A Nasty Spill

When a South Korean-owned cargo ship struck a tower supporting the San Francisco Bay Bridge last Wednesday, ripping a large gash in its hull, the United States Coast Guard first estimated that 140 gallons of fuel had leaked into San Francisco Bay. More than 12 hours later, the Coast Guard announced that in fact 58,000 gallons of a thick, gummy product known as "bunker oil" had gushed into the bay, making the collision of the Cosco Busan the worst oil spill in the region in more than a decade. As the oil slick spreads beyond the Golden Gate Bridge, killing waterfowl and fish, elected officials, including Senators Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Mayor Gavin Newsom have blasted the response from the shipping company and from the Coast Guard. Adm. Thad Allen, the Coast Guard commandant, said after touring the area that the delays in reporting and containing the spill were caused by "errors of omission." Federal officials said Monday they may bring criminal charges against the ship's operators. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the vessel's pilot has been involved in four ship-handling incidents (including one grounding) in recent years. Meanwhile, environmental groups are scrambling to assist in the efforts to clean what has now become a vast area of northern California's ecologically delicate ocean and shoreline. Sejal Choksi is an attorney with the nonprofit environmental watchdog group San Francisco Baykeeper. After inspecting the damage from the spill, she spoke with NEWSWEEK's Karen Breslau. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: What progress is being made in the cleanup?
Sejal Choksi: Over the weekend we had 4,000 to 5,000 people offering to help out. Then we had these [government] agencies saying, "Don't come out to the beaches. You will get in the way. You aren't trained to handle hazardous materials or injured wildlife." So we ended up with people coming out to their favorite beaches anyway, trying to do what they could. The park officials and police would come, and some would cite people, or some would turn a blind eye, because they could see the work wasn't getting done. Baykeeper has been asking for volunteer training for our members, and we didn't get it until today. Hopefully, it's not too late to get people out there to make a difference.

Bay Area officials pride themselves on being prepared for disaster. Yet in this case there's been confusion since the beginning of the incident. What happened?
The on-the-ground implementation just seemed to fall apart. When there is this type of accident, the oil gushes out very fast, the bulk in the first half hour. If we had had the shipping company put out booms to [contain] the spilled oil in first half hour, we would have been in better shape. The Coast Guard took about two hours to get to the scene with a cleanup boat.

Your organization sent out a boat shortly after the spill to assess the damage. What did you find?
We were out there looking at the damage and able to identify areas where no cleanups were happening, but there was lots of oil. We called a hotline [set up by the shipping company] to report these areas, and the hotline number sent us to the claims department, and the poor woman said, "I have no idea what to do. I have been getting these calls of yours. All I can do is fill out a claim form, and it takes two weeks to get a cleanup [vessel]." They finally did set up a real hotline, but that was four days later. It's been kind of a mess.

How important was underestimating the volume of the spill?
This happened at 8:30 a.m., but [the Coast Guard] said 140 gallons and people said, "That's too bad." There was no emergency response triggered. That didn't happen for another 12 or 13 hours. Immediately public health and city officials around the bay should have activated. If there had been a timely response, the oil would have been contained in a small area. This bunker fuel is the heaviest, dirtiest fuel—it's the dregs left over from the refining process. It's thick and tarry, with a consistency like chewing gum. This is some bad stuff. Within 13 or 14 hours this has been able to spread outside the Golden Gate and foul oceanside beaches as well.

The powerful currents in San Francisco Bay have made this spill even worse.
The spill occurred at high tide and then was flushed out of the bay over the next 12 to 23 hours. Then oil came back in with the tide, covering the Marin shoreline.