Angler's Oil Spill Stories Along the Del.River

[NIGHTSTRIKES]

Anglers irate as favorite spot ruined
'This makes me sick,' fisherman says

By VICTOR GRETO / The News Journal

11/30/2004
PAULSBORO, N.J. -- John Pearce didn't need the news in the papers or on the TV telling him it had happened to his river again.

When the laid-off boilermaker and avid fisherman left his home in Paulsboro - about 20 miles from Wilmington - to go after striped bass in the Delaware Bay on Saturday morning, he saw helicopters hovering overhead. Then he saw a large ship listing. And he knew.

"I've been living here for 35 years," he said Monday morning, staring off toward the Pennsylvania coastline from a sludgy, rocky, littered and oil-soaked New Jersey beach. "I knew it happened again. This river was just getting back on its feet."

The air was pungent with the smell of crude oil. From Pearce's vantage point in the back yard of a friend's home on the Delaware River, across the water from Philadelphia International Airport, streaks of oil dappled and smeared the water. In the sunlight, they were almost beautiful, like an abstract painting.

To Pearce's right, the Philadelphia skyline framed the long black hull of the Athos I tanker, alone in the water. Less than three days earlier, the tanker had spilled an estimated 30,000 gallons of crude oil into the Delaware River.

"When I was a kid, I used to swim in this water," said Pearce's friend, Kim Parker.

Pearce and Parker were sad, but they were also angry.

"We were just going to fish the stripers," Pearce said. "Not anymore."

Bob Kelly, a retired civil servant who has lived in nearby National Park, N.J., for more than 40 years, said he fished every day. Or used to.

"This makes me sick," he said. "I don't even want to come down here."

But he did - just like several other moist-eyed anglers, curious residents, duck hunters and deer hunters with rifles slung over their shoulders - to see the desecration of a river that held fond memories and absorbed much of their recreational time.

"This part of the river was clear when I was a kid," said 63-year-old Joe Rile, a volunteer firefighter for the Gibbstown and Repaupo, N.J., fire departments.

"We used to keep our duck boats out here all winter and no one would bother them. Ever," he said.

At a place called Floodgates, N.J., just north of the Commodore Barry Bridge, the southernmost extent of the spill, Rile stood and watched as oil leaked through the gate into a tributary of the river called the Ditch.

Turning from the river toward the Ditch, where some of the best fishing is to be had, Rile's wizened face was downcast. "There are 20 square miles of creeks back here," he said. "There are no ducks around here now. Back in the '50s, '60s and '70s, it was loaded with ducks."

Pearce said he's seen fistfights between fishermen over this area of the river. "People from Delaware, Pennsylvania all come up here to fish, it's so good," he said.

By 2 p.m., workers from Fleet Environmental Services of Bethel, Conn., were cleaning up at the Center Street Ramp at National Park, across from the Kvaerner Philadelphia Shipyard.

Most, in yellow slickers, raked in oil-drenched branches, litter and leaves, filled up black plastic bags, and threw the bags into the back of a van.

Others spread treated sand across patches of oil that had stuck fast to the ramp. One hoisted a string of specially treated nylon pompoms across part of the river near the dock, absorbing the oil, curling it inward toward shore, where other workers raked it into the bags.

Back at Floodgates, Pearce wondered out loud why it took so long to begin the cleanup. He also questioned why the area around Floodgates was not boomed, or protected with absorbent hoselike devices to keep the water clean, and why the best fishing place in the area looked like a sea of oil.

"This is a sportsman's paradise," he said. "They waited three days. That's six tides. I won't be fishing around here for a long time."
http://www.delawareonline.com/newsjournal/local/2004/11/images/113783.jpg
http://www.delawareonline.com/newsjournal/local/2004/11/images/113958.jpg

[ 11-30-2004, 10:37 AM: Message edited by: NIGHTSTRIKES ]

[RedAtNight...]

I know everyone is resisting to post on this one b/c everyone feels the same way and this can go on and on and on ...
But humans are the only creatures on earth that not only don't ultimately contribute to the well being of our mother earth, but destroy it - ok, my "hippie" line said...
This is so damn discouraging. I realize that I'm a bit hypocritical here (I drive a gas powered vehicle, consume natural resources, etc...) but the state of our planet is quickly becoming a disgrace. From this "spill" aka cluster f***, to the progress report on the chesepeak, to the high mercury contaminants in most of the country's water (PA being the highest).
And the best answer they can give us is "it's not cost effective" to install cleaner running power generators or replace ships with better construction. No, rather, have the FDA issue guidelines for fish consumption. "We plan to roll out improved operations by 2012 that will reduce the amount of pollutants and such." BS!!
It's not "cost effective" for me to replace my catalytic converter around the holidays, but guess what - I don't do it, I can't drive it - talk about a double standard.
WTF
(by the way, if you read this you're bored at work or cared enough to keep reading, thanks for taking the time - just wanted to vent)

[dante413]

Well said, Red. I guess it was only a matter of time before something like this happened.

[slowly balding]

Has anyone heard what caused the two punctures in the hull? Do they still not mandate these tankers have double hulls? This is amazing, I used to dolegal work for the DEP and you would just not believe the stuff that we do to mess up where we live. It is sickening, they pursue and fine heavily over petty infractions but when it comes to somthing like this it is a relative slap on the risk. what a mess.
isn't it funny people crate train their dogs b/c a dog will not sh*t where it lives, then there is us, maybe they should be the ones training, i have never fished the delaware for striper but, i guess now i will not even have the chance if i wanted to.
one more question, does anyone know how the spill traveled north against the current, was it just the flowing of the tide or was it something peculiar to an oil slick

[Reel-ality]

Slowly balding, I thought I heard it was double hulled. I thought most of the Bay was sand and mud. Where could this have happened it was in the shipping lane?

Dave Isanski

[mch]

We need to get off of this oil, it's worse than crack, the technology's there, we just have to start to ween the economy off of it. It may take a long time but we have to start now. It'll clean up the environment & we can finally turn our backs on the mideast for good. They sell us this crap & look what it does to our landscape.

I fish the spring run in the del just about everyday after work. My April & May are now possibly ruined.

The company responsible probably will get a minor slap on the wrist. I'll bet if I went over & crapped all over some Exon/Sun/Sunoco, ect executives lawn the'd lock me up & throw away the key.

[NIGHTSTRIKES]

SlowlyBalding,
Welcome to the BassBarn.Com,
Glad To Have You Aboard........

I believe they are still unsure what exactly
punctured the hull, and I heard that starting
next year any tanker entering a U.S. Port will
be required to have a Double Hull...

[njvbass]

Sucks, It was just starting to get like the way it suppose to be. I was seeing Largemouth and Small mouth right in Timber creek. I even heard of some Musky Rumors.This just puts a damper on fishing. I was looking forward to the spring,and also next summer catching some huge Catfish.

[RedAtNight...]

A few different reports are blending here so this may be a bit spotty:
Since the Exxon Valdez accident, boats must be double hulled to enter the USA - BUT not until 2011!!! The exxon spill was in '89 (if I'm correct). So we knew of the danger and the repercussions and accepted to do nothing about it because (again) "it's not cost effective." If it was a global disaster in '89, then it must be a viable danger during our "grace period" of 22 years - un-freakin-believable.
It was a single hull ship carrying crude oil from Venezuala to a Citgo subsidiary located on the deleware. They blame the full moon and weather for moving the spill as much as it did. It was in a "shipping lane" and unfortunatley has entered multiple tributaries/creeks/ and marsh nesting grounds. They ran ships with very technilogically advanced sonar (whatever that means) and found nothing that would have disturbed the ship. The tug captains noticed the spill, they believe it happened near the dock. Although the river is dredged by the gov't, the dock and area is the responsibility of the owner (Citgo).
I don't get it!!!?????????
If an airbag MAY not deploy in a Honda, they recall the car and fix it at the cost of millions - why should this be any different.
Oh, and a representative of the greek shipping company stated "we havn't had an accident in 7 years, we think that's pretty good."
"With great power comes great responsibility" and no one in this industy want to be responsible

[pondbox]

men it never ends, pse@g 1 billon gallons in a 24 hour period premcor spi poly conective, dupont chambers works dupont edgemoor ferro, valero citco, sunoco, conocophillips and on up the river. its cheaper to pay the epa fines then stop dumping or sucking or the run off then lose their buisness waistwater treatment cooling reactors ect. big buisnes calls the shots in this country. they dont care about fish or ducks or people

[Ardmore Bill]

We are definately stuck with these problems for the time being - there are way to many using oil based derivitives - in our cars and heating our homes, and we really don't have any viable, cost effective alternatives as of right now. my hope is with fuel cell technology that is used in cars it will also makes its way into homes for heating. We got a while to wait to see this though - maybe not in my lifetime.

[Bunka Chunka]

On Tuesday, the Coast Guard said that the slick has spread sporadically along a 40-mile stretch of river north of the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge.

"Environmental crews continued their cleanup operation Tuesday of the thousands of gallons of oil that leaked last weekend from the Athos One, a 750-foot tanker ship.

The original reports said that 30,000 gallons of oil was spilled into the river, but after the tanker was brought upright Wednesday, Coast Guard officials told NBC 10 News that 473,000 gallons are missing from the damaged tank. It is still unclear how much was actually was spilled in the accident."
Well here ya have it guys,just as I have been saying all along,There reports were 16 times off how much really spilled out.Wont be long before the Bay and Rips are covered with this mess.Its already past Pea Patch island and is spreading quickly.I wish the best for everyone,This is going to affect the WHOLE estuary for years to come,The Delaware is one of the Largest Striped Bass spawning ground in the Northeast,Our future fishery is crumbling before our eyes,Maybe something will finally be done about this mess,HRL

[ReadyJettyGo]

Originally posted by mch:

I'll bet if I went over & crapped all over some Exon/Sun/Sunoco, ect executives lawn the'd lock me up & throw away the key. Very true!! :rolleyes:

This whole thing just ticks me off. :mad: :mad:
Just watching those birds on TV slowly dying makes me so mad. Its all I can do to not take time off from work & go help.
The alternative energy sources are there but money talks. We won't see them in our life time.
YUCK!!!!!

[Dr. Bass]

Anyone have any evidence of it affecting the stripers ??

