In a faraway state
Cold- and ht-water washings were rhe usual method of cleanup on most heavily oiled Prince Wi
By Stanton S. Miller The state of Alaska has the dual responsibility of being the oil baron for the United States and the keeper of some of the largest national parks, forests, and wildlie refuges in the world. The last outposts of wild and scenic public lands in the world are in Alaska, including the Katami National Park and Preserve on Views are insightful commentaries on timely environmental topics, represent an author's opinion, and do not necessarily represent a position of the sofiery or editors. Corurasting views are invited.
the Alaska Peninsula, the Kenai Fjords National Park, the Kenai National Wildl i e Refuge, and the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge on Kodiak Island. Alaska has more national parks than any other state. It has 12 public marine parks dotted throughout Rince William Sound and about 30 parks in other paas of the state, and its islands contain over 2000 miles of shoreline. It is home to wildlife such as grizzly bears, seals, sea lions, otters, whales, and many species of birds. Fisheries in Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska are the foundation of the area's economy. Commercial fishing in that area alone is a $200 mil-
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lion business. Statewide, fishing is the largest employer of Alaskans. Following the discovery of oil at h d h o e Bay and the sale of $900 million of state oil and gas leases in 1968, Congress authorized conshuction of the pipeline in 1973. Construction was completed in 1977. Currently, about 1.8 million barrels of North Slope crude oil are delivered daily by the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline System, an 800-milelong, privately owned pipeline running from Prudhoe Bay to the Port of Valdez. It has been estimated that 75 tankers come in and out of Valdez every month, to ship this crude oil to US. refineries.
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Alaska supplies about 25% of the oil used by the United States, or 1/8 of the oil used here daily. The export of Alaskan crude oil to other nations is prohib-
miles away. Currently, six state parks have oil on beaches; 13 state parks initially were impacted with oil.
point at which the plan stated that a spill of more than 200,000 barrels would be picked u p n o more than 3000 barrels had been recovered. The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation (ADEC) was so concerned that it requested the Coast Guard to determine if the spill response function should be taken from Alyeska and put under the Coast Guard’s command. The Coast Guard declined to do that, determining that the responsible party, Exxon, was still aying to respond. Perhaps it was more fiscally prudent for the Coast Guard to allow a multibilliondollar corporation such as Exxon to continue some kind of response, rather than taking on a job for which the Coast Guard did not have adequate financial resources. Under federal law, a spiller is in charge of the response until he either quits or fails. When an oil spill occurs. the fmt thing the Coast Guard does is to determine who is responsible. If a spiU occurs and the responsible party decides that it can pay for the response and that it wants to direct the response, then it has the legal right to do so. As long as the spiller, in the Coast Guard‘s opinion,
ited by an act of Congress. (Some oil The inadequate response Cleanup responses were not adequate. goes to Panama, to the east coast, and around Cape Hom to St. Croix in the The U.S. Coast Guard is in charge of overseeing spill cleanup in federal waVirgin Islands.) Then the unspeakable happened. The ters. Under state law, the Alyeska Pipefully laden tanker Exxon Valdez ran line Service Company is responsible for aground on Bligh Reef in Prince all immediate response to a spill in the William Sound, about 25 miles from area. (This consortium is made up of the Valdez, shortly after midnight on March oil companies involved in the North 24, 1989. The grounding on the rocks Slope oil fields: British Petroleum 50%. tore open eight of the 11 cargo tanks on Exxon and Arc0 each 20%; several oil the vessel. Nearly 11 million gallons of concems share the remaining 10%. these oil hit one of the nation’s pristine and percentages are not necessarily equivasensitive environments in about 5 hours. lent to the amount of oil e x m t e d by Twenty percent of the oil on board each company, although this was origispilled into the Sound. The incident was nally the idea.) Alyeska was indeed “mobilizing” equipment, but it was not the biggest oil spill in U.S. history. The impact of the spilled oil has been getting to the oil site. For example, the followed diligently by all affected par- barge that was supposed to be loaded ties, but the total assessment of damages and ready was not loaded at the time of cannot yet be prepared. Many lawsuits the accident. Loading and deployment were filed after this