Work to remove Central Coast oil piers starts this week. How long will it take?

The project to remove old oil piers on Haskell’s Beach is scheduled to start this week, according to the city of Goleta.

At an April meeting in Goleta, the State Lands Commission approved the plan to remove the caissons and pier structures, known as Piers 421, in the tidal zone of the beach. Neither of the piers has been used in decades.

“This landmark decommissioning project marks the end of the Ellwood Oil Field that began production in the late 1920s and continued into the 1990s,” Goleta representatives said in a statement.

The removal project will take about six months, with work scheduled from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays starting next week.

Since the piers and caissons are in the surf zone, a lot of the work will be scheduled around low tide cycles, which could be outside those work hours, according to the city.

Some sections of Haskell’s Beach could be closed temporarily during the work.

The piers are located on the beach below Sandpiper Golf Club, which is east of The Ritz-Carlton Bacara.

“This is a truly momentous occasion,” Goleta Mayor Paula Perotte said in a statement. “This project, the culmination of a multiyear partnership between Goleta and the state, will remove two blighted and derelict structures marring our beautiful coastline. Their removal is a major step in ending a legacy of fossil fuel development in Santa Barbara County.”

ExxonMobil is responsible for paying for the pier removal project and decommissioning Platform Holly, the offshore oil platform that was operated by Venoco until its bankruptcy.

A second part of the pier decommissioning project, to remove an access road and underground pipelines to the piers, is unfunded and involves private land owned by the Sandpiper Golf Club.