[thediehardfisherman]

The delaware river and bay are the breeding grounds for the stripers, I guess this means no striper for dinner for the next 20 years? I guess that would be the same for those blue claw crabs that everyone loves used to be only 1 serving a month now probably 1 serving every 15 years? Sux cause those crabs live in and filter that water, and for that S.O.B. greek company bastard owner to just say 1 accident in 7 years that's pretty good, I'd like to meet him in person and his family and force crude oil down their throats and dump what ever oil that gets boomed up and dump it on greece and see what they say then. I get so pissed off at stupid human mistakes that ruin it for everyone else and us recreational outdoor people who get crapped on everytime something like this happens, government gets pissed but slaps a little million-billion dollar fine to these big companys which is like pocket change for them, and then the government decide to take it out on us and put more restrictions and limitations on our daily limit and catch. If they can make synthetic oil make it at these plants, use the synthetic technology to make gasoline-f*#@k the crude oil. ONE OTHER THING, WHY ARE ALL THESE BIG OIL COMPANIES LIKE SUNNOCO AND MOBIL RIGHT ON THE DELAWARE RIVER? Even if an accident like this never happened, doesn't oil, chemicals and other toxic pollutants leak out of pipes, delivery vehicle, train cars, smoke stacks and rain runoff go into the river-does the EPA ever do studies on this. Besides the the fact that they recieve oil from these tankers can't they do it another way and move thei facilities to a LAND LOCKED somewhat environmentally safe area-like leveling the whole city of CAMDEN and putting the oil refineries there-na, that would make too much sense and cost too much money. Also did anyone notice the trash all along the delaware river banks when watching the coverage of this story on tv or see the pictures in the news paper-look at all the trash along the river banks, it'll make you sick. Sorry about the long VENT and the caps lock in some sentences. I hope some of you fellow barners are as upset as I am or at least understand my point of view and ideas about the oil refineries.
Hope this s@#$t gets cleaned up soon and pray that the fish and wild life affected by this catastrophy aren't harmed for ever and make a healthy recovery. Good luck and tight lines to everyone.

[sunnydaze]

Even worse, it appears they are brazen enough to use this incident for justification to deepen/widen the channel.

It's looking like that's where they are headed. :rolleyes:


"On Sunday, a spokesman for the Greek shipping company Tsakos Shipping and Trading USA pointed to dredging as the problem. The company is paying for the cleanup using private contractors.

"When they talk about dredging budgets being cut in the United States or any country, it has real significance. In order to keep commerce going, it's really important to take care of your waterways," said company spokesman Jim Lawrence."


Originally posted by mch:
I'll bet if I went over & crapped all over some Exon/Sun/Sunoco, ect executives lawn the'd lock me up & throw away the key. :D Great analogy! Too true.


ONE OTHER THING, WHY ARE ALL THESE BIG OIL COMPANIES LIKE SUNNOCO AND MOBIL RIGHT ON THE DELAWARE RIVER?$$$. That's the cheapest way to unload millions of barrels a year.

-----------------------

Sunday's rain and heavy winds dispersed the slick from an initially reported 12-mile stretch from the Commodore Barry Bridge to the Walt Whitman Bridge, to as far north as the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge. That's five miles shy of Bensalem, the southernmost tip of Bucks County.
http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/111-11302004-408645.html
-----------------------
The Greek company that manages Athos I said the bottom of the 750-foot vessel appeared to have hit something as it arrived.

?The company?s thinking right now is that the vessel, with a pilot on board and two tugs assisting it, was pushed into what we think must be an uncharted or unknown sharp object which acted like a can opener on the side of the vessel,? said Jim Lawrence, a spokesman for Tsakos Shipping and Trading S.A., manager of the 20-year-old Athos I.

The ship, built in 1983, has double-walled sides but a single metal skin at its bottom. Federal regulations adopted in 1990 eventually will require tougher, more spill-resistant double-hulled ships for all tanker deliveries.

http://www.delawareonline.com/updates/PartofDelawareR.html

[sunnydaze]

And the fish.....


"Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission spokesman Dan Tredinnick said there's been little evidence of fish deaths so far."

"Generally, the immediate short-term impact to ecology has to do with the ducks that get soiled," he said. "The issue of fish is a longer-term water quality sort of thing. For example, dead vegetation stemming from the spill could change the oxygen levels in the water, and some of the chemicals in the oil could begin to sink to the bottom of the river, both affecting the health of fish, he said. So far, fish consumption advisories have not been tightened."

[slowly balding]

I heard this morning that a short time ago a barge in the delaware lost a 23 foot steel prop, no one thought to go look for it and thats what they believe sliced the hull like a can opener, how can you lose a 23 foot propr and not no where you lost it, absurd...you almost have to admire the recalcitrance, they just dont care what they, 1 accident in 7yrs
whats even better, some insurance company is going to pay for this, the company isnt going to feel much of an impact asides from increase in premiums.
are they accepting volunteers to help with the cleanup like the did with the valdez, why havent I heard anything, does anybody know who we can contact and maybe organize something, there are probably birds, reptiles and mammals all along the banks and estuaries that need cleaning

[TheAdamBomb]

I wasn't going to post, but reading this got me so fired up, I couldn't help it!

I want to KNOW how they can say that 473,000 gallons of crude oil are MISSING, without acting as though they have a clue what happened to it! ARGHHH! It is very frustrating. You have a 443,000 gallon discrepancy in the spill estimate...if you don't know what happened...FIND OUT!

AND...the company executive who said that should be FIRED. One incident in seven years? I would hate to break it to him, but in his industry where the impact of an "accident" is to devastating, there should be NO ACCIDENTS during the company's entire existence. If there is, that should be it for you! Oh yeah, I don't know how a vessel wouldn't realize it lost a prop. That's ridiculous.

Finally, in the future, the US will only allow double-hulled tankers into our waters. However, I heard and read that this legislation won't be in place until 2010. In my opinion, far too long for fear of another incident.

I really hope and pray that they get this contained and cleaned up as quickly as possible.

[TSStriper]

Oil Spill Link (http://www.incidentinfo.com/external/index.cfm?cid=864)

That is a link that was in an article from yesterday. I hope this helps.

Do you guys think that this will be a lost spring in terms of the breeding of Shad, Stripers, and Herring in the Delaware.

It make s me sick :mad:

[slowly balding]

I have to agree with the Bomb, the officials gave some lame excuse this morning about how the oil may have slipped into another chamber of the vessel, 400,000 GALLONS!!!
is there not an indicator on the boat that says how much liquid is in their hulls, wouldnt that have made sense to have, that way, when the thousands of gallons were making a slick down the delaware they would have known in the first place, now we are "missing" 440 thousand gallons
moreover, in college we did a study on these spills and we watched a video from the EPA, if you drop a cup full of any kind of lipid (oil) into water a pond it spreads so thin it will make an extremely thin cover on the whole pond, everyone sees what happens when a little gas comes out of there boat engines
Why is there little to no national coverage, everyday this seems to getw rose and only the local media is covering it, are there so few people who care anymore that its not worth covering it

[TheAdamBomb]

440,000 gallons of oil weighs a lot. I would imagine that if it were "slipping around" inside the hull of that ship, someone would know! They need to do better than that.

[TWIN D'S]

They have gauges in the tanks. When the leaking tanks were discovered, they began pumping into the ballast tank, the only space that was empty. Hence, the list in the boat. With such a list, just looking at the gauge it's not possible to tell how much oil escaped with any certainty.
I don't know that acting faster would have had much impact. A six foot gash one foot wide with all that head pressure. Well I can just imagine it didn't take long for those tanks to empty. This is how I understand it.

I went down to the river this morning. Mantu Creek looked better than the other day. The shoreline in West Deptford and National Park is now covered in tar/oil. I guess as a result of the wind shift. A lonnnnnnnnnnng clean up ahead.

[hipkvw]

It makes me ill to even think about it.

[TSStriper]

In a way I don't even want to believe that it happened, but then I want to find out more info. It's bad for all of NJ.

[creekfisher]

This is soo unbelievable. I've been fishing the river the last 3 or 4 springs for the good ole striped ones and it had been getting better year after year. When not fishing friends and i would always water ski or tube up and down the river since it was the closest source of water 15 min down the road. I can't imagine wanting to go near the water now, it's gonna be a lot of trips to the shore next year.....

[Keeper Seeker]

:( It,s a sad thing folks. Now everybody bend over and take it... :mad:

[duff]

I also heard on the news that a prop was lost. And get this; They said it was lost from an Army Core of Engineer?s ship. Won't that make the clean up settlement more fun. But; Think of all the money the lawyers can make on this one.

[NIGHTSTRIKES]

Boat, marina owners file oil-damage claims

By LAWRENCE HAJNA / Special to The News Journal

12/02/2004
Owners of small boats, marinas and docks have filed about 300 damage claims resulting from the oil spill.

Most of those claims have been from owners of small recreational boats that became oiled by the spill of heavy crude from the tanker Athos I.

Of these, a majority have been on the Pennsylvania side of the river, said Ann Hagen, spokeswoman for Pennsauken, N.J.-based Hudson Marine Management Services. The firm is collecting the claims on behalf of Tsakos Shipping and Trading, the ship's owner.

"The claims are coming from all up and down the river, wherever the oil washed ashore or on piers and bulkheads," Hagen said.

A large number of claims came from the marina at Penns Landing in Philadelphia.

The company says property owners should not take any cleanup into their own hands. Rather they should file claims so responders can take care of it.

"The Coast Guard doesn't want boats to move around until they're cleaned because they'll contaminate the river," Hagen said.

For the most part, though, boats had already been taken out of the water for the winter or were at marinas on tributaries where the effects of the spill are less severe, she said.

Other claims have been coming in from companies and private property owners that have had docks or piers fouled by the oil. Shippers whose vessels were held up leaving and entering the port also are filing claims.

Property owners are encouraged to file a complaint within 90 days of the Nov. 26 accident. Insurance carriers for Tsakos then have 90 days to resolve claims.

"This all has to be cleaned up and the owner will take care of it," Hagen said.

Claims can only be filed by first calling Hudson Marine Management Services.
-------------------------------------------------
Hunters asked to avoid spill areas
Army Corps of Engineers surveys river bottom searching for cause of gashes

By BETH MILLER and JEFF MONTGOMERY / The News Journal

12/02/2004
Waterfowl hunters in three states are being urged to avoid the Delaware River and its tributaries from Philadelphia to south of Odessa as a nearly week-old oil spill of unknown size continues to threaten miles of shoreline and wildlife.

The call for hunter cooperation by federal agencies, Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey, covered areas south of the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge in Philadelphia. That part of the river was polluted Friday when the 750-foot tanker Athos 1 began leaking oil from two gashes in its bottom.

