Speedier response to spills is sought

By Warren Cornwall
Seattle Times staff reporter

ELLEN M. BANNER / THE SATTLE TIMES Robert "Rocky" Rockov of Seattle strings out oil snares, or "pompoms," to soak up oil as part of the cleanup in October just east of the Tahlequah Ferry Terminal at the south end of Vashon Island. Twenty-one miles of shoreline were affected.

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Nearly two months after an oil spill fouled 21 miles of south Puget Sound shoreline, a consensus is emerging that federal and state agencies need to respond to such spills more aggressively and investigate getting more high-tech equipment to detect oil on water, especially at night and in fog.

Today, a task force created after a spill in Dalco Passage of an 1,000 gallons is scheduled to decide on its recommendations for improving performance in the first hours after a spill is discovered.

The Dalco incident triggered concerns partly because a check on the spill wasn't launched until more than five hours after it was first reported shortly after 1 a.m. Oct. 14. The delay allowed the oil to spread.

A more-robust response to oil sightings, technology that can pierce darkness and fog to gauge a spill's size and location, and use of citizen volunteers to scout for oil are among the recommendations that appear to have widespread support on the 14-member task force.

But the group is divided over the need for a local citizen council to make sure governments and industries are vigilant.

Kathy Fletcher, a task-force member and executive director of the environmental group People for Puget Sound, said a group like one created in Alaska's Prince William Sound after the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989 would ensure that citizens have an equal seat at the table.

"There needs to be independent oversight of what happens," Fletcher said. "The Dalco incident has shaken public confidence in whether [the state Department of] Ecology and the Coast Guard respond aggressively enough."

Task force to gather Today's meeting, which is open to the public, will begin at 9 a.m. at the Sheraton Tacoma, 1320 Broadway Plaza in downtown Tacoma.

But some in the maritime and oil industries have said there are already avenues for public involvement. Richard Wright, a task-force member and president of Clean Sound Cooperative, an oil-spill-response company funded by the oil industry, worries that a citizen council could create adversarial relationships with industry and governments.

"What we're doing now is working pretty well," he said.

Gov. Gary Locke and U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. Jeffrey Garrett convened the task force. It includes government agencies, the Makah Tribe, the oil and maritime industries, spill-cleanup companies, environmentalists and people living near the Dalco spill. The recommendations will go to Locke, Garrett and committees that oversee planning for spill responses.

The Ecology Department already has made changes as a result of the spill. Now, a sighting of black oil — as opposed to a transparent sheen — on the water is enough to trigger an immediate response to find out whether an oil spill needs to be cleaned up.

Early on Oct. 14, a tugboat operator told an Ecology duty officer he had encountered a "heavy, thick oil spill. Black oil covering at least an acre," according to a timeline the department released.

But Ecology and Coast Guard officials postponed checking on the spill until daylight, according to the timeline. By then, fog had blanketed that part of the Sound, further delaying a response.

"They stepped up and said, 'We made a mistake; when we heard black oil we should have gone,' " Wright said.

Both King County and the Coast Guard have aircraft equipped with infrared technology that can help show freshly spilled oil in the dark, Wright said. But that doesn't work once the oil has cooled to the temperature of the water, which happened in the Dalco case, he said.

A new system that uses lasers to track oil could solve that problem, but it's still under development, he said.

Warren Cornwall: 206-464-2311 or wcornwall@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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