In a period of uncertain and troubling economic times and as the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history unfolds in the Gulf of Mexico, one might ponder how we would avoid similar devastation here in Puget Sound.
On Dec. 30, 2003, about 5,000 gallons of oil poured into Puget Sound in Shoreline. The heavy bunker oil overflowed from a Foss Maritime barge while being loaded from the former Chevron/Texaco terminal. Rules in place at the time permitted such transfers without deploying protective containment boom around the vessel beforehand.
Over the next two winter months, winds and water processes carried the sludge into wetlands that became soaked by oil in the Suquamish Tribe’s estuary near Jefferson Point (KPBJ, Feb. 2004). Factors such as extreme cold weather expanded the impacted areas and warmer weather, heavy rains and flooding threatened to compound the damage.
Oil slick leaching into the estuaries surface caused extended damage to the entire ecosystem in the place known as Doe-Kag-Wats that Tribal members have used as a place of healing and worship, as well as for subsistence harvests, since time immemorial.
For the next three years, the Tribe negotiated with Foss Maritime to obtain compensation for damages to the culturally sensitive site. In a settlement agreement signed Feb. 9, 2007 the tribe received $1.1 million for spiritual and cultural damages to their historic salt water marsh and beach.
Leonard Forsman, Suquamish Tribal Chairman, said only that, “We’re happy to put the settlement discussions behind us and we look forward to healing the estuary and honoring our ancestors.”
The state has since vigorously worked to prevent oil spills, providing stringent oversight of oil companies, equipping our local Ports and Tribal governments with shared oil spill cleanup trailers, a rapid-response system, and even a tugboat dedicated to rescuing distressed ships before they crash and spill hazardous cargoes.
With 22 billion gallons of oil transferred across Puget Sound each year, the risks of a spill are very real, despite the extensive prevention programs and stricter requirements in place, which includes placing boom around ships during oil transfers.
The state Department of Ecology has a $16 million-a-year spills budget and estimates that companies spend roughly $41 million a year preparing for spills. But do we know if we have enough equipment and know-how to slurp up a big spill?
“Puget Sound is not immune from oil disasters,” said Ethan Bergerson of the Sierra Club. “It could happen here. It has happened here before. So we are showing this is a concern for the people of Puget Sound as it’s a concern for the people of the gulf coast.”
In the Gulf of Mexico the Deepwater Horizon, a semi-submersible drilling rig, sank after an April 20th explosion on the vessel. Eleven people died in the blast. When the rig sank, the riser — the 5,000-foot-long pipe that connects the wellhead to the rig — became detached and began leaking oil. In addition, U.S. Coast Guard investigators discovered a leak in the wellhead itself. As much as 60,000 barrels of oil per day are leaking into the water, threatening wildlife along the Louisiana Coast.
The Gulf of Mexico oil spill is the equivalent of 10-times our local 2003 spill… every day for the last 60+ days and counting. The damage insurmountable, the blame unaccountable, and virtually every superlative apply to the astronomical damage that this tragedy has caused and will continue to distress for decades or more.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano declared it a “spill of national significance.” BP (British Petroleum), which leased the Deepwater Horizon, is responsible for the cleanup, but the U.S. Navy supplied the company with resources to help contain the slick. Oil reached the Louisiana shore on April 30, affected about 125 miles of coast. By early June, oil had also reached Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi. It is the largest oil spill in U.S. history.
In a June 23 New York Times piece by Ian Urbina, it was reported that about three miles off the coast of Alaska, BP is moving ahead with a controversial and potentially record-setting project to drill two miles under the sea and then six to eight miles horizontally to reach what is believed to be a 100-million-barrel reservoir of oil under federal waters.
While all other new projects in the Arctic have been halted by the Obama administration’s moratorium on offshore drilling, BP’s project, called Liberty, has been exempted as regulators have granted it status as an “onshore” project even though it is about three miles off the coast in the Beaufort Sea. The reason: it sits on an artificial island — a 31-acre pile of gravel in about 22 feet of water — built by BP.
The project has already received its state and federal environmental permits, but BP has yet to file its final application to federal regulators to begin drilling, which it expects to start in the fall.
Some scientists and environmentalists say that other factors have helped keep the project moving forward. For instance, rather than conducting their own independent analysis, federal regulators, in a break from usual practice, allowed BP in 2007 to write its own environmental review for the project as well as its own consultation documents relating to the Endangered Species Act, according to two scientists from the Alaska office of the federal Mineral Management Service that oversees drilling.
If we don’t use these past experiences to ensure that the highest and best standards are used by all companies doing business in our waters and that agencies remain stringent in their efforts to monitor so that this type of extreme human error does not happen again, we will be remiss in our efforts to protect our most precious natural resources.
On the morning of June 24, while investigating an estimated 400 to 500 dead fish washed up on shore in Liberty Bay reported by Patrick Mus, Aquarium Director of the Poulsbo Marine Science Center, the Washington Department of Ecology learned of a small spill of diesel fuel from a boat at Poulsbo Marina two days before. While it isn’t clear whether the small spill caused the fish kill, it went unreported, even though Ecology rules require reports of all spills.
The current recession may reduce agency funding in the short term, but we must also be dogged in our determination to support legislation, oversight, and business practices that protect the Puget Sound as it is too important to us now and for our children’s children.