A tugboat captain noticed the leak as the Cyprus-flagged vessel was preparing to deliver crude oil to a Citgo asphalt refinery in Paulsboro, N.J.

Coast Guard officials said as much as 473,500 gallons of crude could have leaked out. Initially, a 30,000-gallon loss was reported. The accident sent slicks along 55 miles of the river, from the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge to south of the Salem-Hope Creek nuclear complex, opposite Augustine Beach, the same area covered by the hunting warning.

The Army Corps of Engineers has crisscrossed the river channel with survey boats since Sunday, taking soundings in a search for anything that might have caused the two gashes found in the hull of the tanker.

No river-bottom surveys were done Wednesday because of high winds that swamped 11 much smaller work boats, but Joe Scolari, chief of surveys for the Army Corps of Engineers' Philadelphia District, said the surveys will be expanded today.

"We did see a couple of interesting objects below 40 feet," Scolari said, "but we didn't see anything to date along the track the vessel took."

Survey boats, which have examined about four miles of the channel will expand their work about six miles south to the Commodore Barry Bridge, an area that should be scanned by Saturday, Army Corps officials said.

Coast Guard officials, who are conducting the investigation, would not name the crew members aboard the tanker, but said tests detected no alcohol or drug usage.

A team of Coast Guard observers was aboard for Homeland Security activities, an increasingly common event on arriving ships since Sept. 11, 2001, but had gotten off the tanker by the time the leak was reported at 9:15 p.m. Friday. A tugboat operator noticed oil gushing from the rear of the tanker. No oil has leaked from the tanker since Friday, the Coast Guard said.

The unsolved mystery of the tanker's hull punctures prompted officials on Wednesday to bar ships with bottoms deeper than 34 feet from moving through a safety zone north of the Commodore Barry Bridge during low tide. Ships with shallower bottoms were granted unrestricted movement through the area, once given clearance by the Coast Guard. Larger vessels must await high tide.

Uncounted numbers of birds and other aquatic life were caught in the oily mess, and dozens of miles of shoreline in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware were smeared with dark goo.

Tri-State Bird Rescue & Research received about 11 more birds - including Canada geese, a swan, a cormorant, a kingfisher and others - at its wildlife rehabilitation center near Newark on Wednesday, bringing the total to about 70. About a dozen have died at the center, said Executive Director Chris Motoyoshi.

Hunters have been asked to avoid the Delaware River area completely, in a call for voluntary aid issued by all three states, the Coast Guard, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

"We're asking hunters not to hunt in areas where they could drive birds out into the bay right now. That's where the birds will be contaminated," said Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control Secretary John A. Hughes.

DNREC also closed state-owned, designated waterfowl hunting areas in the Augustine Wildlife Area, the Lang Farm and a portion of the Rocks Tract of the Cedar Swamp Wildlife Area.

Winds gusting to gale force on Wednesday helped disperse the crude oil and push much of it clear of the river's main channel. Hughes said the storm appeared to have pushed oil away from Delaware shores, at New Jersey's expense. The storm also dragged floating barrier booms out of position and swamped 11 boats that were on cleanup duties. No injuries were reported on those boats.

The search for the cause of the leak - and an investigation into possible civil or criminal charges - continues.

George Griffith, crew chief and head surveyor of the Shuman, one of the Army Corps survey boats working the Delaware, said the survey technology on board is accurate enough to detect items 3 centimeters in size.

Still, surveyors have not yet found the 13 1/2 -foot, 22,000-pound propeller that came off an Army Corps dredging vessel April 23. The Army Corps searched for the propeller for three weeks.

"I think the thing sunk straight to the bottom," said Merv Brokke, spokesman for the Army Corps. "Does it fall over? Does it move? Do the currents affect it? That's why we've expanded the area of the search. It's why we're looking again at high-resolution images. Maybe something moved. We don't want to miss anything."

More than 2,400 vessels have navigated the channel since the propeller was lost in April, Coast Guard officials said.

"I am concerned that we have not found anything," said Coast Guard Capt. Jon Sarubbi. "So we put these restrictions in place."

Capt. Mike Linton, president of the Pilots Association for the Bay and River Delaware, said he believes the channel is safe for full navigation. The restrictions are in place, he said, because of outside pressure to do something.

"We are confident and the Army Corps of Engineers is confident there is nothing in the channel," Linton said. "... Nothing has changed since Saturday but the outside pressure from the media. Everybody wants something done. Being an experienced mariner, I know you have to make adjustments to make everyone comfortable."

Sarubbi said cleaning up the oil on the river still is the primary focus.

"We're trying to balance the movement of commerce with cleaning up the water," he said.

Sarubbi said he did not know how long the shipping restrictions would be in place.
WaterFowl Gets Hit The Hardest,Especailly This
Time of the Year
http://www.delawareonline.com/newsjournal/local/2004/12/images/114320.jpg
http://www.delawareonline.com/newsjournal/local/2004/12/images/114317.jpg
http://www.delawareonline.com/newsjournal/local/2004/12/images/114316.jpg
Oil Sheen Is Clearly Visable Here on the River

[ 12-02-2004, 09:41 AM: Message edited by: NIGHTSTRIKES ]

[Land Locked]

I heard a report today that said they thought what caused the hole in the tanker was a sunken propeller that had fallen off a Navy salvage ship. I think they are trying to down play the spill because of the major future impact of this. It is a shame because we know the damage that this will do.

[slowly balding]

soa apparently they dont know where the mysterious prop came from, i just dont get that, when the prpr fell off the boat, they had to know, no one looked out the window when the boat veered to one direction or the other, that may have been a good place to start
and how about this guy saying i guess it went straight to the bottom, did he think it was going to float? of course it went to the bottom, and he is the guy running this thing, no wonder they cant figure this out
looking at the national coverage this may be just a cover up as landlocked said, this will certainly be fun for the lawtalkers once they get a hold of it

[fishinphanatic12]

Ok let me try and stay calm on this one......

The prop was lost earlier this year and they have searched for it with sounders and everything else with no success...(I do not understand how) The only thing I can think of is that the bottom is very murky from the build up over the years and this thing sunk well into it and is not able to be detected.....I have no idea

As for the fish effects I am sure these will be apparent in the spring as it will take months for it to effect the fish most of which will stem from vegetation damage and lack of oxygen in the water.

Some other things that are not even being mentioned is I PERSONALLY know of at least 75 boats that are covered with this TAR/CRUDE along with all the marinas that will have to be rebuilt due to the docks being covered with this junk.

Not only that but this is also going to effect the deer rabbits racoons foxes and all the other wildlife that use this river as there main source of water. Not to mention the turtles eels and everything else that lives in these estuaries. The flood gate down the street from me is full of sludge and oil now.

Last night on my way to work I called the fisheries agencies and reported a whole group of canadians that were covered I counted 3 dead and about 13 others that were covered.

This weekend I am going to spend a large part of saturday just checking out the local waterways that will be effected by this weather they be tidal marshes or tribituaries or the river itself as this effects me greatly due to the location and the prosimity of my residence. I have had 1 canadian die within 3 ft of my house in my back yard and another group with in 30 yards that were covered.....

I have to end here as I am starting to feel my temper flare

[TWIN D'S]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by NIGHTSTRIKES:



Capt. Mike Linton, president of the Pilots Association for the Bay and River Delaware, said he believes the channel is safe for full navigation. The restrictions are in place, he said, because of outside pressure to do something.

"We are confident and the Army Corps of Engineers is confident there is nothing in the channel," Linton said. "... Nothing has changed since Saturday but the outside pressure from the media. Everybody wants something done. [QUOTE]


hmmmmmm. Seems to translate to We really know what happened, but we're just going through the motions to appease the media and townsfolk

[ 12-02-2004, 06:07 PM: Message edited by: TWIN D'S ]

[egghead]

Maybe the Pew Foundation, which derived its original funding from Sunoco profits and is controlled by the descandants of the founder of Sunono (Mr. Pew) will chip in here to make the clean-up go faster or better?

Nah....their too busy spending tens of millions trying to get us banned from large swaths of all US waters.

[NIGHTSTRIKES]

Oil cleanup may continue for months
Some of the heavy crude may have sunk below river surface
By EDWARD L. KENNEY / The News Journal
http://www.delawareonline.com/newsjournal/local/2004/12/images/114836.jpg
12/03/2004
Last week's oil spill on the Delaware River near Philadelphia International Airport could take several months to clean up, even with more than 1,000 people currently working to remove it.

"We're talking months, not weeks," Edwin Levine, scientific support coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said at a Philadelphia news conference Thursday.

"Once you get into the beach cleanup, that can take a lot of time. There's a lot of manual labor," said Cmdr. Tim Deal, chief of preparedness at the Coast Guard's Marine Safety Office in Philadelphia.

A little more than 7,000 gallons of oil have been skimmed off the river during cleanup efforts that started after the 750-foot tanker Athos I began leaking oil from two gashes in its bottom. And nearly 4,000 gallons of the crude have evaporated naturally, said Lt. Joseph Dye, a spokesman for the Coast Guard's Atlantic area.

But investigators found signs that some heavy crude oil from the Athos I may have sunk.

NOAA employees detected the submerged oil in a "snare" south of Little Tinicum Island that had been placed in the river a day earlier. Three more detection rigs were put in place Thursday, and officials are studying options for recovering the sunken oil.

Heavy crude such as the type the Athos I was delivering to a Citgo asphalt refinery can have a density similar to water, allowing it to drift below the surface or sink.

John A. Hughes, secretary of Delaware's Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, described the prospect of unknown amounts of submerged oil and moving tar balls as "somewhat ominous" for the cleanup and containment effort.

Officials said they still have not determined the cause of the leak, which was reported Nov. 26, nor do they know how many gallons were spilled. It could be as much as 473,500 gallons or as little as 30,000.

"That number is too in flux to give everybody an honest answer," Dye said. "We're working hard. The investigation is continuing."

Officials also have not determined what caused the gashes on the tanker, Dye said.

Cleanup workers and surveyors were not able to accomplish much Wednesday because of severe weather, but the emergency effort continued Thursday.

Oil slicks have been reported from the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge in Philadelphia to as far south as the Christina River, Levine said. A couple of small oil patches no larger than a tabletop also have been spotted just north of Pea Patch Island near Delaware City, Levine said. There is a sizable bird sanctuary at Pea Patch, and booms have been placed around the island to protect it.

Winds coming from the west should continue to send much of the oil toward New Jersey for at least the next several days, he said, and the bulk of the oil should remain far north of Delaware.

"We're not anticipating oil moving all the way down to the mouth of the bay," Levine said.

