Earthquake: The Long Road Back : 400 Dead Fish Removed From Santa Clara River : Oil spill: An endangered stickleback is among the carp and chubs killed after earthquake caused pipe- line to rupture.

Wildlife authorities have scooped up nearly 400 dead fish floating along a 12- to 15-mile stretch of the Santa Clara River east of Piru that was blackened when an oil pipeline ruptured, officials said Friday.

One of the dead fish picked out of the river was an endangered species known as the unarmored three-spined stickleback. Most of the others were common chubs or carp.

Crews working to rescue wildlife and clean up the spill caused by Monday’s earthquake also recovered 11 oiled waterfowl and saw an oiled egret that they could not capture.

Seven of the birds recovered were dead, including a pair of mallards, a northern shrike and a rail. Workers found no least Bell’s vireos, an endangered songbird that nests in the area.

“I think this demonstrates once again the problems with putting pipelines near riverbeds and sensitive areas,� said Ron Bottorff, director of the Friends of the Santa Clara River. “People worry about tankers, but the problems lately have occurred with pipelines.�

Bottorff pointed out that a 1991 oil spill occurred in the same stretch of the Santa Clara River and another spill discovered on Christmas Day at McGrath Lake, a wetlands area near McGrath State Beach near Oxnard.

Authorities do not yet know whether the fish and wildlife were killed by the oil or by chlorine, which was added to treated waste water discharged into the river by the Valencia sewage treatment plant. The plant is operated by the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts.

Like many other treatment plants, the Valencia plant routinely removes chlorine to protect fish before waste water is discharged. But after Monday’s quake, plant officials decided to leave in the chlorine to protect human health and safety in case the waste water contained bacteria.

Plant officials said their system to remove the chlorine also may have been damaged. They reactivated the system and began removing the chlorine again at 2 p.m. Thursday.

Heal the Bay, an environmental watchdog organization based in Santa Monica, along with the Friends of the Santa Clara River in Ventura County, on Friday denounced the use of chlorine in the waste water.

*

Mark Gold, executive director of Heal the Bay, contacted the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, which will determine next week whether an investigation is warranted, a spokeswoman said.

Meanwhile, a crew of about 350 people continued to remove the thick crude. By Friday, workers had vacuumed up about 71,000 gallons of the 147,000 to 168,000 gallons of oil that spilled, said Albert Greenstein, a spokesman for Atlantic Richfield, parent company of Four Corners Pipeline.

He said workers will continue throughout the weekend, unless rain forces them to stop.