oil spill; lawyers took four times longer than the consorand the courts will be involved with tium’s oil spill emergency response plan charges and countercharges for the next called for. Skimmers and booms did not 20 years. Fishermen were getting their arrive at the site until nearly 18 hours nets ready when the oil came, prevent- after the grounding. After 70 b o d e ing most fishing. The few fish caught were not considered safe to eat. This year, fishermen in Cordova, a small town east of Valdez, have been barred h m setting shrimp pots in an area of Prince William Sound because of oil sheen sightings. The emergency order stated that the fishery was closed “since shrimp gear is often left unattended for several days, and oil exists in quantity which presents an appreciable likelihood of contaminating gear and product.” Weather conditions were nearly ideal during the fmt 60 hours of the spill. The wind velocity was no more than 5 knots, visibility was excellent, seas were calm. In brief, conditions were perfect for conducting mechanical cleanup with booms and skimmers. The oil remaining in the Exxon Valdez was beiig off-loaded to another ship. (As damaging as the Exxon Valdez spiU was, it is worth noting that only 20%of its oil was spilled.) Af+Valdez ter three days a violent storm came through the area, moving the oil comIiii-P!!!.~ pletely out of control. Between March 31 and April 6 a p proximately 2 million gallons of oil esc m from Prince William Sound into the Gulf of Alaska. By mid-May the outer coast of the Kenai Peninsula, a Gulf of Alaska steep, extremely rugged coast of fjords, rough seas, high peaks, and abundant wildlife, was heavily oiled. Also by NWR-National Wildllfe Refuge mid-May oil was entering Resurrection NP-National Park Bay, about 75 air miles from Bligh SOUMI: Alaska Airines Travel Allas. Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. and National Park Service. Reef, the grounding site; the mouth of Cook Inlet 200 miles away; and Kodiak Island and the Alaska Peninsula 500
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is making a legitimate effort to respond, the spiller-not the government-is in charge. Moreover, the spiller stays in charge until he feels that he cannot do any more, or until the Coast Guard decides the spiller is doing a poor job. Congress approved this arrangement under the assumption that if a shipper knows he will have to pay for and direct the response to an oil spill, he will act conservatively and carefully.
oil into tiny droplets that sink below the surface and gradually are degraded by the natural action of microbes. The disadvantage of dispersants is that they do not work in calm water; wave action is needed to mix them with the spilled oil. Cold- and hot-water washings from a variety of devices were the standard on most of the heavily hit beaches within Prince William Sound and along parts of the Kenai Peninsula coast. ADEC estimated that the washing of the surface picks up about 20-25% of the oil actually on the beaches, but that its highpressure hosing can actually drive oil deeper into the substrate. A manual cleanup technique was also used on the Alaska oil spill; tons of oiled beach sediments were bagged up to be buried in a special landfiil in Oregon.
The impacts
For Alaskans who gain their livelihoods on the sea, the impact of the Exxon Valdez oil spill was felt not only in Prince William Sound, but hundreds of miles away. In all, 1244 miles of shoreline were contaminated with oil, including 311 miles in Prince William Sound, 100 miles on the Kenai Peninsula, and 833 miles on the Alaska Peninsula and Kodiak Peninsula. Of the 257,000 barrels of oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez (10.8 million gallons) the statistics showed that approximately 65,000 barrels of oil-water emulsion were recovered and 77,100 barrels of oil evaporated, leaving 114.000 barrels of unrecovered oil in Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska, according to the state statistics. The unrecovered oil amounts to six million to seven million gallons. It is surprising that there has been no scientific paper published on impacts of the spill, with one exception. This paper, “The Immediate Impact of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill on Marine Buds,” whose senior author is John Pian of the US. Fish & Wildliie Service, appeared in The Auk, a scientific quarterly of the American Ornithologists’ Union. It reported that more than 30,000 dead birds of 90 species were retrieved from polluted areas by August I, 1989. Another 7,000 birds were retrieved between August 1 and October 13, but most of those buds appeared to have died from natural causes. Based on aerial and ship-based surveys for populations at risk, and extrapolating from the number of dead buds recovered, these authors estimated that the total kill from oil pollution was from 100,OOO to 300,000 birds. This is the largest sea bird kill caused by an oil spill ever reported. The impact on fishing has not been reliably reported.