Hughes said the river off Delaware's shore appeared clearer Thursday after floating oil and sheens were swept west by hours of high wind.

"It's the first day since this whole thing started that we can say for sure things are looking better," Hughes said. "That's not speaking for Philadelphia and New Jersey.

Two nuclear power plants in southern New Jersey were to be shut down today because of fears the water intake valves that provide coolant for their reactors could be clogged by oil from the spill, their operator said.

Protective booms were placed around the water intakes at the Salem I and Salem II plants, but their operator, Public Service Enterprise Group, said the barriers might not block heavier globs of crude oil beneath the river's surface.

The company said it expected the plants in Lower Alloways Creek, N.J., to be shut down for several days. A spokesman for the company said consumers would not be affected.

There is no way of knowing how many hundreds of waterfowl and other wildlife have been affected by the spill. But Clay Stern, a fishing and wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said Thursday that 72 oil-covered birds had been captured for cleaning and another 36 were found dead.

The Coast Guard has asked hunters not to hunt on the Delaware River south of the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge, spokesman Chief Petty Officer Steve Carleton said. One of the reasons is to keep them from setting out decoys that would attract more birds to the oily area.

The timing of the spill coincides with large migrations of geese and other birds, Stern said.

"It's not good in that the number of birds that will be coming in will be increasing," he said.

Earlier this week, officials in charge of the oil cleanup moved their Incident Command Post from the Marine Safety Office near the Delaware River to the Holiday Inn on Arch Street. The cleanup team had outgrown its former quarters, Deal said.

He said the operation is being manned by about 120 people and is running around the clock.

"It's a huge day shift, and we put a skeleton crew in here at night," Deal said. "While they're cleaning up, we're planning what we're going to do tomorrow. The main thing is teamwork."

Lists and charts cover the walls of the command post, including a tally of vessels awaiting movement.

Dye said ship movement is continuing to improve, with up to seven or eight vessels a day making their way past the spill.

Ship movement has been allowed on a limited basis since two days after the spill was detected. Vessels are escorted in and the ones heading out are put through a decontamination process, said Petty Officer 3rd Class John Edwards, a Coast Guard spokesman.

Staff reporter Jeff Montgomery and the Associated Press contributed to this article. Contact Edward L. Kenney at 324-2891 or ekenney@delawareonline.com.

[ 12-03-2004, 09:25 AM: Message edited by: NIGHTSTRIKES ]

[Sea Isle Al]

From todays AC Press:
December 03, 2004

Locals help clear the slick
Shore people leave ocean for a while to clean up river
By RICHARD DEGENER Staff Writer, (609) 463-6711

Cory Ozelski played a little hooky Thursday, but the Dennis Township high school senior didn't exactly skip classes to while away a lazy December afternoon.

Ozelski actually was smack dab in the middle of what some are calling the worst oil spill ever on the Delaware River. He was getting paid for it.

"I love it. I get paid to skip school. It's pretty wild," said Ozelski, 17, with a smile on his face and oilskins covered in some of the possible 473,500 gallons of Venezuelan crude that leaked out of the Greek tanker Athos I.

Sometimes real life can offer educational experiences you can't get from books. At least that was Ozelski's pitch to school officials at the Cape May Technical High School. They bought it. So Ozelski, who had a summer job working for company that responds to marine emergencies, found himself in a small boat under the shadow of a listing Athos I, ferrying oil-spill workers around the Paulsboro area.

While Ozelski is one of the youngest workers here from the shore, Capt. Frank Simonsen of the oil-spill response boat Lynne Frink is one of the oldest. Simonsen was delivered into this world at his house on Lafayette Street in Cape May 67 years ago. Fortunately, he stays in shape.

"I have to. I work with 30- to 35-year-old kids," Simonsen said.

Nursing an aching shoulder from throwing footballs with the team he coaches, the Lower Township Raiders, Simonsen said he still takes five-mile runs on the Cape May Promenade and along the Cape May Canal to be ready for events like this.

Simonsen fought the 1996 Delaware Bay oil spill from the Bahamian-flagged tanker Anitra that littered beaches from Cape May Point to Holgate with oil, but he never has gone upriver for such a big spill. He got the call at 4 a.m. Saturday at the Lynne Frink's regular berth at the Cape May-Lewes Ferry. The National Response Corporation, or NRC, the company in charge of cleaning up the spill, owns the Lynne Frink. Simonsen got to the Commodore Barry Bridge is about six hours and has spent the last five days booming and skimming oil.

"The Anitra was pretty bad, but this the biggest I've seen in the Delaware River," Simonson said.

It's good having a New Jersey shore element here. One reason is that shore people are used to contemptuous weather on the water. Wednesday's blow, which brought 6-foot waves to the river and swamped numerous boats, pretty much halted operations to recover the wayward oil. But it didn't stop workers from the shore.

"We were the only ones out here yesterday. We're used to this," said Jeff Stetler, 29, of the Haleyville section of Commercial Township, Cumberland County.

Stetler usually works out of the Maurice River for a company called Northstar that helps mariners in distress, mostly anglers who run into trouble on the water. He spent 12 years working on the sportfishing boat Captain Robbins in Sea Isle City before landing a job with one of Northstar's SeaTow franchises. Constantly unplugging oil from the water intake on the Northstar III is a bigger problem for Stetler than mere 6-foot waves.

Like most of the workers, Stetler is working for the paycheck, but he also sees the bigger picture.

"You get up in the morning with a great feeling. You're helping the environment," he said.

Many of the cleanup workers do care deeply about the environment. Ed Tucker, a Margate resident who works as a deckhand on the Lynne Frink, said he is saddened to see waterfowl covered in oil. The Lynne Frink was named after the woman who founded Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research, the Delaware organization that cleans the birds.

"The environmental and the industrial world have to learn to get along," Tucker said.

While many oil workers are staying at a hotel in Philadelphia, the crew on the Lynne Frink is living on the boat. They dock at Penn's Landing at night. The day begins at first light as an NRC helicopter identifies slicks to tackle and the entire crew hits the deck to get the heavy oil booms over the side.

"It takes 10 of us to put it over. This is what the day consists of, running up and down the river," said Trevor Cooper, 23, of North Cape May.

Cooper lightens the load with constant banter with crewmates. This includes his father, Scott, who landed a job on the Lynne Frink after retiring from the U.S. Coast Guard.

What's it like working with Dad?

"It's harder for him than me," said Scott.

"Yeah," confirms Trevor, noting that his father never stops. Even during a lull in the action, "he runs around with rags cleaning the boat."

The Athos I spill is something for newer workers. Ian Farrow, of Cape May Court House, fought his first spill in 2002 when the scallop boat Christopher Pride sank at the Lobster House dock in Cape May. That was just 5,000 gallons - it seems insignificant compared with this.

"Here you just try to keep the mess from getting bigger. It's hard work, but it's better than pushing paper. At the end of the day, you feel good with what you did," Farrow said.

On shore, at a staging area for workers, other shore dwellers who came to help talked about the job. Duane Clause, of Point Pleasant, said it's hard but certainly not monotonous.

"This morning it was booms. Now it's steam cleaning. You never know what you will be doing," Clause said as he jumped into a boat to head to another hot spot.

The locals seem to appreciate it.

"They're working very hard and doing the best they can. They deserve a big hand for all their heroics," said Megan Davis, who watched the work from her home on the waterfront in Paulsboro.

To e-mail Richard Degener at The Press:

RDegener@pressofac.com

[Whiteyr]

I placed a call to the hotline about some geese in our retention pond here in Thorofare and they were out trying to catch geese this morning with no luck. I spoke with a man on the crew. He was from Federal Wildlife - he told me there is a moratorium on fishing and hunting in this area because they do not want any of the waterfowl that are inland to be disturbed into flying out of the clean areas back into contaminated areas.

[NIGHTSTRIKES]

All-hours cleanup of oil spill continues
Damage claims may exceed liability max

By EDWARD L. KENNEY / The News Journal

12/06/2004
Cleanup operations continue around the clock on the Delaware River after a Greek tanker, the Athos I, spilled as much as 473,500 gallons of oil just before it docked Nov. 26 at the Citgo Petroleum Corp. refinery in New Jersey.

"They're not taking a break," even on the weekend, Walter Sandell said Sunday. Sandell is a Coast Guard auxiliary volunteer. "There are more supplies rolling in, more equipment rolling in," he said.

Floodlights along the shoreline in Gloucester, about a mile south of the Walt Whitman Bridge in Philadelphia, allowed workers there to continue the cleanup at night, he said.

The 750-foot single-hulled ship was carrying nearly 14 million gallons of Venezuelan crude oil when the accident happened. The spill, the cause of which is still a mystery, interrupted shipping operations for three days, barring access to Philadelphia and New Jersey ports, and shut down two nuclear power plants in Lower Alloways, N.J.

A spokesman for PSEG Nuclear said the utility plans to seek compensation, which could reach $750,000 a day. Some groups have said damage claims could exceed the $45 million liability limits for the ship owners.

So far, almost 11,000 gallons of an oil and water mixture have been recovered since the discovery of a large leak from two gashes on the bottom of the tanker. Nearly 7,000 pounds of oily solids, including cleanup material, also have been collected from the river, according to Coast Guard officials.

About 2.5 million gallons of oil have been transferred from the Athos I to a barge. The transfer operations of oil from the tanker are expected to be completed early next week, officials said.

Experts also report that 98 birds have been retrieved through rescue efforts, 68 have been cleaned and 74 have died. Most of the birds are waterfowl.

The oil has affected about 80 miles of shoreline, and more than 105,700 feet of spill-control and absorbent boom is in place.

Although sheens of oil have been spotted as far south as Pea Patch Island near Delaware City, the largest concentrations run from the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge in Philadelphia to near the mouth of the Christina River in Wilmington.

The Coast Guard has asked hunters not to hunt on the Delaware River south of the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge

[NIGHTSTRIKES]

Oil cleanup likely done by spring, NOAA official says

By DAVID BENSON Staff Writer (609) 272-7206
Press of Atlantic City

It will be a long, cold winter for the federal, state and local people skimming the surface of the Delaware River and Bay, cleaning up after last week's oil spill. But by early next year, one government official said Friday, most of the spill will be gone.

"Springtime," said Ed Levine, scientific coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. "It could be March 1 or May 30," he said. But sometime next spring, most of the Delaware River will be free of the thousands of gallons of oil discharged by the Athos I tanker.

"When I say that," Levine added, "I mean that there could still be three guys in a boat scrubbing a rock somewhere, but the majority of the cleanup will be done."

