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Crews cleaning up crude oil spill from Ventura County facility

An oil spill occurred Tuesday afternoon in the mountains north of Santa Paula. About 420 gallons of oil was believed to have spilled.
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An oil spill occurred Tuesday afternoon in the mountains north of Santa Paula. About 420 gallons of oil was believed to have spilled.

State Fish and Game officials say about 420 gallons of oil spilled from a facility in the mountains north of Santa Paula.

Crews are cleaning up a more than 400 gallon oil spill from an oil facility that’s flowed into a creek in the mountains north of Santa Paula.

It was discovered Tuesday afternoon at the Carbon California facility, north of Highway 150. An estimated 420 gallons of crude oil ended up in a tributary of Sisar Creek. It’s about 10 barrels of oil.

The spill impacted about three quarters of a mile of the tributary. State Department of Fish and Wildlife officials say the spill has been stopped and contained, and cleanup crews are on scene recovering the oil. They say as the cleanup continues, they'll have a more precise estimate of the amount of oil spilled.

A joint Ventura County, state, and federal response team is handling the incident, which is in an isolated canyon area. There’s no word of any oiled wildlife, but teams are monitoring for it, and a response team is on standby.

The cause of the spill is under investigation.

Lance Orozco has been News Director of KCLU since 2001, providing award-winning coverage of some of the biggest news events in the region, including the Thomas and Woolsey brush fires, the deadly Montecito debris flow, the Borderline Bar and Grill attack, and Ronald Reagan's funeral.