In Alaska bioremediation began on August 1, 1989. The process of bimmediation uses naturally present microorganisms to degrade oil. First proposed by the federal EPA, bioremediation involves spreadmg fertilizer on beaches. The fertilizer enhances the growth of oil-eating bacteria that already live on the beaches. At the end of the first summer of cleanup last year, results were encouraging, but not conclusive. In February 1990 EPA solicited responses for bioremediation cleanup. Thirty-nine proposals were submitted. Hap Pritchard, the EPA official in charge of bioremediation, met with the microbiology research community in Anchorage to recommend a list of pmducts for further testing. Last year, Exxon spent about $2 billion on cleanup and is expected to spend $35 million this year. Before this year’s cleanup which started on May 1, survey teams conducted the Spring Shoreline Assessment. These teams of Exxon, 66 ADEC, and Coast Guard personnel visited shorelines in Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska. The survey of the shoreline coincided with daylightoccurring low tides. The team concluded that in some instances high-energy beaches, where. winds and waves have the greatest effect, were found to contain less oil than low-energy beaches, which showed little improvement since last year’s cleanup. Oil that penetrated the surface of beaches has not been as greatly affected by weathering or by winter storm turnover of beach sediments, according to ADEC reports. This subsurface oiling persists in many locations. Some beaches are still heavily contaminated with oil only a few inches below the surface despite their improved surface conditions, an ADEC spokesman said. Other ADEC The nonmechanical methods of clean- r e p m point out that on some beaches, up include dispersants and bioremedia- the upper layer of sand, gravel, and tion. In last summer’s cleanup, Exxon mks is turned over and replaced continused COREXIT 9580, a chemical man- uously by strong wave action, which can ufactured by Exxon, which is a proc- bury the oil-contaminated surface under essed kerosene with other cleaners add- a layer of clean sediments. ed to it. This material failed to address The nature of the oil has changed. Oil the sticky problem of subsurface oil. remaining on the beach surfaces has beThe Research and Development com- come less liquid and less mobile, ADEC mittee which advised on the cleanup workers reported. Surface oil charactertechniques concluded that COREXIT istics have changed from pooled oil and would raise more problems that it would “mousse” (a thick oil-water emulsion) solve. State and federal agencies con- to tar,asphalt, and stains. However, subcluded that if a neutral substancesurface oil in many cases is still gooey water-worked about as well as a chem- and liquia; it has not weathered to asical, it made more environmental sense phalt as has oil on the surface. to use water. Bimediation appears to work on oil This year’s agenda spills. Albugh bioremediation is not at Both Exxon and ADEC repsentatives all new, it has never been used this exten- agree that this year hw\rment techniques sively in the case of a marine oil spill. and the number of people used probably However, bioremediation has been used will be very different from the cleanup in land spill treatment routinely for years. effort launched last year. The vast major-
It is surprising that there has been no scientific paper published on impacts of the spill, with one exception.”
