Oil spill detected off Edmonds ferry dock

Thursday, August 31, 2006

Oil spill detected off Edmonds ferry dock
Investigators are hampered in search for source

By ROBERT McCLURE AND BRAD WONG
P-I REPORTERS

A mysterious oil spill that covered as much as 11 acres of Puget Sound near the Edmonds ferry terminal was spotted by chance early Wednesday. Efforts to corral it before it dissipated were unsuccessful.

A search for the source is likely to prove difficult because investigators didn't arrive until it was too late to get samples of the oil that could be chemically fingerprinted.

Although the oil dissipated, "any amount of oil is toxic to the environment. I wouldn't want to minimize that," said Curt Hart, a spokesman for the state Department of Ecology. "This is a spill that should have been prevented."

The spill was discovered when a Washington State Patrol airplane pilot on routine patrol saw it about a quarter-mile west of the ferry terminal. The patrol relayed the report at 6:40 a.m., said Jeff Pollinger, a Coast Guard petty officer.

At the time of the first report, the spill was estimated to be about 1,000 feet by 500 feet, State Patrol Trooper Kirk Rudeen said. That's a little more than 11 acres. The Coast Guard later said the spill was about 1,000 feet by 200 feet.

Patches of red algae in the spill area complicated the task of estimating the spill's size. Officials offered no immediate estimate of the number of gallons spilled.

Ecology and the Coast Guard sent helicopters up to check out the size of the spill about 8:30 a.m., after television news helicopters had photographed it, Hart said, and they notified oil-spill cleanup contractors to start preparing to contain it.

By the time an Ecology oil-spill responder got a boat out to the spill at about 9:30 a.m., it had spread into an unrecoverable sheen on top of the water that couldn't be collected for chemical fingerprinting.

"We got out there just as soon as we could," Hart said.

At that point, efforts to corral the oil were called off.

Although it will be difficult to identify the spiller, "our educated guess is that it came from a vessel," Hart said. "We're really looking hard at what vessels were in the area."

P-I reporter Robert McClure can be reached at 206-448-8092 or robertmcclure@seattlepi.com.

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