How oil spill in Sound might have been stopped in its tracks

By Craig Welch
Seattle Times staff reporter

	TOM REESE / THE SEATTLE TIMES With an oil boom in place around a barge, Steve Still of Sound Refining shuts down a pump taking in fuel oil on the dock.
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The last time California's busiest harbor had a major oil spill — 6,300 gallons of crude from a tanker — the toxic mess never strayed from the terminal and was slurped up in a day.

"There was virtually no damage — no impact to sensitive sites and nobody had to chase oil anywhere," said Scott Schaefer, with California's Office of Spill Prevention and Response, of the 1998 Long Beach spill. "The tanker owner figured he saved $1 million in clean-up costs."

Unlike Washington state, California requires fuel-transfer terminals to run oil-spill containment booms around almost every large marine vessel before it loads or unloads petroleum — a precaution that allows workers to quickly corral any spilled oil before it can spread.

The pre-placement of an oil-spill boom may have helped spare Puget Sound from damage in last month's spill near Richmond Beach, say some outside experts.

The fast-moving, 4,800-gallon fuel spill quickly shimmered across Puget Sound, soiling eelgrass, crab and shellfish beds and polluting the Suquamish Tribe's once-pristine beachfront. The tribe has estimated it lost several thousand dollars worth of shellfish, and the total cleanup costs for the spill already has topped $1 million.

Oil-spill hearing The state House Fisheries, Ecology and Parks Committee has scheduled a public hearing at 8 this morning on the Point Wells oil spill and subsequent cleanup: Hearing Room A of the John L. O'Brien Building on the Capitol Campus in Olympia.

The spill reawakened Washington's regulators and the public to the oil-spill risks associated with the state's 25 fuel terminals. Including the major refineries that receive crude from the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, millions of gallons of oil are transferred over state waters every day, leading some outside experts to suggest the lack of mandatory "pre-booming" is an inexplicable weakness in state spill-preparedness.

"It's far and away the most effective regulation we've had in the last 12 years," said Schaefer.

Only a fraction of Puget Sound's commercial facilities voluntarily set up the oil booms before transfers. It has never been required — either by the Legislature or state Ecology officials. And although state regulators have kicked the idea around often, no one seems to recall why it was never adopted as a rule or policy.

"Over the years there has been a lot of talk about pre-booming," said Linda Pilkey-Jarvis, the Department of Ecology's spills coordinator. "But I'm having a really hard time finding anyone who can remember the history on this."

In recent months, state officials reconsidering their oil-spill plans have talked again about requiring it but have reached no conclusions. State Rep. Mike Cooper, D-Edmonds, who has called a public hearing on the matter today in Olympia, has said he might propose legislation to make it mandatory.

Pre-booming simply means sending workers out in a skiff to surround a fueling barge, tanker or ship with a floating boom. It's a practice required of oil tankers fueling up in Valdez, Alaska, but not for the same tankers when they arrive in Puget Sound. The Navy also employs the practice for all its ships in Puget Sound.

"It just makes things so much easier," said Tammy Brown, spill coordinator for Navy Region Northwest, which like California started pre-booming all transfers in 1992. "But industry's always fought it because it costs money in labor."

	TOM REESE / THE SEATTLE TIMES In Tacoma, Charlie Zurcher, left, and Tom Beck move a boom away from an oil barge after the oil pumping is finished at Sound Refining. The boom at lower left is permanently deployed around the dock, a preventative measure not currently required in this state.

While it's not fail-safe — booming can't help in areas where daily currents or winds are strong — even Washington's Department of Ecology regulators praise pre-booming as an effective ounce of prevention.

"Definitely it can contain and reduce the impact of spills," said Pilkey-Jarvis.

Small spills can be damaging

Marine biologists have long known an oil spill in Puget Sound could be calamitous. Even small spills can be damaging, and federal scientists recently determined a catastrophic one posed the single greatest threat to the survival of killer whales. A thicket of Coast Guard and state rules, contingency plans and practice drills is supposed to keep oil out of the water — and under control if it gets in the water.

