Protecting Beaches From Gulf Oil Spill

  • Volunteers are combing every inch of the shoreline, picking up trash and raking driftwood and sticks into the dunes. Normally they’d let the natural debris stay on the beach. But if it gets coated with oil it becomes hazardous waste and has to be shipped to a local landfill. (Photo courtesy of the NOAA)

It’s been weeks since oil began gushing from
a broken underwater well in the Gulf of Mexico.
As BP continues to try to stop the leak, many
coastal communities are scrambling to
prepare for the oil that threatens their
shorelines. As Tanya Ott reports, volunteers in
Alabama are taking some low-tech steps to get ready:

Transcript

It’s been weeks since oil began gushing from a broken underwater well in the Gulf of Mexico. As BP continues to try to stop the leak, many coastal communities are scrambling to prepare for the oil that threatens their shorelines. As Tanya Ott reports, volunteers in Alabama are taking some low-tech steps to get ready:

Within days of the oil rig explosion, Casi Callaway’s phone started ringing off the hook.

“I have hundreds of volunteers calling every minute.”

Okay – well maybe not every minute. But Callaway’s group, Mobile Baykeeper, has been very busy organizing volunteers. In the past week more than 7-thousand people have flocked to the white sands of the Alabama coast hoping to help.

They’re combing every inch of the shoreline, picking up trash and raking driftwood and sticks into the dunes. Normally they’d let the natural debris stay on the beach. But if it gets coated with oil it becomes hazardous waste and has to be shipped to a local landfill. So volunteers are working round the clock to move the material. Tom Herder is with the Mobile Bay Estuary Program. He says they have to be careful because this is nesting season for wading birds like Plovers and Terns.

“You know we were the dumb transgressors the first day. I was throwing stuff in the dunes. And we were just moving stuff up and I wasn’t looking for Plover nests and the Audobon Society kinda got on my case – and it’s good, they educated us. And we’re educating our volunteers.”

They’ve been training volunteers on how to remove debris without disturbing wildlife. But Herder says the clock is ticking and there’s still lots of work to do. So they’re balancing the need to protect wildlife with the need to get the beaches ready. Herder says to do that they’ve been bending the rules a little bit.

“People have to be 18 years old to take part in our volunteer efforts. Shoot – that’s, that’s not necessarily the way people do things here. And we tell people, if you live on the Western shore of Mobile Bay don’t wait for us. Get down there and clean it up yourself. You know. And that’s not rogue.”

While volunteers work to get the beaches ready for oil, BP says it’s working to keep the oil from reaching the shore. It’s using what are called chemical dispersants – basically it’s industrial detergent – to break up the oil deep under the surface. But critics say the chemicals could kill off the larvae of fish that use the Gulf of Mexico for spawning grounds… fish like the Atlantic bluefin tuna. It could also hurt oysters and mussels. But BP’s Steve Rinehart says there’s always a tradeoff.

“Nobody wants an oil spill. We have an oil spill. You need to make judgments about limiting the damager where you can.”

Rinehart says a group of state and federal spill responders, including environmental scientists, has determined that dispersants pose the least risk.

“If the choice is oil going to shore or using dispersant off shore, using dispersant off shore causes less environmental impact. That’s not to say there won’t be some, but it’s less harmful to the environment than having the oil go to shore.”

So basically, it could be an “either/or” – protect the beach with dispersants and you might risk the fish. Tom Herder — with the Estuary Program — says it’s a no win situation.

“I’ve almost been making deals with God. And I can’t bribe God, but he knows I’ll follow through.”

Right now, Herder’s just praying for good weather – and more time – to get the coasts prepared.

For The Environment Report, I’m Tanya Ott.

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Congress Investigates Gulf Oil Spill

  • One area the investigation will focus on is whether the blowout prevention and emergency shutoff devices had been tested and properly maintained for use at the drilling facility.(Photo courtesy of the US Mineral Management Service)

Next week Congress will hold what’s likely to be the first of many hearings on the drilling rig explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Lester Graham reports this is just the latest Congressional investigation into BP’s operations.

Transcript

Next week Congress will hold what’s likely to be the first of many hearings on the drilling rig explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Lester Graham reports this is just the latest Congressional investigation into BP’s operations.

Congressman Bart Stupak chairs the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. He says you can add this oil spill in the Gulf to several oil spills on Alaska’s North Slope and the refinery explosion that killed 15 people in Texas City in 2005. He says earlier this year he fired off a letter about billions of dollars in budget cuts BP just recently made.

