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Thursday, October 12, 2006
Major oil spill presents greatest short-term threat to orcas' survival
The Keystone Kops-like response to Puget Sound's largest oil spill this decade would have seemed comical if the results hadn't proven so disastrous.
First, as an oil-delivery barge was being filled at Point Wells, the shoreline near Edmonds, it overflowed. The time was a few minutes after midnight. The automatic alarms failed to sound. Before anyone realized it, an estimated 4,800 gallons had gurgled overboard.
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 | Paul Joseph Brown / P-I | |
| An escorted oil tanker en route to Anacortes passes through narrow Guemes Channel, one of a number of passages that make navigating to the Sound challenging. | ||
It was the week between Christmas and New Year's, and temperatures were in the 20s. Workers scrambled to launch a small boat to tow oil-containment curtains into place to corral the spill and keep it from spreading. But the launch's motor wouldn't start.
So they got out the backup boat. It also failed to start. So they jumped the battery -- only to find out that the transmission was shot.
By the time they got their act together, the oil was long gone.
This cascade of missteps happened in calm seas right next door to one of the biggest caches of oil-spill cleanup equipment in Puget Sound. Eventually, the oil that got loose made its way clear across the Sound. It fouled a near-pristine seaside marsh and beach called Doe-Keg-Wats where Suquamish Indians had gathered shellfish for generations.
For orcas, a huge spill -- something like the 450,000- gallon Tenyo Maru spill off Washington's coast in 1991, or the 11 million-gallon Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989 -- would be a disaster. The Valdez spill killed 25 orcas. Only 90 inhabit Puget Sound today.
Government scientists say a major oil spill is the biggest extinction threat for Puget Sound orcas over the next half-century.
Even smaller spills irritate orcas' eyes and skin, and contaminate their prey. Fish eggs exposed to small amounts of petroleum compounds can hatch fish with twisted spines and deformed hearts. Oil-soaked birds can succumb to the cold.
At the time of the Point Wells spill, the state Department of Ecology had been working for nearly three years on a set of rules designed to prevent such a disaster.
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| Mike Urban / P-I | |
| Oil-soaked water flows around a rock near Manzanita Beach on Maury Island. If a major oil spill, on the scale of the Exxon Valdez, occurred in the Sound, cleanup would be nearly impossible. | ||
Only now, nearly three years after the spill and almost six years after Ecology started updating key rules dating back as far as 1991, the new regulations go into effect this month. While they set standards higher than those required under federal law, critics say they don't go far enough to protect one of the nation's busiest waterways.
Still, in the years since the Point Wells spill, improvements have been made in the spill-protection system. Last month Ecology began distributing some $1.5 million worth of containment and cleanup equipment in caches to be left with Indian tribes, fire stations and operators of ports and marinas. The aim: a quicker initial response to spills -- a crucial factor in limiting environmental damage.
The Coast Guard also arranged for access to a helicopter and plane equipped with special devices to allow tracking of spilled oil in dark or foggy conditions -- a key failing in the Point Wells spill and a subsequent spill near Vashon Island. Ecology contributed software. Officials also have upgraded the pre-positioning plans for where to deploy oil-containment curtains called "boom" to protect the Sound's most ecologically sensitive shorelines.
The spill near Vashon in October 2004 occurred at night. At first, no one knew who was responsible. It was weeks before officials zeroed in on an oil tanker.
In response, then-Gov. Gary Locke appointed a task force to study the incident, known as an orphan spill because no one knew initially where it came from. The task force's list of future actions needed to prevent a repeat included "orphan spill drills designed to test agency response." But Ecology also has failed to conduct a full-blown drill involving such an "orphan" scenario.
Ecology says it gets plenty of practice cleaning up small orphan spills in its day-in, day-out role as the cleanup source of last resort.
The Vashon spill also led to the creation of a separate citizens advisory council intended to look over the shoulder of Ecology and cleanup contractors. In coming months the Legislature will take up that group's recommendations, which came out last week.
The council recommended roughly doubling the state's investment, including setting aside money to make sure tugboats are available should a ship get into trouble and need help staying off the rocks.
"We have a good program now, but the Legislature asked us to make a recommendation for a state-of-the-art program," said former state Rep. Mike Cooper, who led the effort.
The Point Wells spill served as a potent reminder that despite vast improvements in Puget Sound's and the nation's oil-spill record in recent years, spills are still happening here -- some 1,850 were reported to the state last year -- and big ones are still very much a possibility.
"We're lucky we haven't had a very large oil spill," said Linda Pilkey-Jarvis, who heads Ecology's oil spill preparedness unit.
