Ships dump 88 million gallons of oil into the ocean illegally each year - that's eight times the amount of the Exxon Valdez oil spill (Photo source: Vmenkov at Wikimedia Commons)
Each year, ships intentionally dump millions of gallons of oil into the oceans. Rebecca Williams reports everything from cruise ships to cargo ships to oil tankers have been caught:
Transcript
Each year, ships intentionally dump millions of gallons of oil into the oceans. Rebecca Williams reports everything from cruise ships to cargo ships to oil tankers have been caught:
Ships have all kinds of mechanical parts that use oil.
The ships are supposed to collect the waste oil and separate it out, but it turns out a lot of ships just dump it overboard.
Stacey Mitchell is chief of the environmental crimes section at the Department of Justice. She says some estimates are all this oil adds up to about 88 million gallons a year.
That’s eight times the amount of oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez. And those are just the ships they catch.
“As we do more and more of these enforcements the crews on board these vessels who are trying to defeat our purposes are getting craftier and are coming up with new ways to commit this crime and new ways to conceal it.”
Mitchell says it takes time and costs money to separate the oil the way you’re supposed to, and so they might think the chance of getting caught might be worth the risk. Though if you are caught, the fines can be in the millions of dollars.
A NOAA scientist surveying an oiled beach to assess the depth of oil
penetration soon after the spill (Photo courtesy of NOAA)
Twenty years ago this week, an oil tanker ran aground on a rocky reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. The Exxon Valdez spilled more than 11 million gallons of crude oil. It’s considered to be perhaps the biggest ecological disaster in US history. Ann Dornfeld has this look at how oil spill prevention and preparedness have changed in the two decades since Valdez:
Transcript
Twenty years ago this week, an oil tanker ran aground on a rocky reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. The Exxon Valdez spilled more than 11 million gallons of crude oil. It’s considered to be perhaps the biggest ecological disaster in US history. Ann Dornfeld has this look at how oil spill prevention and preparedness have changed in the two decades since Valdez:
The call came in just after midnight.
“Ah, evidently leaking some oil and we’re gonna be here for a while.”
Court records indicate Captain Joseph Hazelwood was likely drunk when the Exxon Valdez ran aground.
There was hardly any clean-up equipment on hand. No plan for action. The location was remote.
Oil polluted a stretch of Alaskan coastline the length of the entire west coast of the U.S. The oil killed fish, sea otters, harbor seals and an estimated quarter of a million birds. Today, there is still oil on some beaches.
Twenty years later, a cargo vessel has just reported a spill of 160
gallons of oil in Washington state’s Commencement Bay. Investigators
have filled the “Spill Situation Room” in the state Department of Ecology.
“Who’s responsible for actually maintaining
the bow thruster, when was the last time they performed maintenance on it?”
“You mean one of the staff on board?”
“Yeah.”
Spill Response Manager David Byers says coastal states learned a lesson from Exxon Valdez, and developed rapid response systems like this.
“We’ve got crews headed up in a helicopter to do on-
water observations, we’ve got response resources on the water headed out to do containment when we find the location of the oil.”
Byers says the state handles dozens of spills this size each year, making it somewhat of a well-oiled machine.
After the Exxon Valdez, the state of Washington put in place some tough prevention standards. But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the state.
The court ruled the state was making safety demands of oil companies that only the federal government could make.
Mike Cooper is Chairman of the state’s Oil Spills Advisory Council. He says that ruling is one reason why small oil spills are common in Washington’s bays. He says other states have come up against the same restrictions.
“When the Massachusetts legislature passed strict laws,
the United States Coast Guard and the industry did the same thing that they did to the people of Washington state. They sued the people of the state of Massachusetts and said, ‘We’ll decide if industry has to pay.'”
The federal Oil Pollution Act did raise industry’s liability and the amount of federal money available in the event of a spill. It also requires oil tankers and barges in U.S. waters to be double-hulled by 2015. The Exxon Valdez’ single hull was easily gouged open when it ran aground.