When dealing with an oil spill, NOAA, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Coast Guard have found that there comes a time when cleaning does more harm than good. That's why the federal agencies are reluctant to put a time frame on how long the cleanup of the Delaware River will take.

"It isn't physically possible to clean up every bit of oil," said Petty Officer Kimberly Smith, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Coast Guard. "Every oil spill relies on people to clean it up, but then nature does its natural sifting and filtering it out."

In 1989, the Exxon Valdez spilled almost 11 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound in Alaska. NOAA scientists learned during that disaster and cleanup that too much scrubbing could do more harm than good.

High-pressure hoses and hot-water washing of the shorelines effectively removed stranded oil, but they also damaged or killed some plants and animals. While these are still two of the tools used to clean oil from a shoreline, Smith said a group of scientists evaluates cleaning methods daily.

"It's called the Unified Command," Smith said. "It's a collaboration of state, local and federal authorities. On a day-to-day basis, we look at all avenues of cleaning." Each group brings its own expertise to the meetings to figure how to best disperse the oil: "The Coast Guard doesn't have the same type of experts that NOAA or Fish and Wildlife would have."

Bringing in a variety of experts is necessary because of the nature of a spill.

"Every oil spill is different," said Doug Helton, incident operations coordinator for NOAA. "It's complicated to predict the trajectory of spilled oil. It depends on the characteristics of the oil, and that will change over time as it is exposed to the elements."

Helton also said the difference between the fresh water of the river and the salt water of bay will have an effect on how the oil moves. So will temperature, wind and the confining shorelines of the river.

Nevertheless, NOAA, along with other agencies, must find a way to fight oil spills quickly and effectively. One of the ways they do it is to practice for an emergency.

"We had a large oil-spill exercise in November 2003," Levine said. "We get together three or four times a year to work as a team."

As part of a national contingency plan, NOAA lends scientific expertise to the Coast Guard in the event of chemical, biological and oil spills. The only way the agency can do this, Levine said, is to hold exercises that simulate disasters.

Even as they practice, Levine acknowledged that each incident is different. He said the exercises aimed more at teaching people how to work together.

Knowledge of oil spills over the years, combined with that gained from exercises, gives Levine some insight into how long it may take to clean up the Delaware River. Although his projections leave a three-month window, the scientist believes most of the oil will be gone by spring.

"I have 18 years of working in the field," Levine said. "I have faith that the bay and river will recover from this."

Strengthening Levine's belief is the fact that in June 1989, a similar incident took place when the President Rivera ran aground near Marcus Hook and spilled 250,000 gallons of crude into the Delaware River.

"It took a couple of years for the Rivera area to come back," Levine said. "But it did come back

[NIGHTSTRIKES]

Cleanup effort not getting easier
River life not even close to normalcy
http://www.delawareonline.com/redesign/images/12072004.jpg

By BETH MILLER and JEFF MONTGOMERY / The News Journal

12/07/2004
Capt. Tom Bryan and the "Captain Lucky" charter boat were back on the Delaware River Monday - the first time the boat has left its dock at Philadelphia's Penn's Landing since a massive crude oil spill forced officials to close it to regular traffic late last month.

Ordinarily, the all-wood, 70-foot Captain Lucky provides a three-hour tour of the harbor area. But Monday, Bryan steered the boat 10 miles south to the Mantua Creek Anchorage, near Paulsboro, N.J., where the 750-foot vessel that leaked the crude is anchored.

The Athos I, a Cypress-flagged vessel, was heading for a Citgo asphalt refinery dock at Paulsboro with a load of Venezuelan heavy crude about 11 days ago when a tugboat crew member reported oil gushing from the rear. Cleanup efforts started two days later and have continued through daylight hours ever since.

River traffic is permitted on a case-by-case basis and only with the Coast Guard's approval. The Captain Lucky was out on the water Monday at the Coast Guard's request, hauling reporters, photographers and TV crews to see the cleanup efforts and get a closer look at the Athos I.

The smell of crude oil was gone from this part of the river, but the thick black deposits were clearly visible on bulkheads and shorelines. Though early estimates put the leak at about 30,000 gallons, officials later said as much as 473,500 gallons remain unaccounted for.

The accounting may take weeks and will happen in several ways, said Lt. Cmdr. Rob Campbell, executive officer of the U.S. Coast Guard's Atlantic Strike Force Team, a sort of SWAT team for hazardous material and oil spill incidents.

Oil company workers will report how much cargo was recovered from the vessel - a process that could be completed later this week, a spokesman for the ship said. Cleanup workers will report how much they have removed from beaches and rocks.

Recovery teams will report what they have pulled from the water and surveyors will report what they have spotted in and under the water. Still others will estimate how much oil may have evaporated in the first two days after the spill. Deposits on bulkheads, rocks and beaches will be measured to determine the amount of oil required to leave such marks.

All those numbers, though, are just different ways of looking at a big problem.

"We've only had a few catastrophes on this river," Bryan, 62, said as he steered back to Pier 24 North, where the Captain Lucky is docked. " ... They've been taking pains to get it clean and then - wham! Something like this happens and you're back to square one. It wipes out all of the 'attaboys.' "

The spill sent oil and sheens as far south as the Salem/Hope Creek nuclear complex, fouled 70 miles of shoreline on both sides of the river, and triggered a cleanup that now employs about 1,400 people. About 1,200 of them have been hired by The O'Brien's Group, which is managing the cleanup of the spill. The O'Brien's Group was hired by Greece-based Tsakos Shipping & Trading, which manages the Athos I.

In addition to cleaning up the oil, a top priority for officials has been to find out what caused two gashes found in the hull of the ship.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wrapped up its sonar scan of the river bottom Monday. Some results from those scans could be released as early as today.

Merve Brokke, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, said late Monday that a depth map of the main shipping channel would be provided to the top Coast Guard officer at the Port of Philadelphia as early as today.

"We're giving them a good picture of that river bottom. It's up to them to make a call as to what caused it," Brokke said.

Scans of the area around the refinery immediately found no signs of unnaturally shallow areas, although initial runs detected logs or other items that may have given a false shallow level in some spots. Later checks verified the depths.

Mike Hanson, spokesman for Tsakos Shipping & Trading, said Monday all signs continue to suggest that the tanker encountered something near the refinery dock that punched holes in the single-layer hull.

Without the oil spill, the damage to the ship's hull would have been "minor," Hanson said, needing about a week to repair.

Underwater inspections found two inward-curving punctures in the ship's hull, roughly end-to-end, Hanson said. He added that the Coast Guard appeared to be getting close to a ruling on the case, and was "putting together a complete package."

Another search has begun this week - this one to determine how much oil is below the surface, said Edwin Levine, scientific support coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "Snare samplers" are being used to determine where oil is suspended in the water and where it has sunk to the bottom.

Deposits on the river bottom have been found in 10 to 12 places so far, Levine said Monday. A diver described one as "thick," Levine said, and another reported a "thick, large amount" south of Tinicum Island.

Levine said officials have no idea yet how wide or thick the deposits are.

Monday's wind affected cleanup workers, with wind chills that sometimes dipped to 20 degrees.

Scores of workers could be seen on the shores of National Park, N.J., using a fire-brigade method to remove plastic bags full of tarry, black debris.

Bob Van Fossen, of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, said workers use shovels to remove oily sand. Cleanup efforts eventually will stop for the winter, he said, if the oily deposits are covered by snow or ice.

Workers continued Monday to remove enough oil from the tanker to float it to the Citgo dock where they can finish removing the crude from the vessel. More than 2.5 million gallons had been removed by Monday afternoon, Hanson said.

Delaware officials are developing a detection system for drifting subsurface oil where the river begins to widen into the Delaware Bay, in the event that the spill threatens shellfisheries and aquatic life to the south.

Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control Secretary John A. Hughes said Monday that officials increasingly worry that large amounts of oil may be drifting below the surface south of Mantua Creek in New Jersey.

"Certainly, we've shifted the main thrust of our concern from the surface of the water to the water column and bottom," he said. "We have oyster beds, the crab-dredging industry and the conch industry plus immense natural resources to the south. That's a huge natural resource liability that we have to assess."

Hughes said DNREC wants to use the snares - floating clusters of absorbent material similar to pompoms strung from weights - to detect oil below the surface of the river off Liston Point, an area on Delaware's side of the river southeast of Odessa and east and slightly north of Taylor's Bridge.

"Until I know the quantity of the spill, I can't really tell you how excited I am," Hughes said. "If it's 30,000 gallons, then I think the shoreline contamination and what's been skimmed could account for an awful lot. If there's a substantial amount of oil below the surface of the water, it's clearly an increased responsibility on Delaware."

Another complication has been reported by some ship managers at Philadelphia-area ports. They say their hulls are marked with the stubborn, almost steam-proof oil left by the spill.

After 11 days on the river, the crude has weathered into a tarry paste that sometimes coats a ship's hull without bleeding off thin sheets, or sheens, of oil even when blasted with hot water, according to a copy of a notice posted by the Maritime Association for the Delaware River and Bay.

The Louisiana-based O'Brien's Group used the sheen test to determine if ships are clean enough to leave port without spreading pollution. If a sheen appears in the water after attempts at cleaning, the ship doesn't pass the test.

"By Sunday, Dec. 5, hot-water pressure washing was no longer an effective method for cleaning hulls," O'Brien's wrote in the notice. The oil was so hardened on many ships that none of it was being washed off, he said.

Claims for oil-fouled hulls now number in the hundreds, mostly involving smaller recreational craft.

Contact Beth Miller at 324-2784 or bmiller@delawareonline.com. Contact Jeff Montgomery at (302) 678-4277 or jmontgomery@delawareonline.com.

[NIGHTSTRIKES]

Volunteers examine spill's impact

By MOLLY MURRAY / The News Journal

12/07/2004
Bob Rufe and a team of birders scanned the landscape at Cherry Island Landfill in New Castle County on Monday, looking for signs of environmental damage from a large oil spill miles to the north.

Rufe and his group are part of a cadre of volunteers who have responded to state and federal calls for nature watchers to comb the shorelines along the Delaware River to note the impact of the spill on wildlife and habitats.

The crews are fanning out from New Castle County south to the marshes and beaches along Delaware Bay in Kent County, counting birds and looking for signs of oil on feathers and marsh reeds.

Among the birds observed with oiled feathers are great black-back, herring and ring-billed gulls, along with ducks and geese.

The information gathered will be incorporated into state and federal assessments of the scope of environmental damage from as much as 473,500 gallons of heavy crude oil thought to have leaked from the Athos I oil tanker more than a week ago off Paulsboro, N.J.

