December 27, 2007

Lessons Learned?

The recent oil spill of 58,000 gallons into San Francisco Bay on November 7 from a cargo vessel gives us a lot to think about - and wonder if we've learned some of the same lessons from our own experience in Washington State.

Senators Diane Feinstein (D-CA) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) stepped forward to assist the state of California in identifying and correcting the "serious mistakes that were made in the response to the oil spill."

What went wrong, and do any of these problems sound familiar to us in Washington State?

A key criticism from everyone from U.S. Senators to outraged local city and county officials was the slow set up of a command structure by the Coast Guard and the California Office of Spill Prevention and Response - and their late notification of local government offices of the spill. Almost 12 hours passed before some local jurisdictions were officially notified of the spill. This delay prevented containment boom from being placed to contain the oil slick, and allowed the strong tides and currents to widely spread the spill in the crucial initial hours to San Francisco and East Bay communities' beaches and waterfronts.

The size of the spill was also initially misreported as only 140 gallons. The actual 58,000 gallon volume was not discovered until over 4 hours after the spill.

Does this sound familiar? In Puget Sound we contend with heavy fogs and very limited visibility, making it difficult to assess the size and movement of oil spills at an accident site, just as in San Francisco Bay.

In Puget Sound's Dalco Passage Mystery Spill of 2004, one of the lessons we learned was that we need to be prepared to determine the extent of a spill right away, even at night, and immediately position oil skimming and recovery equipment to start work. The Department of Ecology's consultant report on the Dalco Passage spill acknowledged that "lost contact with the oil reduces successful recovery and results in more immediate and extensive beach impacts." In the case of the Dalco Passage spill that meant 21 miles of Puget Sound beaches were oiled and almost 7,000 gallons of oily water had to be recovered.

The way the San Francisco Bay spill was handled frustrated a lot of people because of its slowness and what Bay Area lawmakers complained was a "clumsy, chaotic, and woefully inadequate" response to the spill.

The San Francisco Chronicle quoted Berkeley leaders as being told in the crucial early hours after the spill that "we weren't high enough on the priority list" to be given immediate attention or help.

In our state we learned from the Dalco Passage spill that we needed to more quickly and comprehensively notify local governments, communities, tribal governments, aquaculture interests, and other effective stakeholders and keep them informed after the spill. The Department of Ecology purchased an automated notification system and set up detailed call-down phone and e-mail address lists that will be maintained for communities at risk. They also acknowledged the special problems of managing a "mystery" spill, where the source of the spill cannot be located, and where the Department of Ecology must be proactive in taking charge, and directing rather than just monitoring and evaluating the spill response.

The handling of volunteers, who turned out in droves to offer help in the cleanup in the San Francisco Bay area, was also widely criticized. Volunteers were often turned away when they showed up at beaches, because they had not been trained, and could not safely participate in clean-up work - but the first training sessions weren't offered till almost a week after the spill. Potential volunteers stood in long lines waiting for four-hour crash training sessions to qualify them to work in the toxic environment. Responding to these problems, local Contra Costa County supervisors already have approved a plan to train volunteers in advance, so that they will be ready to respond to future hazardous spills in the East Bay area.

In Washington State we faced some similar problems with making the best use of volunteers, and have learned that having volunteers ready to go in advance can significantly enhance an oil spill response. The Department of Ecology's revised plans after analyzing the Dalco Passage spill included advance training of community volunteers and formation of a trained and professional volunteer cleanup organization.

Some larger questions remain unresolved and troublesome for California, us in Puget Sound, and all other potential oil spill sites.

These include:

• Is the Coast Guard being given enough resources to handle both their new homeland security mission and their marine safety mission? (More than half of the Coast Guard's budget now goes to homeland security.)
• Can the Coast Guard and the state agencies responsible for oil spill prevention and response objectively investigate problems that involve their own agencies? Should investigations of major spills be independently run from the outside?
• Should cargo ships have the same financial liability as oil tankers?
• Are oil spill prevention and response agencies given enough resources to thoroughly train and practice drill oil spill response scenarios with their partner agencies, industry, and community resources?

Some of these questions are being addressed in the investigations and legislative proposals coming out of Senators Boxer and Feinstein's work in the other Washington.

Still pending is Senator Cantwell's bill authorizing funding for the Coast Guard in 2008 which would also require industry funding of a year-round rescue tug stationed at Neah Bay near the entrance to the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

But for oil spills, the "ounce of prevention" seems to always be the front line strategy for protecting our Sound's natural resources.

Researched and written by Tim Bernthal, Volunteer

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