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Accord Between Exxon, State Aims Tanker Toward San Diego

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Times Staff Writer

The state and Exxon Shipping Co. on Wednesday reached agreement on bringing the crippled Exxon Valdez into state waters for repairs, and the vessel may enter San Diego Bay Sunday morning, officials said.

The agreement, which stipulates the oil company’s liability to the state and provides safeguards against pollution of state waters, ended six days of negotiations and is a second-to-last step to docking the Valdez, which has been drifting off San Diego since July 10.

Agreement Applauded

“Nobody is pleased with the idea that a tanker with part of its bottom missing is coming into port. But, given that there is a tanker and it has to be repaired, we’re much more assured with this agreement than we would have been,” said Anthony Summers, a supervising state deputy attorney general who helped negotiate the agreement.

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On Tuesday, state lawmakers, who were in San Diego for a hearing on oil-spill prevention and response, applauded the agreement and said proposed legislation could lead to tougher standards for all oil tankers entering California waters.

Both the removal of seven massive, dangling plates, which was completed Monday, and the trimming of other sagging steel from the ship’s damaged bottom have delayed the ship’s entry into the bay. But salvage divers are expected to finish the trimming today, clearing the tanker’s final obstacle.

Once interim repairs to the hull are complete, the process required by the state and Coast Guard for bringing the vessel into the bay will begin, officials said.

“It’s safe to say we are very pleased to have the agreement. We’ve negotiated and acted in good faith throughout this process and tried to meet everybody’s demands,” said Jan Cool, a spokeswoman for Exxon Shipping Co. “If this process occurred again tomorrow, we would follow the same procedure. We would try to make everybody as comfortable as possible that we were bringing a clean ship into San Diego.”

The ship Wednesday drifted about 5 miles off San Clemente Island in federal waters. Two small, bluish discharges came out of the tanker early Wednesday morning as divers worked on the ship’s hull, but they dissipated before cleanup and response equipment could be deployed, the Coast Guard reported.

The equipment later was tested in a drill conducted by the Coast Guard and state Department of Fish and Game.

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Under the agreement, the tanker must emit no discharges for 24 hours before it enters the bay, a test that will include maneuvering the vessel in various positions. It also must be surrounded by cleanup and response equipment and crews before, during and after its docking at National Steel & Shipbuilding Co.

If the ship does have a discharge, the transit will be stopped while the material is cleaned up, according to the agreement.

Exxon will post a $10-million expense account for the state and a $10-million security deposit to guarantee the company’s word, but that is not necessarily the limit of its liability, officials said.

“With all of these guarantees, we are reasonably confident Exxon is going to perform, especially because we know it’s not to Exxon’s advantage to have oil trailing from that ship. You know that the whole world is going to be watching” the ship’s entry into the bay, Summers said.

Coast Guard Cmdr. Don Montoro made similar demands of Exxon and requested an underwater survey of the ship’s hull before transit begins and a moving safety zone around the ship while it is brought into the bay.

‘The Safest Place’

A similar underwater Coast Guard survey, conducted July 10, a day before the Valdez was scheduled to dock at Nassco for a $25-million, nine-month repair job, revealed the presence of the dangling plates and an 18-mile oil slick believed to have come from the ship.

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The agreement approved Wednesday authorizes Ladin Delaney, executive director of the Regional Water Quality Control Board, to command the ship’s entry into the bay, but gives Montoro the final say in decisions made during the ship’s transit.

Environmentalists Wednesday expressed satisfaction with the agreement and said they will not impede the tanker.

“It’s about time to get it out of the water, for once and for all,” said Kelly Quirke, ocean ecology coordinator for Greenpeace. “The safest place for this thing is out of the water.”

The Valdez, towed 2,200 miles after hitting a reef and spilling 11 million gallons of oil along pristine Alaskan shoreline, was built at Naasco.

Earlier, Exxon officials said they were concerned about whether the ship would be salvageable, because steel on the tanker’s hull continued to peel away and the ship cannot be dry docked if too much of its bottom is missing.

But Coast Guard officials Wednesday said they were “optimistic” about the vessel’s salvageability.

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“We never have reached a crisis situation about the vessel,” said Lt. Larry Solberg. “The goal has been to cut the plates off in as reasonable time as possible, and get the vessel in. We just want to get it into port safely.”

Officials Concerned

The Coast Guard is still awaiting test results of samples taken from a waxy oil residue on the lower walls of the ship’s damaged tanks. Samples of water from the tanks showed barely detectable, nontoxic levels of oil, officials reported Tuesday.

But test results of water from intact tanks indicated higher levels of toxic materials, and oil was found floating on the surfaces of the water in all the intact and damaged tanks, said Reed Smith, pollution response coordinator for state Department of Fish and Game.

The presence of the floating oil has officials concerned that toxic materials could leak when the ship’s draft level is raised once it reaches the Nassco berth.

But protective booms around the area should prevent any leakage into the bay, and mussels will be deployed around the dry dock area as guinea pigs to test the environmental impact of the transit, Smith said.

Also, water from intact and damaged tanks will be pumped into a barge when the ship reaches its berth and will then be tested for toxicity. If oil is found in the water, it will not be emptied into the bay, he said.

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