“We wanted to make sure these cuts don’t negatively affect the safety of the workers or the environment. I mean, we put that in writing to them in January. And when I heard about the blow-out and the fire down there and the accident, they didn’t have to tell me the company that was bitten by this. I just figured it was BP.”

Stupak’s subcommittee will be questioning BP officials, the drilling rig operators, TransOcean, and Halliburton which did maintenance work on the rig.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Oil Spill Cleanup Seeks Volunteers

  • Until they work out the logistic challenges that go along with hosting out-of-town volunteers, organizations are looking for people who are locally based, who are easily within driving distance and may be able to contribute a day’s worth of work.(Photo courtesy of the NOAA)

No one really knows how many thousands of barrels of oil have gushed from the British Petroleum pipeline on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. But, the environmental damage is expected to be astounding. Lester Graham reports… Gulf Coast groups are preparing for the worst.

Transcript

No one really knows how many thousands of barrels of oil have gushed from the British Petroleum pipeline on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. But, the environmental damage is expected to be astounding. Lester Graham reports… Gulf Coast groups are preparing for the worst.

The Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana is a consortium of environmental groups trying to coordinate volunteers to help clean up the environmental damage to hit the coast.

Steven Peyronnin is Executive Director of the group.

“There is the potential that we may need volunteers for extended periods of time–for weeks, but certainly there are challenges to arranging logistical and housing support for that. So, in the interim we are looking for people who are locally based, who are easily within driving distance and may be able to contribute a day’s worth of work.”

Right now they’re in need of people with HazMat training, but anyone can register to volunteer. The website is crcl.org.

You can also volunteer for clean-up at volunteerlouisiana.gov.

They’ll likely be looking for volunteers for months.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Oil Spill Worse by the Day

  • The gulf region is the world's largest producer of oysters and shrimp(Photo courtesy of the NOAA)

When an oil rig off the coast of Louisiana exploded last week, gulf coast officials knew they had a problem on their hands. But as Tanya Ott reports from Alabama, everyday they find it’s worse than they originally thought.

Transcript

When an oil rig off the coast of Louisiana exploded last week, gulf coast officials knew they had a problem on their hands. But as Tanya Ott reports from Alabama, everyday they find it’s worse than they originally thought.

It’s estimated more than 200-thousand gallons of oil are spewing out of the well each day. Cleaning up using chemicals causes problems because it might make it easier for marine animals to eat the oil. Burning the oil on the water is not great either. Casi Callaway is with the environmental group Mobile Baykeeper.

“The air quality impacts from it and therefore the health impacts from it are great – and frankly unknown.”

It’s not just an environmental crisis. It’s an economic crisis. This area is the world’s largest producer of oysters and shrimp. And the pristine gulf coast beaches fuel a tourism industry worth 20-billion dollars a year.

For the Environment Report, I’m Tanya Ott.

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Decision Coming on Cape Wind

  • Bill Eddy of East Falmouth, Massachusetts, built his own schooner, and would one day soon like to sail through the proposed wind farm known as Cape Wind. (Photo by Curt Nickisch)

A decade-long fight over a proposed wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts could be over soon. It’s called Cape Wind. U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says he will make a decision by the end of April. What would be the nation’s first offshore wind farm is bigger than a simple “not in my backyard” issue. It has divided communities and even neighbors. Curt Nickisch met two people, who’ve come down on opposite sides – both for environmental reasons.

Transcript

A decade-long fight over a proposed wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts could be over soon. It’s called Cape Wind. U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says he will make a decision by the end of April.

What would be the nation’s first offshore wind farm is bigger than a simple “not in my backyard” issue. It has divided communities and even neighbors. Curt Nickisch met two people, who’ve come down on opposite sides – both for environmental reasons.

At 63-years-old, Bill Eddy has old-man-and-the-sea white hair. He’s been sailing all his life, including the waters where the 130 wind turbines would go up more than five miles offshore. He knows the wind’s power. And he’s willing to give up part of the horizon he loves for clean energy.

“I have a firm, firm belief. We may have to for one generation be willing to sacrifice a very small portion of a coastal sea off the coast of Massachusetts. To launch this new future.”

Cape Wind would generate three-quarters of the electricity used by Cape Cod and the islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. Bill says it’s time for residents here to share in the sacrifice for the energy that drives modern life.

“Consider for just a moment the sacrifice that’s already being made by the thousands of our fellow American citizens who live where their mountains are being removed for coal. Or what about the thousands of American men and women who are serving overseas to protect the places where the oil is that we import? To be honest with you, the 130 turbines of the wind farm, I’d prefer any one of them to one more marker in Arlington National Cemetery.”