The sheen is moving down the bay at a rate of about two miles a day, said Rob Hossler, a regional manager with the state Division of Fish & Wildlife. He is coordinating the state effort to assess the short- and long-term environmental impact of the spill.

"At this point, there is surface oil as far south as Bombay Hook," Hossler said.

In past spills, damage assessments by federal, state and local officials, aided by volunteers, would have come months later.

After this spill, Hossler said, crews focused immediately on containing the spread of the oil, but were starting to try to quantify the damage five days after the accident.

Starting today, a team of federal, state and local scientists will begin meeting to try to figure out potential long-term impacts on the river, bay, tributaries and coastal area.

Among the questions they will be asking is whether the heavy oil sinking to the river bottom will harm the tiny worms that live in the bottom mud of the Delaware River and form the base of the food chain. They will try to assess whether problems on the river floor could have an impact in future years on fish, Hossler said.

Rufe, a longtime birder and president of the Delmarva Ornithological Society, said another concern is whether the spill could ultimately harm fragile horseshoe crab populations, which state and federal officials have been trying to protect for decades.

The crabs are an important link in the food chain for thousands of migratory songbirds that stop in Delaware each spring to feed on the eggs the crabs lay on Sussex County beaches.

That has become a question because the problem continues to expand as the oil moves south. Until Monday, winds were helping to keep the oil off the Delaware shoreline and in the main shipping channel. But the winds shifted Monday, leading to concerns that the oil could move closer to shore, Hossler said.

Marshes along the Delaware coast north of Bombay Hook in Kent County look like someone took a can of black spray paint and applied a water line on the stalks of the reeds, he said.

Rufe said the birds are a focus because there is so much uncertainty about what the oil will do to them.

"The question is: How much oil will be required to kill a bird?" he said. "We've learned a lot. Unfortunately, every oil spill is different. Every system is different."

Karen Bennett, who directs the state Natural Heritage Program, is coordinating the volunteer effort to look for and count birds affected by the oil spill. She said her group started looking for signs of damage on Thursday, and continued the effort Sunday and Monday.

Bennett said her teams haven't seen birds so covered in oil that they couldn't fly, but are finding many birds that are smudged and smeared. The number of oily birds in a typical flock ranges from 20 percent to 50 percent, she said.

She said it is hard to know for certain just where the birds are picking up the oil.

"As the birds are being impacted, they're starting to move around," said Kevin Kalasz, an assistant zoologist who is working with Bennett on the assessment.

So far, the birders have looked along the Delaware shoreline from New Castle County south to Cedar Swamp Wildlife Area, east of Townsend, and west from Delaware City along the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal.

[NIGHTSTRIKES]

Oil tanker may have hit pipe
Sonar scan finds hazard projecting from riverbed
http://www.delawareonline.com/redesign/images/12082004.jpg

By EDWARD L. KENNEY / The News Journal

12/08/2004
A U-shaped pipe on the bottom of the Delaware River may be the culprit in the 12-day mystery of what ripped two gashes in the hull of a tanker, spewing thousands of gallons of oil into the river.

Using a sonar scan of the river completed Monday, searchers detected the 15-foot-long, free-standing pipe protruding about 3 feet from the riverbed at the Mantua Creek Anchorage near Paulsboro, N.J., said Capt. Jonathan Sarubbi, U.S. Coast Guard Captain of the Port of Philadelphia. He spoke Tuesday during a news conference in Philadelphia.

Preliminary analysis of red paint from the pipe and paint found on the Athos I tanker has determined there is a match, Sarubbi said. More testing will be needed before the match is proved conclusively, but that will have to await a salvage recovery of the pipe.

"The investigation will take several months to complete," he said.

But, he added, "There are no other likely objects in this area."

Sarubbi said the previous prime suspect - an 11-ton propeller that fell off an Army Corps of Engineers dredging vessel in April - probably has sunk into the mud.

Roy Denmark, the Philadelphia district chief for the Corps, said the sonar search of the river channel revealed no other "anomalies."

Sarubbi said he did not know how deep the pipe extends beneath the riverbed.

Officials have not determined where the pipe came from or how it got there, but its rusty condition indicates it has been there for a long time, Sarubbi said. Further investigation also will be needed to understand how other ships managed to avoid the obstacle.

He said the anchorage where the pipe was found is the responsibility of the Corps.

The pipe, about 3 to 4 feet in diameter, was discovered by members of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Army Corps of Engineers and other agencies. The pipe was found about 700 feet from the Citgo asphalt refinery pier where the Athos I was docking Nov. 26 when a tugboat crewmember reported oil gushing from its rear, Sarubbi said.

"We are very pleased that this object has been found," said Michael J. Linton, president of the Pilots Association for the Bay & River Delaware. "We felt all along it was never in the shipping channel."

Mike Hanson, a spokesman for Tsakos Shipping & Trading, the ship's manager and operator, said it would continue to meet its financial obligation for the cleanup. It will be up to the ship's insurance carrier, the United Kingdom Protection Indemnity Club, to decide whether to try to recoup its losses through legal options should the investigation prove the ship was not at fault, he said.

"I expect the main activity of cleaning up the spill to be well over before the final determination of where that pipe came from. The Coast Guard has got a lot to investigate," Hanson said.

Sarubbi said officials have established a probable timeline for the Nov. 26 accident. The ship exited the channel at 8:50 p.m., turning to dock at the Citgo pier. At 9:08, it struck the pipe and began listing about eight degrees to the port, or left, side.

The pipe appears to be cast iron, he said. Two brackets on the pipe appear to be severed, and workers are hoping to find them inside the tanker's hull, which has one gash about 6 feet long and a foot and a half wide and a smaller gash about 2 feet in diameter.

The amount of oil that spilled from the tanker is still in doubt. Coast Guard officials have said that between 30,000 and 473,500 gallons could have leaked from the ship.

Workers are trying to get a portable heater into a cargo tank and portside ballast tank of the ship where the damage occurred to soften the thick Venezuelan crude inside. The oil in the tanks has the consistency of molasses, Coast Guard spokesman Chief Petty Officer Steve Carleton said.

Carleton likened the operation of drawing the oil out through a pipeline to trying to drink a thick milkshake through a straw. Once the oil is extracted, officials will be able to better calculate how much oil escaped by determining how much remained, he said.

Barges are being used to offload oil from the Athos I to lighten the ship for salvage operations. So far, 5 million gallons have been offloaded, Coast Guard officials said. Workers are expected to complete the transfer operation later this week.

Officials reported that about 1,600 people are working at the incident command center at the Holiday Inn on Arch Street in Philadelphia and in the cleanup operation on the river, where 145 vessels are being used. More than 11,000 gallons of an oil-and-water mixture and about 320,000 pounds of oily solids, which includes cleanup materials, have been collected.

About 106,000 feet of containment booms, including absorbent booms, have been placed in key areas. Sites in Delaware where booms have been placed include the mouth of the Christina River and around Pea Patch Island near Delaware City.

Meanwhile, the tally of birds affected by the spill continues to mount. Rescue workers report 116 birds have been captured, of which 84 have been cleaned so far. In a separate count, 80 birds have been reported killed by the oil, which has affected about 85 miles of shoreline.

The Coast Guard has asked hunters not to hunt along the Delaware River south of the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge.

Contact Edward L. Kenney at 324-2891 or ekenney@delawareonline.com.

[ 12-08-2004, 10:11 AM: Message edited by: NIGHTSTRIKES ]

[NIGHTSTRIKES]

Oil spill spreads farther south
Suspect object raised from river

By JEFF MONTGOMERY / The News Journal
http://www.delawareonline.com/newsjournal/local/2004/12/images/116497.jpg
12/10/2004
Spilled oil from a tanker near Philadelphia could turn up in coming days in the bay near Cape Henlopen, more than 90 miles south, federal experts said Thursday.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration made the forecast as ship handlers moved the oil tanker Athos I away from an anchorage in the Delaware River 13 days after one of the worst oil spills in the region's history.

Coast Guard officials hauled to the surface a 12-ton, U-shaped object that investigators believe tore two holes in the tanker's hull, spilling as much as 473,500 gallons of oil in the river. The rust-encrusted metal, originally described as a pipe, was tentatively identified late Thursday as the bottom half of a large industrial pump casing, according to Mike Hanson, spokesman for Tsakos Shipping & Trading. The company, based in Greece, manages the Cyprus-flagged tanker.

The 750-foot ship started gushing oil just short of a Citgo asphalt refinery dock near Paulsboro, N.J. About 107 miles of shoreline have been affected by the spill, and an undetermined number of birds and other wildlife killed or oiled.

"The health of the river is currently in jeopardy. We won't know the environmental impact for quite some time," said Eileen Butler, environmental advocate for the Delaware Nature Society.

Delaware Natural Resources and Environmental Control Secretary John A. Hughes said late Thursday that much of the spilled oil may remain pooled along the bottom of the river above the Delaware line.

"There's a low chance that vast quantities have moved down the bay and are going to plague us. They're hopeful that the majority of the oil is in the upper river, where it's much more recoverable," Hughes said.

Hughes said that DNREC on Thursday checked the 40-foot-deep main shipping channel south of the spill area. Workers noticed more widespread sheens of oil than on Wednesday, he said.

In New Jersey, oil spill cleanup contractors were assembling industrial-size, underwater tar-ball filters for the Salem/Hope Creek nuclear complex today as the costs of a spill-related power plant shutdown continue to mount. PSEG Nuclear idled its two Salem reactors last week when oil arrived at the plant's cooling water intakes.

Efforts to make the plants safe for a restart continued as spill investigators moved the Athos I to a pier and raised the metal casing believed to be the likely cause of the accident.

Coast Guard Petty Officer First Class Kimberly Smith said the massive object was taken to the Coast Guard's Marine Safety Office in Philadelphia for further examination.

"They're going to be looking at it to determine absolutely, yes, this is what the tanker hit, as well as they're going to examine it and try to figure out where it came from, how it got there and how long it's been there," she said.

Hanson confirmed that tugs have moved the 23-year-old Athos I to a Citgo asphalt refinery dock near Paulsboro to finish unloading its cargo of heavy crude oil. Workers transferred about 5 million of the 13 million gallons of the oil on the Athos I to barges before its short trip to the Citgo dock near Mantua Creek, opposite Philadelphia International Airport, Hanson said. The tanker will move to a nearby shipyard after it fully unloads for further inspections and repairs.

