But after a furious debate that divided neighbors, workers last fall began to demolish the entire beachfront. After the buildings are razed, excavators will remove enough contaminated soil to pile a football field 60 feet high. Little is left of the town's commercial hub except deep, gaping holes and mounds of sand and dirt piled 20 feet high. A thin sheen of oil rises from the sand that once welcomed generations of sunbathers and family picnickers. Someone has crossed out the town's business district sign with black paint.
Homes still dot the hills that slope down to the beach.
There, steel pilings jut from the sand to form a metal fortress. Several miles southeast of Avila Beach, Unocal is cleaning up another mammoth oil spill at its Guadalupe Oil Field. About 3,000 acres of highly sensitive dunes reach out to endless Pacific surf. Steep and low valleys intersect delicate marshes and wetlands filled with numerous endangered species. A worker is dwarfed by walls of metal pilings surrounding a construction site on Avila Beach where contaminated sand will be replaced.