Oil Spill Fouls Hopes
(Published in The Providence Journal on July 15, 2003)
Before the oil spill, before his fears, saltwater ran through Jim Mellen’s life. But now he stares at Buzzards Bay from a ragged chair on shore, leans back in his Faded Glory sneakers and talks about why the spill made him quit shell-fishing, why it scared him.
“It’s like a liquid tar. There’s so much oil on the sea bottom … I’d be afraid to harvest [shellfish in] this stuff,” said Mellen, who takes a seat nearly every morning at a hangout called Hoppy’s Landing, in Fairhaven, where he smokes Marlboros, gazes at photos of bygone fishing boats and strokes the fur of a stray cat or two. “The main thing is to prevent it” from happening again.
Yesterday, maritime experts, fishermen and politicians gathered in New Bedford and pledged to try. Their top recommendation was to speed up the requirement that all barges and tankers be equipped with double hulls, giving them an extra skin to capture material that would otherwise seep out if one hull were ruptured. Eyebrows went up when a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers official said that just 19 percent of the tankers and barges going through the Cape Cod Canal are double-hulled.
But despite attention on the problem after a Bouchard Transportatopn Co. barge was damaged, spilling tens of thousands of gallons of oil into Buzzards Bay in April, chances are slim that Congress will pass a law requiring that all ships be double-hulled ships by 2007. The changeover is currently slated to be done by 2015.
“Commercial interests have more weight than environmental interests” in the current administration, said U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, in an interview after the meeting that he and fellow Democratic U.S. Rep. William Delahunt held at the New Bedford Whaling Museum.
So officials yesterday also proposed new “separation zones” that would require tankers and barges to stay farther offshore, perhaps by two to three miles, before entering the bay
They suggested Massachusetts require a second, “assist tug boat” to closely follow a barge and its tug boat. That way, if the main tug became disabled, the assist tug could quickly take over, preventing the barge from running aground or hitting an object.
They supported a satellite-monitoring system on tug boats that would let the Coast Guard or Cape Cod Canal officials track precisely the movements of ships carrying materials.
And they recommended Massachusetts pass a law that only people with expertise in piloting vessels through the state’s water bodies be allowed to do so; currently, pilots can be from anywhere in the country or world. A bill to do so awaits action in the legislature.
Representatives for Bouchard Transportation did not attend the meeting, a fact that drew Frank’s criticism. Jennifer A. Carpenter, a senior vice president with the American Waterways Operators, said her organization would “do everything in our power to be sure this doesn’t happen again.” But pressed by Frank to declare support for the proposals, Carpenter would say only that the organization is willing to look at them.
Initially, the spill was put at about 15,000 gallons. Officials became angry and suspicious when the company hiked the figure to 98,000 gallons. And later came news reports that the drivers of the tug boat were not tested for alcohol until some 18 hours after the barge hit.
The spill ultimately spread over 300 miles of coastline, including as far as Block Island, and 460 birds died while 19 injured in the spill surived, Coast Guard Capt. Mary Landry tolde those gathered at a June 27 Fairhaven hearing about the spill. The response price-tag was put at more than $35 million. Some 452 claims have been filed for financial assistance to local fishermen and others, with Bouchard awarding from $1,500 to $5,000 to individuals so far.
About 90,000 acres of shellfish beds remained closed, according to the June 27 figures, so some fishermen are going elsewhere to ply their trade. And people such as Mellen come to the place they’ve loved, but talk about another time, before the spill.
Hoppy’s Landing is on a spit of land called Long Island. Underneath the building’s overhanging roof are a few chairs and couches where Mellen often sits, taking it all in.
He grew up in Rhode Island, started fishing there, and has been a commercials fisherman for decades. “I came here one day,” he said of Fairhaven, “and I just loved the town. It was that simple.”
He sees the vacationers who arrived to spend a week or two in some of the fine homes down the road, on West Island. He’s luckier, he said: He does not rent the sea breezes, he wakes up them any time he pleases.
He is 62 and could retire from shell-fishing for any number of reasons. But he had not planned to. There was money to be made, but, he said, he does it became he loves his trade.
Then came the oil spill. The number 6 oil, a heavier industrial type, has seeped into the bottom – where shellfish live and get their nutrients. He fears that a big storm will send another wave of solidified oil, called tar balls, rolling up from the bottom onto the shore.
Even when the shellfish beds are reopened, Mellen doubts the fish will be safe to eat. For him, it’s a matter of pride – his shellfish don’t make people sick. It’s also a matter of experience – he got sick from seafood once and would rather no one share that experience.
“With this oil,” Mellen said, “I’m scared.”
But at the Fairhaven meeting in June, where the top officials involved in clean-up and monitoring spoke, they acknowledged there is a long way to go in the recovery, but did not describe a health risk for people who go into the water. Oil has not closed beaches.
Stephen M. Lehmann, scientific coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told the gathering that tar balls and stains may appear for some time but are “relatively benign.” Beaches in Galveston, Texas, Miami and Bermuda have a tar-ball problem, he said, but it is not considered a health risk. Swimmers are told to use baby oil or mineral oil to remove any oil from the skin.
One concern was the chemical naphthalene in the oil, but Lehmann said the concentrations of it in oil that is by now “heavily weathered” are low.
“The remaining tar or oil does not represent a credible public health threat,” Lehmann said that night.
The cleanup and monitoring is proceeding in phases. The final stages, including restoring damaged natural resources, could be completed in a few years.
But Mellen and others like him have doubts.
“A real ecological disaster,” Mellen called the spill. “They’ve made a mess from Westport [Mass.] to Bourne. Just thinking about it makes me sick inside.”