The spill is known to have killed 139 birds, although officials have said the true number killed or harmed may never be known.

Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research was expected to release the first group of rehabilitated birds this morning. About 20 Canada geese and Buffleheads were to be set free at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge near Cambridge, Md.

At the Salem nuclear plants on Artificial Island opposite Augustine Beach, officials said workers were assembling 5-by-20-foot oil barriers in a setup similar to "a very large furnace filter" to protect plant water intakes. Crews made the filters with the same type of absorbent material used to make pompom-like "snares" for detecting subsurface oil. Tests were under way, although officials said they were unsure when or if Salem would attempt to resume operations using the underwater screens.

PSEG Nuclear spokesman Skip Sindoni said the utility expects to pay $1.5 million to $2 million daily to replace power that could have been generated by the 1,100 megawatt twin Salem plants.

Hughes said that officials hope to see Salem's two reactors, which can generate 1,100 megawatts each, restarted without problems. He said the region would miss the energy supply in the event of a winter cold snap.

[ 12-13-2004, 12:00 PM: Message edited by: NIGHTSTRIKES ]

[NIGHTSTRIKES]

Oil, tar from spill head to shoreline
Fallout has been seen from Philadelphia to points below the Smyrna River

By EDWARD L. KENNEY / The News Journal

12/13/2004
Tar balls and scattered patches of oil from last month's tanker spill on the Delaware River are expected to wash ashore during the next few days along the Atlantic shoreline of Delaware and New Jersey, according to a scientific support team from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The bottom of the Athos I tanker was ripped open in two places Nov. 26 near Paulsboro, N.J., spewing as much as 473,500 gallons of oil in the river. The culprit is believed to be a 12-ton, U-shaped piece of metal discovered near the Mantua Creek Anchorage. That object was hauled to the surface last week for further analysis.

The Athos I tanker has been temporarily moved to the Marcus Hook Anchorage in Pennsylvania, officials said.

Patches of oil have been seen from the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge in Philadelphia to south of the Smyrna River on the Delaware River. Tar balls also were found in the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal in Maryland.

Meanwhile, more than 1,600 workers and 150 vessels are continuing the around-the-clock cleanup effort. About 11,500 gallons of an oil and water mixture have been recovered from the river, officials said. And almost 2 million pounds of oily solids, including cleanup materials, have been collected.

Experts report that 190 birds have been captured, 126 of which have been cleaned so far. The bird death toll also continues to mount, with 106 reported killed.

The oil spill has affected about 120 miles of shoreline. More than 124,000 feet of containment boom is in place, with absorbent boom being used as well. The cleanup is expected to take months, officials said.

Contact Edward L. Kenney at 324-2891

[cisco651]

NightStrikes,
Thank you for your efforts in posting thes articles. I was courious if this oil was being blocked off from the C&D canal.

I live on the Ches Bay and concerned about contamination...

[NIGHTSTRIKES]

Originally posted by cisco651:
NightStrikes,
Thank you for your efforts in posting thes articles. I was courious if this oil was being blocked off from the C&D canal.

I live on the Ches Bay and concerned about contamination... No Problem Cisco651,
That's What I Am Here For...

Here's the latest that I could Find Today..
It's Talks about the Short-Nose Sturgeon
Being affected by this mess,I wonder how
many other species will find a similiar fate.

-----------------------------------------------
December 15, 2004

Oil spill may harm endangered fish

By RICHARD DEGENER Staff Writer, (609) 463-6711, E-Mail/Press of Atlantic City

Oil-soaked waterfowl may be the most visible victim of the Delaware River oil spill, but biologists are more worried about an endangered fish that lives in the bottom of the waterway.

By one estimate, there are only 15,000 short-nosed sturgeon left in the Delaware River. They spawn each spring near Trenton but spend the winter in the stretch of river from the Delaware Memorial Bridge to just north of Philadelphia.

The sturgeon's entire population could be at risk, and this is a fish that has been around for a long, long time.

"Sturgeon are the most ancient fish in the world. There have been theories around that they were around at the time of the dinosaurs. They are the most prehistoric creatures we have," said Valerie Fellows, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Since the Greek tanker Athos I spilled heavy crude oil into the river Nov. 26, there have been deaths of Canada geese, various ducks, gulls and some mammals. There has not been a fish kill, and a dead sturgeon has yet to be found. Fellows said it might not mean there are no problems.

"Right now, it's too early to tell. The oil is not one big chunk. It's patches of it here and there, and we're in the beginning stages. The big concern is long-term habitat impacts. It could affect everything they eat, so winter reserves are used up while they are in all that cold water. It could affect breeding in the spring," Fellows said.

There is also some debate about whether a dead sturgeon would even be found. The bottom-feeders, which use their snouts to root up mollusks and crustaceans, have what is known as negative buoyancy, so they would not immediately float. As decomposition builds up, gases would force the sturgeon carcasses to rise to the surface. This process probably would not happen until the spring, when the river water heats up.

Some are not too worried. Crude oil is one of the less toxic forms of oil, compared with refined products, and fish can swim away, although sturgeon are somewhat limited by the salinity of the water.

"Those fish have lived here a long, long time. They can get out of the way if they have to," said Michael Hanson, who represents Athos I owner, the Greek firm Tsakos Shipping & Trading S.A.

The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection has been busy dealing with oil on the surface but plans to look into the crude that has sunk to the lower water levels. The DEP will not try to catch a sturgeon - they are on the federal endangered species list and are illegal to possess - but plans to catch catfish and carp to see if other bottom-dwelling fish are ingesting oil.

The short-nosed sturgeon is also known as the "little sturgeon" because it is smaller than the ocean-dwelling Atlantic sturgeon. It can reach almost three feet in length. Fellows said the Atlantic sturgeon is about twice as big.

Now that the bald eagle and the peregrine falcon are off the federal endangered species list, the sturgeon could be the most expensive species impacted by the oil spill. The responsible party in an oil spill typically has to pay Natural Resource Damages, or NRD's, for wildlife that is killed. The price increases depending on the rarity of the species.

Short-nosed sturgeon were once common in coastal rivers but have suffered from over harvesting, pollution, dredging, dams, and other impacts. They were once harvested for their meat, hide and eggs. There are still small populations left in the Delaware and the Hudson rivers.

To e-mail Richard Degener at The Press:

[NIGHTSTRIKES]

DEP Reopens Salem River WMA to Waterfowl Hunting and Rescinds Waterfowl Advisory

December 17, 2004

The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) announced today that the closure of the Salem River Wildlife Management Area (WMA) to all waterfowl hunting has been lifted. The Salem River WMA had been closed to waterfowl hunting to reduce the potential for birds to be exposed to oil contamination in the Delaware River. However, based upon observations of limited surface oil during a recent aerial survey by DEP biologists, it was determined that the area should once again be opened for public access.

In addition to reopening Salem River WMA, DEP also rescinded the waterfowl advisory that was in effect for the area from the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge east on Route 74 to the junction with the New Jersey Turnpike. South on the NJ Turnpike to the junction with Route 322. East on Route 322 to Route 45. South on Route 45 to Route 581. South on Route 581 to Route 49. East on Route 49 to Route 654. Route 654 west to Route 651. Route 651 to Route 623. Left on Route 623 to Route 658. Right on Route 658 straight onto Alloway Creek Neck Road to the Salem Nuclear Power Plant.

DEP will continue to work with the United States Coast Guard and other federal and state agencies to contain and clean-up a spill that occurred on November 26 when an oil tanker, the ATHOS I, released an undetermined amount of crude oil into the Delaware River while attempting to dock at the Citgo Petroleum Corporation terminal in West Deptford Township. The spill has now impacted more than 120 miles of shoreline.

[NIGHTSTRIKES]

Tanker that fouled river heads to sea

By VICTOR GRETO / The News Journal
12/31/2004
PENNSBURY MANOR, Pa. -- Belching black smoke, the tanker that spilled as much as 473,500 gallons of crude oil into the Delaware River lumbered silently past William Penn's 300-year-old estate Thursday as it left the region.

Across the Delaware River from the estate, sandwiched between Bristol and Morrisville, Pa., the lights of Trenton winked.

A tugboat sailed alongside the 750-foot tanker as it pulled from its dock at Groves Terminal, where it had undergone temporary repairs, and turned slowly south.

Its 125-mile trip down the Delaware River and Bay to the Atlantic will take the Athos I past the scene of the Nov. 26 accident that dumped heavy crude into the river, prompting a massive cleanup. The ship's journey will end in Mobile, Ala., where the Athos I will be fully repaired in dry dock.

"We say goodbye to the Athos and good riddance, and we hope that the legacy of this disaster is that single hulls will be banned from the Delaware River," said Tracy Carluccio, special projects director for the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, a nonprofit environmental organization dedicated to the Delaware River.

Two jagged holes were torn into the single-hulled ship as it tried to dock at Paulsboro, N.J., on Nov. 26, and a 15-foot piece of U-shaped cast iron has been blamed for the damage.

Carluccio said state officials in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware need to consider steps to ban higher-risk single-hull tankers from the region before a federal deadline of 2015 requires that only double-hulled tankers be allowed.

"We have sensitive ecosystems and a relatively small estuary, and special resources of the river have been gravely damaged for decades by this catastrophic oil spill," she said.

Kimberly Smith, Coast Guard spokeswoman, said the patch work on the Athos I was designed to "create a box-like shape to cover the area that was damaged. This will allow them in dry dock to pump out the oil and not spill it. They can cut out the entire section, and the area that was damaged will be intact so investigators will look at it up close."

Smith said no one can estimate how much oil was spilled until the rest of the tanks are emptied.

Mike Hanson, spokesman for Tsakos Shipping and Trading, which manages the ship, said the Athos I will be fully repaired and used again, but he didn't know whether it would return to the Delaware River.

The river will be feeling the effects of the spill for years to come. According to Coast Guard figures, more than 1,700 people are working on the spill. A little less than 50,000 gallons of oil and oily liquid and more than 1,800 gallons of submerged oil have been recovered.

Nearly 260 birds have been cleaned so far, 155 of which have been released; 162 birds were reported killed.

Of the dozens of miles of coastline that the spill hit, from the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge in north Philadelphia to south of the Smyrna River in Delaware, 22 percent have been cleaned to federal and state standards, Smith said.

Contact Victor Greto at 324-2832 or vgreto@delawareonline.com.

[NIGHTSTRIKES]

January 13, 2005

Effect of Delaware River oil spill hard to gauge

By RICHARD DEGENER Staff Writer, (609) 463-6711, E-Mail/Press of Atlantic City

CAPE MAY - Where is the bulk of the oil that spilled from the Greek tanker Athos I?

