i­dents were ini­tial­ly promised $40 and lat­er in­formed they would re­ceive less.

"We can­not work for that amount. It is oil we are deal­ing with here, we have no wa­ter here, we have noth­ing to eat here, peo­ple are sick here, chil­dren are get­ting sick. We need a help-out in this sit­u­a­tion," he said.Res­i­dents, he said, were be­ing made to work in the oil with­out prop­er equip­ment such as gas masks.Yes­ter­day, plas­tic bar­ri­ers were placed along the shore to soak oil as it washed ashore in La Brea.

Ashram Ram­per­sad, 37, a fish­er­man, said Petrotrin did not have the sit­u­a­tion un­der con­trol even though they were try­ing their best."The sit­u­a­tion is im­prov­ing but very slow­ly. They said they have the oil con­tained but it is not so. They are work­ing, but not fast enough to con­tain the oil spill," Ram­per­sad lament­ed.He said fish­er­men were pleased Petrotrin had promised com­pen­sa­tion for their boats and the down time they will be ex­pe­ri­enc­ing be­cause of the spill.

Ram­per­sad al­so ad­vised fish lovers to brace for high fish prices, since the oil spill will sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce the avail­abil­i­ty of fish on the lo­cal mar­ket.The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA), Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment and the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs have formed an ad­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee to over­see the oil spill sit­u­a­tion, the Guardian was told.


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