In Puget Sound, that would be a disaster of mammoth proportions. The waterway is poorly flushed and extremely deep, so oil would not be dispersed as it would be on the open ocean. Cleaning up an Exxon Valdez-sized oil spill would be pretty much impossible.
"A major oil spill would spread black icky goo from the San Juan Islands to the state capital, damage our economy and our natural, cultural and historic resources for decades to come," Cooper said.
The newest set of rules about to be approved by Ecology covers the deployment of cleanup equipment and precautions required when fuel is being transferred on or off vessels, among other areas.
Why did the rule-making last six years?
"It has taken a long time to get through this process, but I believe that we haven't been moving backwards in our preparedness over these years, and it has resulted in a much better rule that has a more generalized support," Pilkey-Jarvis said.
"These are very complex rules that we needed to do a lot of really careful thinking and weighing before coming to our final product."
But environmentalists and the state agency dedicated to protecting Puget Sound say the most recent version, while an improvement over the old ones, is inadequate on several key points.
"We are extremely disappointed in the failure of the Department (of Ecology) to provide clear and firm standards to protect our waters," wrote Bruce Wishart of People for Puget Sound in a letter about the proposed regulations. "We urge the department to strengthen prevention methods."
But the maritime and oil industries say the rules are too strict. Warren Aakervik Jr., who runs Ballard Oil and refuels many of the state's fishing vessels, among other boats, attacked what he calls "emotional and unrealistic" requirements.
"We're going to be doing all kinds of paperwork," Aakervik said. "People are going to be watching meters and they're not going to be watching for the one thing they should be, and that's watching to make sure you don't spill."
Among the provisions of the new rules:
One criticism of the rules concerns regulations that require the pre-staging of boom before oil is pumped onto or off boats. This would have contained the Point Wells spill very well. But there's a huge loophole: The new rule says deploying the boom must be done only when it's "safe and effective" to do so. That phrase isn't defined.
"We're never going to get to pre-booming under this rule," grumbled Fred Felleman, Northwest representative of the environmental group Ocean Advocates. "It's too vague and amorphous."
The Puget Sound Action Team, state government's point agency for Puget Sound, and the Suquamish Tribe protested, too.
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| Paul Joseph Brown / P-I | |
| Leonard Forsman, tribal chairman for the Suquamish Indians, says he'll always remember the stinking, oily spill that happened in December 2003 when he visits the now-recovered Doe-Keg-Wats beach on the Kitsap Peninsula. | ||
Both said that if inclement weather prevents putting out the boom, then perhaps no oil should be transferred onto or off of a boat -- because if a spill occurred, it by definition couldn't be contained by the boom.
Responded Paul O'Brien, head of the Ecology spill preparedness unit: "It requires them to pre-boom. ... It's not that they have an option to. They must pre-boom when it's safe and effective."
Other criticisms include:
"Say you have a person in charge today and they make an evaluation of what is the maximum extent practicable, and then six months later the administration changes and the new director says no, no, that's not right, it's twice that," said Frank Holmes of the Western States Petroleum Association. Rules "should be something (industry) can depend on being there a while."
Lurking in the background throughout the rule-development process has been the possibility that someone will challenge the new rules as conflicting with federal regulations governing oil spill cleanup.
Such a challenge could come from industry or the Coast Guard, but even Washington State Ferries officials said they are "very concerned" that the state rules require more cleanup equipment than federal regulations do.
Industry officials have pointed to state law requiring officials to show evidence of "substantial" benefits before making state requirements more strict than federal ones.
"We've asked for justification for why the state of Washington needs to go further than the federal government," Holmes said. "That's pretty straightforward: just why it's needed."
Critics also say the cost-benefit analysis used to justify the rules is flawed because it understates costs to comply with the rules, and says that "qualitative" benefits from a protected environment help outweigh the numerical costs to follow them.
The new rules come too late to protect Doe-Keg-Wats, a Kitsap Peninsula beach near Indianola. The Suquamish Indians had for generations visited this shoreline to gather shellfish for celebrations and subsistence.
After the spill three years ago, stinking fuel spread deep into the shallow channels of the seaside marsh. Waves drove the oil down into the pebbly shore. Shellfish were polluted and inedible.
There's little evidence of the accident now. Flipping over rocks occasionally reveals a coffee-colored oil stain. Tribal biologists are watching to make sure spartina -- an invasive, damaging plant -- doesn't take hold in spots where the fuel killed native plants. The bleached clamshells and marsh laced with fish-friendly channels reveal a beach that has largely healed.
Perhaps the greatest damage was to the Suquamish psyche.
Doe-Keg-Wats -- the place of deer -- was an escape from the modern world, said Leonard Forsman, tribal chairman.
The spill forever marred it in memory.
And it made tribal members realize the potential for much larger spills that could cause permanent damage.
