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Tar and oil wash up on some Santa Barbara County beaches. Officials say it's from natural seeps

This is the Carpinteria Bluffs.
Lance Orozco
/
KCLU
This is the Carpinteria Bluffs.

Some Santa Barbara County beaches have been spotted with a sticky, gooey mess for the last few days.

Oil and tar have washed up on beaches in Carpinteria, Summerland and Montecito. U.S. Coast Guard and state officials say they've done testing and determined the cause isn't a spill.

They say it's coming from natural oil seeps in the Santa Barbara Channel.

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.