Workers Try To Unload Tanker; Environmentalists Call Spill a Disaster
Millions of gallons of crude oil that spilled when a tanker ran aground spread across a wildlife-rich stretch of ocean Saturday, and Alaska's chief environmental officer criticized cleanup efforts as too slow. The biggest oil spill in U.S. history created a slick about seven miles long and seven miles wide in Prince William Sound. The Coast Guard said only Reef Island and the western edge of Bligh Island had been touched by the slick. ``This situation, I think, was everyone's secret nightmare about what could happen with oil traffic in the sound,'' said Dennis Kelso, commissioner of the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. Some 240,000 barrels _ about 10,080,000 gallons _ of crude oil from Alaska's North Slope spilled early Friday when the 987-foot tanker Exxon Valdez ran hard aground on Bligh Reef, about 25 miles outside Valdez, where it had taken on a total cargo of 1.2 million barrels. Initial reports indicated 270,000 barrels had spilled. ``What we have here is a major environmental catastrophe,'' said one oil spill expert, Richard Golob of Boston, publisher of Golob Oil Pollution Bulletin. Golob said cleanup equipment at the site was ``grossly inadequate'' but added that even under ideal circumstances cleanup efforts would not have significantly reduced the spill's impact. ``It is an enclosed body of water,'' he said. ``The only way for this oil to ecape out to the sea is by traversing the entire length of Prince William Sound with all its islands, fjords and bays and channels. ``And during that transit, undoubtedly a large stretch of shoreline will be contaminated,'' he said. Divers Saturday said they had found six to eight holes in the vessel's hull large enough to swim through, said Frank Iarossi, president of Exxon Shipping Co. About 30 feet of the vessel is resting on a shelf on the reef. Efforts to begin pumping 200,000 gallons of oil off the Exxon Valdez onto another tanker, the Exxon Baton Rouge, were halted early Saturday when authorities noticed that oil appeared to leaking as the pumping operation proceeded. Eleven of 17 tanks that lie forward of the ship's masthead were ruptured in the accident, causing concern over removal of the oil, said Coast Guard Lt. Ed Wieliczkiewicz. ``Whenever you start removing oil from a vessel this size it has to be done in a controlled manner,'' Wieliczkiewicz said. ``If it's not ... you endanger the stability of the vessel.'' Wieliczkiewicz said a boom was placed around the Exxon Valdez and the Exxon Baton Rouge to help contain oil around the vessels. He also said four members of the Coast Guard's Pacific Strike Team from San Francisco, specially trained to deal with pollution and oil spills, arrived Saturday and were helping to rig pumps and assemble equipment needed to transfer oil to the Baton Rouge. Kelso was highly critical of what he said was a slow response to the spill. ``The initial reponse was inadequate and unacceptable,'' he said before a news conference Saturday. Kelso said the efforts should have been under way in five hours, but took much longer. ``You miss the opportunity right at the beginning and you've missed our best opportunity to do something.'' Kelso said Alaska has a plan for oil spills that calls for action within five hours of a spill. It took several hours longer, he said, and only two of seven skimmers available to the Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. were used at the outset. Alyeska spokesman Chuck O'Donnel said he was satisfied with his company's actions. ``I think our people did an excellent job,'' he said. The spill's effect on wildlife had not yet been assessed, but commercial fishermen who depend on the sound for a catch worth millions of dollars were outraged and said a key herring spawning area had been polluted. ``The whole food chain could be affected by the spill,'' said Alan Reichman, ocean ecology coordinator for the environmental group Greenpeace, in Seattle. ``There's a high concentration of sea otter, waterfowl, sea birds and pink salmon in that area,'' said Steve Goldstein, a spokesman for the Interior Department in Washington. ``Some birds have already died, and we are doing our best to try to save the fish by containing the oil to the area where it presently is and by trying to skim it.'' Whales, porpoises and seals are also common in Prince William Sound. ``It's kind of like sailing through a zoo,'' said Jim Lethcoe, who lives on a boat in the sound and operates a sailing business. An animal cleanup station was set up in a building at the community college in Valdez, but volunteers there said they had no animals to work on by midafternoon. The response to the spill also drew fire from the 12,000-member United Fishermen of Alaska. ``We feel that this should have been the easiest oil spill in the world to clean up,'' said Riki Ott, chairman of the organization's habitat committee. She noted that the spill had occurred in a protected area close to the Valdez marine terminal and the water was calm. Ott said the spill had polluted Prince William Sound's primary herring spawning area. Fishermen also take salmon and shellfish from the sound. Last year, they were paid about $85 million for their catches, she said. The Port of Valdez remained closed to tanker traffic. North Slope crude oil is shipped 800 miles through the trans-Alaska oil pipeline from Prudhoe Bay south to Valdez for shipment aboard tankers to refineries outside Alaska. The Coast Guard said the Exxon Valdez struck the reef when it maneuvered outside normal tanker traffic lanes to avoid icebergs. The vessel's captain, Joseph Hazelwood, has worked for Exxon for 20 years, at least 10 as a ship's master. It was unclear if a pilot was aboard the Exxon Valdez when it grounded. There was no decision Saturday on whether to use chemicals to disperse the oil, but a test of the dispersal method was being conducted Saturday afternoon, as was a test to determine whether at least some of the crude oil could be burned. Coast Guard Cmdr. Steven McCall said National Transportation Safety Board investigators are expected to arrive Sunday to take over the accident probe. He said one or more blood-alcohol tests were administered after the grounding, but he said he didn't know know how many people were tested or the results. McCall said the tests routinely are administered in marine accidents involving federal jurisdiction. The Coast Guard issued a statement late Saturday that McCall has subpoenaed the ship's master and two crew members. The subpoenas require them to make themselves available to NTSB investigators arriving Sunday. The Coast Guard said the supoenas were routine. Previously, the largest U.S. tanker spill was the Dec. 15, 1976, grounding of the Argo Merchant tanker off the Nantucket shoals off Massachusetts, in which 7.6 million gallons of oil spilled, Golob said. Up to 10.7 million gallons of oil was lost on Nov. 1, 1979, when the tanker Burmah Agate collided with another ship in Galveston Bay, Texas. However, that oil burned as well as spilled. The largest tanker spill in history resulted from the July 19, 1979, collision off Tobago of the supertankers Atlantic Empress and Aegean Captain, in which 300,000 tons _ more than 80 million gallons _ of oil was lost.
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