The teehnologies There are some technologies for cleaning up spilled oil. They include booms and skimmers, dispersants, bumiog, and bioremediation. Mechanical cleanup with booms and skimmers always is preferable when conditions, such as calm seas, favor it. The use of dispersants by spraying them on oil spills from planes or boats breaks up the 1200 Environ. Sci. Technol.. Vol. 24, No. 9, 1990
ity of free oil Id on the shorelines is b e low the surface and CBnnOt be removed with the techniques used last year. In a letter to the spill’s federal on-site coordinator, Alaska Environmental Conservation Commissioner Dennis Kelso said that this year’s cleanup must focus on three things: first, remove as much oil as possible using techniques that will produce the best long-term recovery; second, continue the damage assessment studies, using the best scientific methods available; and third,implement a strong resource restoration program. The overa l l goal, Kelso said, is to achieve longterm recovery of the area. “As much as possible, we should bring the resource and the people who have been affected by this spill back to their p s p i l l condition. We don’t want to limit ourselves to any single technique. We need to tailor the treatment techniques to actual conditions on the shoreline.”
Changes A number of changes have been proposed by the state to cope better with an oil spill. The state now requires escort vessels to accompany laden tankers through PrinceWilliam Sound, radio contact must be maintained between the tanker and the authority of the port of Valdez; crew members must be tested to ensw that they m not impaid hy alcohol or drugs; and a variety of other measures to prevent spills must be taken. Also, the state has required Alyeska PipAiie Service Cmpany to increase immediately the equipment and staffing of their spill response facilities so that they can pick up l0,oOO barrels per hour. As the treatment proceeds in thii second summer of cleanup, we watch as the number of people and the treatment techniques change to clean up aged oil. lhe oil spill story is far from over. The cleanup job is not fmished. The Studies of effects on people, wildlife, fisheries, and tourism continue.
Looking ahead An important lesson to be learned from recent oil spills is that all spills are different. Is there an oil spill SWAT team that would have the experience, equipment, and know-how to clean up any spill, fromany tanker, in any water, on MYbeach, at any time, in the UNted States? No. In the world? Fmbably not. me way the United States will handle the next spill, and the next, has not changed much. Contingency plans offer false expectations when the real spill is on the water and needs cleanup. Acknowledgment The author gratefull acknowledges the suggestions of AD& representative L. J. Evans in Anchorage, Alaska.
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Alaska’s oil spill: Details are forthcoming The story of the Exxon VaMez oil spill is far from over; the cleanup and damage assessments are unfinished. On May 15 and 16, Jerry Schnoor, a member of the ES&T advisory board, and managing editor Stan Miller visited Anchorage and went on shoreline tours provided by Exxon’s Russel Tait and Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation (ADEC) Commissic er Dennis Kelso. Starting in Januz 1991, this journal will begin a fivupart series of articles on this oil spill. After discussing the series with prospective authors, Schnoor invited the following articles for the series. Oil spill response and clea Dennis Kelso, ADEC Oil spill scientific studies AI Maki, Exxon * Bioremediation research and e ciency Hap Pritchard, EPA * Oil spill response techno ies William Westermeyer, 0 ice Technology Assessment * Fate and trans ort modeling the Exxon Vabez oil s ill
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Additional readings and sources of information Alaskan Oil Spill Bioremediation Project; Office of R&D, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: Washington, DC; EPA/600/8-89/073, August, 1989. Davidson, A. In the Wake of the Exxon Valder: The Devastating Impact of the Alaska Oil Spill; Sierra Book Club San Francisco, 1990. Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Information Packet; State of Alaska Office of the Governor; September 1989. Oil Spill Chronicle (weekly puhlication of the ADEC); 2(7), Feb. 13, 1990; 2(11),March20, 1990;2(12),March27, 1990; 2(18), May 29, 1990. Piatt, J. F. et al. The Auk 1990, 107, 387-97. State of Alaska; News Release No. 90-47; March 23, 1990. US. Congress, M i c e of Technology Assessment. “Coping With an Oiled Sea: An Analysis of Oil Response Technologies”; OTA-BP-0-63; Washington, D.C.: US. Govemment Printing Office, March 1990.
Stanton S.Miller is the managing editor of ES&T.
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