Today, most U.S.-flagged tankers and barges are double-hulled. Most foreign tankers aren’t yet.
But there’s no law requiring a second hull on cargo ships. Bruce Wishart is Policy Director for People for Puget Sound. He says it’s cargo vessels that are most likely to spill oil.
“It’s commonly assumed that oil tankers pose the
single greatest threat in terms of an oil spill. There are actually many, many more cargo vessels plying our waters that pose a very significant risk simply because they carry a lot of fuel on board.”
In 2007, the cargo vessel Cosco Busan spilled 53,000 gallons of oil into San Francisco Bay. Thousands of birds died, including endangered species. A fully-loaded cargo ship can contain 40 times more oil than what leaked from the Cosco Busan.
So, while oil tankers have become safer in the two decades since the Exxon Valdez, the nation’s waterways still remain at risk of a major spill.
Lake Superior's South Shore, Wisconsin
(Photo by Dave Hansen, courtesy of the EPA)
There’s a new agreement that says the
Great Lakes water has to stay in the Great Lakes.
It’s been approved now by all eight of the states
and the two Canadian provinces that border the
Lakes. Rick Pluta reports the agreement is now
on its way to Congress:
Transcript
There’s a new agreement that says the
Great Lakes water has to stay in the Great Lakes.
It’s been approved now by all eight of the states
and the two Canadian provinces that border the
Lakes. Rick Pluta reports the agreement is now
on its way to Congress:
The Great Lakes region was worried that drier parts of the country and the world might
be eyeing the largest supply of freshwater on Earth.
Ten years ago, a Canadian company got permission from Ontario to send millions of
gallons of water to Asia via tanker ships. Fierce opposition from around the Great Lakes
region put an end to that project. But regions neighboring the Great Lakes basin still see
them as a possible cure for their water shortages.
Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm says the Great Lakes compact offers an answer to
anyone outside the region who wants to get their hands on that water.
“Can’t touch this. (laughs) That’s what we say. They need to look at their own way of
preserving and managing their resources.”
When Granholm signed new laws in a ceremony here on the Lake Michigan shoreline,
Michigan became the last of the eight Great Lakes states to formally join the compact.
The compact was put together by leaders of the US states and two Canadian provinces
that border the lakes. Granholm says, once it’s adopted by Congress and signed by the
president, it will give the Great Lakes states new authority to protect their water.
“This allows me as governor to veto any large diversion of water, so we can put a stop to
it ourselves. It really allows us the autonomy of protecting these Great Lakes overall.”
It took 10 years for the Great Lakes states to get the compact through their legislatures
and signed by their governors. Members of Congress from the region are hoping it won’t
take quite so long to get it to the president’s desk.
Chicago Congressman Rahm Emanuel is expected to lead the effort to get the compact
through the US House. He says congressional hearings will begin this year and the
compact should be approved in time for it to be sent to the new president in early 2009.
Emanuel says he’s not expecting any problems.
“Because people understand and know, this is our Yellowstone Park, this is our Grand
Canyon. This is a national treasure. There’s been a lot of work and years of effort to get
this done. The good news is a lot of the chairmen of the committees that are relevant, come
from the Midwest, know how important the Great Lakes are and will act with due speed
in getting it done.”
Both the Republican presidential candidate John McCain and Democratic candidate
Barak Obama have said they would sign the compact.
Environmental groups are among those backing the deal. But many of them say it
still comes up short because it does not stop bottled water from leaving the Great Lakes
region.
Cyndi Roper is with Clean Water Action.
“Water is water. You can’t fill a tanker with water and take it out of the Great Lakes, but
you can fill that same tanker with bottles of water and ship them to other parts of the
country and other parts of the world, and we believe as we move forward, that’s a very
dangerous precedent to set.”
She says that’s because many millions of gallons can still trickle out of the lakes – even if
it’s 12 ounces at a time.
Ships dump 88 million gallons of oil into the ocean illegally each year - that's eight times the amount of the Exxon Valdez oil spill (Photo source: Vmenkov at Wikimedia Commons)