"Even though this is a sanctuary for us, we are vulnerable," Forsman said. "We have to protect it."
WHAT IS NEEDED?
Doubling of state oil-spill-containment spending
WHAT'S BEEN DONE?
State-appointed panel recommended increased funding
WHAT ARE THE ROADBLOCKS?
Gov. Chris Gregoire, Legislature must approve
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TOMORROW
Looking to the orcas' past to save their future.
What are your thoughts on promises to clean up Puget Sound and save local orcas?
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Part One:
Over some 90 years, Granny has dodged bullets, escaped captors' nets. Can she survive the contamination of her home -- and her body?
Part Two:
A young Granny grows from infant to mature female in a sea increasingly dirtied with human waste and poisoned with chemicals. To humans, she's a monster, a curse -- and, soon enough, a swimming target.
Part Three:
Granny has escaped the bullets of fishermen and the military, but she and her family aren't so lucky when the nets of fortune-hunters close around them.
Part Four:
Granny escapes the nets of captors, but she can't escape a world in change. Her seas grow noisy, crowded with boats -- and young relatives are dying.
Part Five:
Granny must adapt to a world that's noisy and crowded, an underwater New York City where orca mothers pass along human poisons to "crack babies." The world up top is as strange. The same humans who once feared her now revere her.
Part Six:
Granny is tough. She has dodged nets and bullets. She has swum in our garbage and pollutants for nine decades and survived. What she can't survive is a sea without prey.
All about orcas
A primer.
Part One:
Marine life is disappearing from Puget Sound, and fast
The causes are many: Politicians' broken promises, industries' resistance and the inability to convince people to live and work more gently on the shores of the Sound.
Although some species thrive, the feast is actually a famine
Shrimp and spot prawn appear to be thriving -- which may represent a serious imbalance in the Puget Sound ecosystem.
Some businesses find flouting laws is cost-effective
Environmental agencies are hamstrung by businesses that repeatedly fail to follow the rules.
In the battle between fish and farmers, orcas are the losers
The Skagit River is the classic example of how much people resist changes that are necessary to rescue the sound's sea life.
Part Two:
A rising tide of chemicals and sewage
Despite years of cleanups, bans on certain chemicals and increasingly stringent regulations, pollution in Puget Sound remains pervasive. Fish are bathing in microscopic bits of plastic, toxic chemicals, pharmaceuticals and caffeine.
The message in the (plastic) bottle is dire
A lot of the plastics -- bottles, bags, toys, packaging, etc. -- that we use are winding up in marine waters. It's a newly emerging threat to sea life as the items break down and make their way into the food chain.
Septic tanks suspected in threat to nation's manila clam harvest
Leaky septic systems are oozing sewage into marine waters and making shellfish unsafe for eating. But in many cases health inspectors can't get onto private property to pinpoint the culprits.
Part Three:
Toxic stormwater is one of the Sound's biggest threats
For years, government officials and scientists have known that polluted stormwater poses one of the greatest threats to the Sound. And they know how to fix it. But so far, no one has had the political nerve or money to match the threat.
Low-impact methods have high impact on ecosystems
Grassy ditches, rain barrels and green roofs are all innovations to close the tap on stormwater and can help save salmon and orcas.
Part Four:
Major oil spill presents greatest short-term threat to orcas' survival
Government scientists say a major oil spill is the biggest extinction threat for Puget Sound orcas over the next half-century. Even smaller spills irritate orcas' eyes and skin, and contaminate their prey.
An ounce of prevention won't clean up even a gallon of oil, activist warns
A gadfly has a warning about the preparedness for cleaning up a massive oil spill in Puget Sound.
Part Five:
Slaughtered orcas' DNA a chance to save the species
Odds are good that your grandkids -- or maybe even your kids -- could see the Sound's orca population shrink perilously low in their lifetime. The government has launched protections to save the orcas, declaring most of the Sound protected.
Saving Puget Sound could cost $12 billion
The cost of saving Puget Sound could exceed $12 billion and will require a holistic strategy that tackles the problems plaguing the entire marine ecosystem, according to an all-star advisory panel appointed by the governor.
Part Six:
Puget Sound is in trouble, but many still don't get it
The Sound is still in trouble and people still aren't getting it. Restoration advocates agree that getting the public onboard is key for raising needed funding and stanching the flow from the "death by a thousand cuts" sickening the Sound.
What the readers are saying ...
"The Sound of Broken Promises" readers were troubled to learn about the plight of Puget Sound and conflicted over who's to blame and what to do next, according to the dozens of comments logged on the P-I Web site.
Track the latest environmental news on Lisa Stiffler and Robert McClure's Dateline Earth.
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