But the Dec. 30 Point Wells spill highlights the limitations of that system.

Just after midnight, a 248-foot Foss Maritime barge was loading up on heavy-grade bunker fuel at the Chevron transfer facility. Such barges, which hold more than 1 million gallons of oil, typically ferry fuel to ships or to other fuel terminals. Inside the barges are individual tanks, each of which can be opened and closed by a tankerman.

Two Chevron workers were at the terminal that night, according to Foss Maritime spokesmen and the Coast Guard. Foss' tankerman was doing paperwork when the fuel from a 10-inch line overflowed from the barge, sending oil spraying across the deck and into the water.

Foss officials and Coast Guard investigators have not yet explained if the tankerman simply failed to realize the tanks were nearing full. The Foss barge uses a float that triggers an audible alarm and flashing lights when the tank is 95 percent full, and again at 98 percent full — "a system over and above what's required on this barge," said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Lee Boone, whose office is still conducting the investigation.

	TOM REESE / THE SEATTLE TIMES Surrounded by a floating boom, the oil barge Shauna Kay's contents are pumped out at Sound Refining in Tacoma. Tom Beck and Charlie Zurcher move the boom using a skiff.

Boone said the alarm was tested, but would say no more.

Sam Sacco, a spokesman for Foss Maritime, insisted the alarm "did go off."

Regardless, the fuel was moving at 3,500 gallons a minute. Once the spill was discovered, the tankerman radioed the terminal workers, who quickly hit a button to shut down the pump and closed the supply valve to the pipe.

The Chevron terminal, which had a similar spill in the early 1990s, is required to have a containment boom on the dock and be able to deploy and anchor it within one hour.

Foss says the boom was in the water in 15 minutes, but even slow-spreading bunker fuel can thin out quickly when it hits the water.

And while some reports have suggested wave action drove oil under the boom, "it's probably never going to be determined how much escaped the boom, and how much was never contained in the first place," said Lt. Ted Hutley with the Coast Guard's marine environment branch, one of the initial Coast Guard pollution investigators on the scene that night.

Booms seen as good business

Some outside experts maintain pre-set booms would have made a difference that night.

"In this case, from what I know about it, it certainly would have helped," said Jean R. Cameron, executive director of the Pacific States/British Columbia Oil Spill Task Force.

Others insist predeployment of booms is merely good business.

Oregon does not require pre-booming, in part, spills-program officer Mike Zollitsch said, because it doesn't see a large amount of crude-oil tanker traffic. Yet, the companies that voluntarily pre-boom respond "heads and shoulders above everybody else during emergency drills," he said.

But Chevron spokeswoman Marielle Boortz maintained that "high tides, high currents and high winds" — conditions similar to those found at Point Wells — can make the use of booms ineffective.

But asked if that meant it was never practical to use them, Boortz said, "I can't answer that."

Industry spokesmen and regulators in California, Oregon and Washington acknowledge the use of booms can be time-consuming and potentially expensive and shouldn't be done with certain types of refined fuels.

"It's not required by law and there are times it can be unsafe," said Sacco, the Foss Maritime spokesman. "You can't do it with some material, because it's not good to pool and concentrate potentially flammable stuff. If conditions are choppy, it could even be unsafe."

In California, Schaefer said, industry figures suggest pre-booming initially added $900 to the cost of each fuel transfer, which lasts from a half-hour to 10 hours — a cost he believes has come down.

At Tacoma's Sound Refining, Ray Burke said the company pre-booms transfers — a process that takes about two man-hours. Burke said he only does it to better his chances of meeting emergency-response deadlines in the event of a spill.

"You have to be able to deploy in an hour, so we figured it was better to just do it up front," Burke said.

Cholly Mercer, president of Rainier Petroleum, said the decision to use or not use booms is not just about money and time.

"For us it's a matter of conscience," said Mercer, who pre-booms some but not all of his fuel transfers, particularly for factory trawlers. "We do it at our cost because it's the right thing to do."

Craig Welch: 206-464-2093 or cwelch@seattletimes.com

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