“It’s not going to make any difference, this one wind farm.”

Martha Powers is just as passionate about Cape Wind, but she’s against it. She lives by the water, too.

“So this was a summer cottage, my Dad bought it in 1958.”

As a kid, Martha spent summers here. Now she’s a librarian with graying hair. She keeps binoculars by the back porch for birdwatching.

“This project would tear a big hole in that whole web of life there that could never be repaired. It would tear a hole that big under the ocean, all of the animals that live in the ocean beneath that water, and that fly above that water, it would be horrific. I can almost see it, like a bomb, to me, it feels.”

Mainly, Martha’s worried about the birds that will be killed by the spinning blades of the wind turbines. Her Christmas card this year was a photo of a chickadee perched on her finger.

“When you feel those little feet on your hand, trusting. It’s an amazing experience. So to kill them is just such a horrible thought. That’s the hardest thing for me to accept about this project.”

A few miles away, Cape Wind supporter Bill Eddy says it would be hard for him to accept the project not going forward.

“I know, I just know that, in a year or so, I’ll be able to go out to the wind farm. The wind in my sails and the winds in the blades of the turbine, that something very old and something very new is bringing about a most wondrous evolution.”

Whether that evolution starts off of Cape Cod will be up to someone in Washington. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says the nation will move ahead with wind farms off the East Coast. But since people like Bill Eddy and Martha Powers can’t agree, Salazar will decide whether Nantucket Sound is the right place to start.

For The Environment Report, I’m Curt Nickisch.

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If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Eat ‘Em

  • Every march, the Cownose Stingrays migrate into the Chesapeake Bay from the Atlantic. They come to give birth, mate, and eat. (Photo courtesy of NOAA)

We like seafood – a lot. Many
species are disappearing. That’s
causing a ripple effect that’s
changing the patterns of sea creatures.
In the Cheseapeake Bay, it’s an invasion
of stingrays. The cownose stingray
is eating oysters that are commercially
raised there. Some people say: if
you can’t beat them, eat them. Sabri
Ben-Achour has the story:

Transcript

We like seafood – a lot. Many
species are disappearing. That’s
causing a ripple effect that’s
changing the patterns of sea creatures.
In the Cheseapeake Bay, it’s an invasion
of stingrays. The cownose stingray
is eating oysters that are commercially
raised there. Some people say: if
you can’t beat them, eat them. Sabri
Ben-Achour has the story:

In a little boat just off shore of Virginia’s Cone River, AJ Erskine leans overboard. He is using 20-foot poles with gaping jaws full of long needle like teeth to scrape the bottom of the emerald colored river.

“These things are called hand tongs.”

Up comes a pile of oysters. They’re only about a year old.

“We don’t feel comfortable giving them more than one year of a chance.”

That’s because Erskine is worried about stingrays, specifically Cownose Rays. Every march, the winged sea creatures migrate into the bay from the Atlantic. They come to give birth, mate, and eat.

“What they do is flap their wings, put the oysters in a pile, and crunch the shells, and they go through a seed bed of oysters in a weekend.”

Erskine says it’s become a huge problem for oyster farmers.

The rays also damage the underwater environment. They uproot aquatic grasses, destroying nurseries for fish and blue crabs.

Some biologists believe there are more rays because a main predator – the shark – has been overfished out in the Atlantic. Tiger Sharks in this area have declined 99% over the past 30 years.

Other biologists say it’s that strict limits on fishing in the Chesapeake Bay have meant fewer rays caught accidentally in giant nets. Whatever the reason, oyster farmers are looking for a way to control the rays.

A hundred miles inland, in Richmond, Mead Amery thinks he has a solution.

“Depending on how you prepare it, it’s delicious.”

Avery is a seafood distributor. He and officials with the State of Virginia want you to try stingray.

“The texture is wonderful, it has a veal pork type of texture.”

It’s been a tough sell so far.

“People hear ray and think, ‘I don’t wanna eat that!’”

Marketers are trying hard though. They don’t call it Cownose Ray but rather Chesapeake Ray. They’re pushing the ray in restaurants from Virginia to Japan. And it may take off – after all, lobsters used to be considered insects of the sea and only the poor ate them. The popular Chilean Sea Bass used to be a nuisance by-catch.

But, while those cases offer hope for marketers, they carry warnings for environmentalists. Both Sea Bass and Maine lobsters were dangerously overfished because of their popularity. Bob fisher is a biologist with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. He knows full well there are risks involved in going after stingrays.