It must be a good question, for many of the 150 scientists assembled here at The Grand Hotel on Wednesday to discuss the Delaware River oil spill nodded in agreement when Rutgers University marine biologist Greg DeBrosse asked it.

DeBrosse, who does experimental work with oysters and other shellfish at the Cape Shore Laboratory on the Delaware Bay in Middle Township, is worried the oil will ruin his work. He depends on clean Delaware Bay water.

"The hatchery starts up in March. I use 75,000 gallons a day. It's 48 days after the spill, and they can only account for 2 percent of the oil," DeBrosse said.

A panel of experts from the federal and state governments, there to address the scientists, could not answer DeBrosse's question. That is partly because they still don't know how much oil spilled from the tanker in November when it ran into a metal pipe, or pump casing, on the river bottom near Paulsboro.

An estimated 473,500 gallons disappeared from the cargo hold but an undetermined amount was pumped into the tanker's ballast tanks. It was an attempt to reduce the spill that was somewhat unsuccessful because the pump casing also tore into the ballast tank area. The Athos I is now being taken to Alabama, where oil in the ballast tanks will finally be measured.

"It's going to drydock in Mobile where they'll remove oil and water on the vessel. They will give us the number actually released, but 473,000 is the worst-case scenario," said Jerry Conrad, of the Coast Guard's Marine Safety Office in Philadelphia.

If that much did spill, it would leave a lot of oil still out there somewhere, according to Jim Hoff, who works for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Damage Assessment Center.

"If it is a 473,000 gallon release, there is a lot of product out there yet to be recovered," Hoff said.

Estimates given at the meeting led DeBrosse to believe about 2 percent of the oil has been recovered. That estimate, however, did not include more than 7,000 tons of oil-soaked debris collected on the shoreline. It hasn't been measured yet, but one estimate suggests the oil clinging to the debris could bring the recovery rate to the 5 percent range.

The answers did not exactly satisfy DeBrosse.

"My concern is where the heck is the rest of it," DeBrosse said after the meeting. "The estimates leave 95 percent of it to wreak havoc when the water warms up. They didn't really answer the question. I guess I'll find out."

The scientists were assembled at a conference sponsored by the Partnership for the Delaware Estuary, which was established in 1996 to promote the watershed as a regional resource. The estuary includes the Delaware River and Delaware Bay.

The panel included the government officials in charge of collecting damage the oil caused to wildlife and public uses of the estuary. Some of the scientists at the conference will be enlisted to help determine the damage, since they have already collected baseline data about the estuary prior to the spill. The scientists include regional experts on water quality, toxic materials, aquatic life, wetlands and other areas of expertise.

The panel members, known as "trustees" who determine "natural resource damages" after a spill, represent the federal government as well as the states of New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania. As damages are documented, the trustees will meet with Lyle Trumbull, who works for a consulting firm hired by the Tsakos Shipping & Trading, S.A., of Greece, the company that owns the Athos I, to determine how much money will be paid and by whom. Trumbull gave a presentation on impacts thus far, but said the spill event is not over.

"There is definitely oil out there. Tar balls are expected for months, and there is the potential for tar balls to reach the outer coast, most likely in Delaware, but they could hit New Jersey as well," Trumbull said.

Sherry Krest, a trustee representing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said they would seek the cost of restoring natural resources, funds to cover the public's lost or diminished use of the estuary, and the costs of making the "natural resource damage assessment," or NRDA. The trustees may need help from the scientists to collect data and support the claims.

"A legal case must be developed in conjunction with science. There will be a legal case and a legal settlement that will come out of this," Krest said.

Payments for the damage would be nice, but for now some people just want to know how much oil is out there and where it is. The only thing known for sure is that it is no longer on the surface.

"Submerged oil is a concern, rolling around the bottom and fouling shellfish beds. Storm events could move it around," said Joe Steinbacher, of NOAA's Damage Assessment Center.

To e-mail Richard Degener at The Press:

[HookLine&Drinker]

I went down to the river today, in west deptford next to the riverwinds complex, to see how high the tide would be with all this rain. There were a couple of tents set up with about 20 guys working down there, some on boats and some on land. As I pulled up I saw about 6 of the guys on land throwing literally hundreds of big plastic trash bags into a huge dumpster. The weird thing was that there was only one small thing in each of the bags. I wasn't quite close enough to make out what was in each bag. Could these be tar balls? I kind of hope they are, because they were all about the same size as catfish or ducks or some other small animal. Anybody know anything about this???

[NIGHTSTRIKES]

More debris found in oil tanker's path
Cleanup cost for Delaware River spill approaches $100 million

By VICTOR GRETO / The News Journal
01/19/2005
PHILADELPHIA -- Less than two months after an oil tanker leaked about 265,000 gallons of crude oil into the Delaware River, the cleanup cost is nearing $100 million with months of work and years of restoration to come.

At a hearing Tuesday in Philadelphia, a congressional subcommittee learned that the 15-foot chunk of metal that probably caused the Athos I's late November spill eluded sophisticated radar for days.

The U-shaped piece of metal was found by a diver who accidentally backed into it. The group also learned that an anchor and concrete slab also may have been involved.

Officials said investigators are inspecting the punctured portion of the hull, cut from the tanker during repairs, and are conducting tests to compare paint from the objects with paint from the hull.

The anchor and the 8-by-4-foot concrete slab were found in the tanker's path to a refinery dock near Paulsboro, N.J. Coast Guard officials said the anchor was bent, but more investigation is needed to determine what role those objects may have played in the Nov. 26 accident.

"The ship did indeed pass over these large objects either as she was coming in or as she was leaving," said Capt. Jonathan Sarubbi of the Coast Guard, adding that the exact sequence of events wasn't clear.

Both objects were found more than 40 feet below the surface, Sarubbi said; the Athos I draws about 36.5 feet, but had been listing deeper after the accident.

Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., made a brief appearance at the beginning of the hearing before leaving to attend Gov. Ruth Ann Minner's inauguration in Dover.

Castle proposed creating a monitoring and research program for the Delaware River. He also wants to establish a regional task force to evaluate and monitor the health of the river and to ensure regional cooperation.

Rep. Frank LoBiondo, R-N.J., chairman of the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee, and Rep. Rob Andrews, D-N.J., led the subcommittee's questioning of Lt. Robert Ruch of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, focusing on the corps' attempt to find out what caused the spill.

Ruch said initial sonar surveys the corps took of the area revealed nothing. However, a side-scan sonar provided by a contractor showed "an area of interest" in the water. While swimming through that area, "the actual pipe was found when a diver backed into it," he said. No one saw the pipe with the sonar equipment, and its source is still unknown.

LoBiondo asked Ruch if he was sure no other debris was in the channel.

"I can't tell you with absolute certainty that there is nothing," Ruch replied.

Ruch told the subcommittee it would cost more than $3 million to equip the corps with, and provide maintenance for, a more accurate side-scanner sonar.

As of Monday, cleanup workers had recovered 79,131 gallons of oil and oily liquid, 1,817 gallons of submerged oil and 8,115 tons of oily solids - or roughly a third of the 265,000 gallons of oil spilled.

LoBiondo told officials he is concerned with the amount of oil not recovered.

"If warmer temperatures cause the oil to come back up, will it migrate to our beaches?" he asked.

"That's a primary concern of mine," said Brad Campbell, commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.

"We're already at the $90 million mark," Campbell said. "That gives you a sense of scale of how much this will cost."

"I share your great fear of what lies ahead," LoBiondo said.

The oil spill cleanup has cost $94.5 million so far, and probably won't be completed until the summer, Sarubbi testified.

Since the tanker company apparently was not negligent in the spill, it is liable only for $45.5 million of the damage, according to the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, he said. The act was passed in response to the 1989 Exxon Valdez accident, which spilled 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound.

Sarubbi said the ship's owner, Tsakos of Greece, has paid for all of the cleanup costs so far. But there is no guarantee the company will continue to pay, he said, and under the law, Tsakos may ask to be reimbursed for any money it pays over the liability amount.

That money would have to come from the oil liability trust fund, also set up by the 1990 act, Sarubbi said.

Rear Admiral Sally Brice-O'Hara testified that the fund, originally at $1 billion, is now at $842 million, and may be depleted by 2009. The fund was supported by an oil tax until the tax was discontinued in 1994, she said.

LoBiondo said he would push to increase the limited liability amount.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this article.

Contact Victor Greto at 324-2832 or vgreto@delawareonline.com.

[NIGHTSTRIKES]

Government to pay claims from oil spill

By DANIEL WALSH Staff Writer, (856) 794-5111
Press of Atlantic City

The federal government will pick up the tab on all damage claims from November's 265,000-gallon oil spill on the Delaware River.

Tsakos Group has already incurred more than $100 million in cleanup costs for the Athos I spill, well beyond the $45 million federal law obligates it to pay. The Greek shipping company will continue paying for cleanup costs through its insurance company, according to spokesman Mike Hanson, but the National Pollution Funds Center will now handle all damage claims.

Hundreds of individuals and businesses have filed damage claims with Hudson Maritime Management Services in Pennsauken, which handled all damage claims for Tsakos. Hudson will return their original claims, and those people will have to refile them with the federal government, Hanson said.

"We have met our responsibilities and more, and remain committed to supporting the enormous response efforts of so many people along such a beautiful waterway," Tsakos general manager Harry Hajimichael said.

The oil spanned about 57 miles of shoreline, from the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge to south of Cumberland County. The river cleanup effort has been scaled back from more than 1,300 workers at one point to about 400, but it will continue into the summer, U.S. Coast Guard spokeswoman Kimberly Smith said.

The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 created a trust fund to help facilitate cleanup activities and compensate for damages from oil spills, and the $45 million limit was set back then. Some say that number is outdated and needs to be increased.

"It's so far out of date and so far out of whack with the real life provisions of an oil spill that it needs to be changed and replaced," Delaware Riverkeeper Maya Van Rossum said. "It's letting them off the hook with paying half the bill or significantly less than half."

Van Rossum said the Delaware River also has unique vulnerability because 70 percent of the northeast United States' oil comes through Philadelphia. She suggested some special legal protection be added for the Delaware.

The National Pollution Funds Center will hold several public presentations to explain how to navigate the federal bureaucracy and file damage claims with the government. The first two will take place at 4 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. Feb. 22 at the Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia, while a workshop will also be held on March 8. For more information, see the Web site:

http://www.uscg.mil/hq/npfc/index.htm