“You remove a top predator like that from the food chain, we don’t know what the repercussions would be.”

He says stingrays are slow to mature and give birth to only one offspring at a time. And no one even knows how many there are. But Fisher is still very much open to the idea of harvesting the rays given the problems they seem to be causing for oyster growers.

“I look at things that are in our oceans as resources, it’s our responsibility to take care of our resources, but it’s also a resource that’s there that can be, and I believe should be, utilized for humans.”

Fisher is working with the Marine Products Board, and the Department of Agriculture to come up with a plan to strictly limit fishing of the ray to what’s sustainable.

So, if the whole thing is successful, you might find Chesapeake Ray on a plate near you.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sabri Ben-Achour.

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Sea Levels Threaten Coastal Towns (Part Two)

  • A living shoreline near the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. The native grasses and sandy shore provide habitat for terrapins, the University of Maryland mascot. (Photo by Tamara Keith)

Scientists are pretty certain climate change is going to cause the sea level to rise. It’s
happening already, actually. In communities around the Chesapeake Bay, people are
getting a sneak preview. Tamara Keith reports some people there are trying to work with
nature rather than resist it:

Transcript

Scientists are pretty certain climate change is going to cause the sea level to rise. It’s
happening already, actually. In communities around the Chesapeake Bay, people are
getting a sneak preview. Tamara Keith reports some people there are trying to work with
nature rather than resist it:

(sound of kids planting)

It’s been raining in Woodland Beach. The community is just off of the Chesapeake Bay
in Maryland. The ground here is so soft you sink into it. Mud is everywhere. And that’s
just fine with the volunteers planting native grasses on a sloping hillside.

Stephen Hult is trying to keep things in order.

“And when we plant them we want them all the way down. I’m telling everyone twice.”

Hult heads up shoreline restoration projects for the local property owners association.
And there’s a lot of shoreline to restore.

“The shoreline, in parts of the community since the 1930s, have eroded 20 feet. Year to
year, one barely notices, but if you look at aerial maps of what it used to be like
compared to what it is, it really is quite dramatic.”

There’s been tons of erosion here. The land all along the mid-Atlantic coast is also
slowly sinking. Combine that with global sea level rise and you get erosion in overdrive.

Hult says the community is trying to restore the beach with rock and dirt and sand and
grasses to hold it all together. This is what’s called a living shoreline.

“We have now, with this project it will be well over half a mile of living shorelines that
we’ve installed.”

It’s a relatively new concept, a more natural approach to the gnawing problem of
shoreline erosion. Living shorelines create buffer between the water and homes. They are
kinda like the tidal wetlands that used to be here – before property owners started building
sea walls, also called bulkheads.

Jana Davis is associate director of the Chesapeake Bay Trust. It’s one of the organizations
funding this shoreline restoration. And Davis also happens to live here.

“It’s a wonderful alternative that provides just as good shoreline protection while also
providing a lot of really important habitat benefits that a bulkhead or rock sea wall does
not provide.”

Good for wildlife, and she says, it’s adaptive in the face of sea level rise.

“If sea level were to rise another foot, for example. The marsh could kind of migrate
inland, whereas if you had a bulkhead obviously there’s no migration because it can’t
move.”

But most of the people with bulkheads are NOT buying it. They want to protect their
property from the sinking land and rising water, and a lot of them don’t think a bunch of
rocks and grass are going to cut it.

Kevin Smith is chief of restoration services for the Maryland Department of Natural
Resources.

“There’s many places you can go and look at miles of shoreline and not see any natural
shoreline at all. It’s all armored off.”

Smith met me at a nature center along the bay. A few years ago, a stretch of bulkhead
here was replaced with a living shoreline. The natural ebb and flow of these shorelines
has made some property owners skeptical. They want the shoreline to stay put.

“If these types of projects don’t protect that shoreline from erosion, then homeowners are
not going to want to do it.”

But Smith insists these projects do work, and long term they’re going to be more
sustainable and more flexible than bulkheads – which over time will lose the battle
against the constant pounding of the rising sea.

For The Environment Report, I’m Tamara Keith.

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Sea Levels Threaten Coastal Towns (Part One)

  • The boardwalk in Ocean City, Maryland. Before beach replenishment, you could get your feet wet standing underneath the boardwalk. Now, as you can see, the water is 200 feet away. (Photo by Tamara Keith)

It’s beach weather – and along the mid-Atlantic one of the most popular beaches is Ocean
City, Maryland. For years, engineers have been battling back the ocean to save the beach
and the town. And as Tamara Keith reports, that fight is only going to get tougher and
more expensive if predictions of sea level rise from climate change become a reality:

Transcript

It’s beach weather – and along the mid-Atlantic one of the most popular beaches is Ocean
City, Maryland. For years, engineers have been battling back the ocean to save the beach
and the town. And as Tamara Keith reports, that fight is only going to get tougher and
more expensive if predictions of sea level rise from climate change become a reality:

When the sea level rises, Ocean City feels it. It’s on the front lines – a barrier island on
the edge of the Atlantic.

(sounds of water)

Terry McGean is the city engineer for a town he describes as a working class resort.

“Our industry is tourism, and the real reason people come here is the beach.”

But in the 1980s, that beach was reduced to a narrow strip. Not so today, all thanks to a
massive, and expensive, beach replenishment project. In 1991 countless tons of sand
were brought in, dunes were built. But that wasn’t the end of it.

To keep up with erosion, McGean says the beach here at Ocean City has already been re-
nourished 4 times.

“Approximately every 4 years we’re doing a re-nourishment project. To give you an idea
of the scale, that’s 100,000 truck loads of material that we’ll put on here. Though it
doesn’t actually come on a truck? No. It’s pumped in a dredge from out in the ocean.”

It is a constant fight, because the waves keep coming, keep pulling the sand back out to
sea. Scientists say this is partially just normal erosion. But some of it at least can be
blamed on global climate change and sea level rise. Over time, they say, the share of the
problem caused by climate change will grow.

“If you hadn’t done the beach replenishment do you have any sense of what this would
look like right now. There probably would have been no public beach left in many of
these areas.”

So far fending off the sea has cost $90-million, split amongst local, state and federal tax
dollars. But engineers estimate some $240-million in storm damage has been prevented.

“Holding back the sea is an economic proposition. If you’re willing to spend the money,
the sand exists to elevate any given barrier island.”

Jim Titus is the project manager for sea level rise at the Environmental Protection
Agency. And he’s been sounding the alarm about climate change for years. And he says
policy makers and the public will eventually have to decide which beaches, which
communities are worth saving.

“The challenge for communities like Ocean City is to persuade everyone else that they
are one of those cities that are too important to give up. And then to get their residents to
cooperate in doing what it takes to do to gradually elevate the entire community with a
rising sea.”

But if you think in geologic time, like University of Maryland professor Michael Kearney
does, there isn’t a whole lot of hope for barrier islands like Ocean City.

“It’s essentially a pile of sand. There’s really nothing permanent about it.”

Kearney studies coastal processes.

“The long term prospect of any barrier surviving the projected rates of sea level rise, even
at the moderate rates – the so-called moderate rates, that the IPCC predicted is pretty
slim.”

Ocean City engineer Terry McGean just isn’t buying it. He thinks Ocean City can survive
sea level rise.

“I think that we can design towards it and we can probably build towards it and with
responsible actions we can live with it.”

As long as there’s enough sand and money to keep it going.

For The Environment Report, I’m Tamara Keith.

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Rare Right Whale Recorded

  • Only two Right Whales have been spotted in the last 50 years off the southern tip of Greenland (Photo courtesy of NOAA)

Scientist think they’ve found
a rare whale in a place where
they thought they were wiped
out. Sadie Babits reports,
they haven’t seen the whale
but they’ve heard it:

Transcript

Scientist think they’ve found
a rare whale in a place where
they thought they were wiped
out. Sadie Babits reports,
they haven’t seen the whale
but they’ve heard it:

Scientists thought the North Atlantic Right Whale
was gone. Only two of them have been spotted in
the last 50 years off the southern tip of Greenland.

But some underwater microphones picked up right
whale calls.

“They sound like mmmmmmick… kind of like that.”

That’s David Mellinger. He teaches at Oregon State
University.

He says they recorded more than two
thousand right whale calls in a year. That doesn’t
mean there are a lot of the whales, but Mellinger
says hearing any in the North Atlantic is significant.

“Because the population is so endangered. There
are only 300-350 maybe right whales in the world.
So finding any new whales is important.”

But there is a concern. As the Arctic Ice Cap
melts because of global warming, more ships are
expected to pass through the area. That could
mean ships could strike and kill the few right
whales that are left.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sadie Babits.

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The Legacy of the Exxon Valdez

  • 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.

For The Environment Report, I’m Ann Dornfeld.

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