Technology Still Too Primitive to Cope With Spill

If there had to be an oil spill, it couldn’t have happened under much better conditions.

As Alaskan crude bled from the tanker American Trader from a self-inflicted wound Wednesday night, the seas were calm. Santa Ana winds blew gently seaward. Temperatures were mild.

The first cleanup crews were on the scene within an hour.

Yet, on Friday, oil was lapping onto the shore at Newport Beach and Huntington Beach--and the worst may still lie ahead. The slick had stretched to seven miles in length and four miles across, and cleanup crews couldn’t keep up.

What went wrong?

The sad truth, authorities said Friday, is that the most advanced technology is simply inadequate for containing even a moderate oil spill, such as the one spreading off the Orange County coast.

“The fable is that you can go out with this equipment and stop something that’s going toward shore. That will not happen. All we can do is try to minimize it,” said Brian Baird of the California Coastal Commission.

The American Petroleum Institute, in a major report released last June, concurred. “If oil is spilled close to a shoreline and if the drift of the oil caused by wind and current is onshore, it is unlikely that anyone can prevent shoreline contamination, no matter how ideal the conditions.”

Few were surprised when that proved to be the case in Alaska’s vast Prince William Sound after the Exxon Valdez ran aground last March. But the turn of events off Huntington Beach suggested that even much smaller spills are difficult to contain.

The American Trader spill was less than 3% the size of the Exxon Valdez disaster. Yet, it appears to have overtaxed available resources.

By Friday night, only 500 barrels of spilled oil--about 7% of the total--had been picked up by skimmers plying the waters off Huntington Beach.

“That’s not a hell of a lot of oil--500 barrels of oil for 24 hours,” observed Pat Moore of the state Fish and Game Department.

About 35% of the total is expected to eventually evaporate. That would help the coast, but add to air pollution problems.

Wind and sea conditions--not human effort--are the main factors determining whether an oil spill reaches shore.

The fairly small amount of oil recovered so far off the Orange County coast came despite a flotilla of eight skimmers, a helicopter to track the slick, 390 workers and 10,000 feet of plastic and foam booms to fence off the crude.

Booming efforts were limited the first day because the spill occurred just before nightfall. It is difficult to deploy booms or to skim oil at night because the goo cannot be seen. But booms are ineffective in even moderate sea conditions because oil splashes over and under them. Currents can dislodge them from anchors. Also, boats used to skim oil from the surface are ineffective in choppy waters.

“Remember the (1961) Bel-Air fires? They had fire trucks from San Francisco and still couldn’t put it out. There’s just not that much equipment in existence to handle an instantaneous spill,” said Roy C. McClymonds, general manager of Clean Coastal Waters, the industry oil spill cleanup cooperative leading spill response efforts.

“I think under the conditions we’ve had down here we’ve been very fortunate. All our resources have been put into play and used effectively. Yes, there is oil on the beach and probably will be more oil on the beach. . . . I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. I’m not making little of that. Our object is to keep the oil off the beach. We’re doing our very best to do that under the circumstances,” McClymonds said Friday.

The one attack on the oil often favored by the oil industry--and the one requested by British Petroleum--was rejected Thursday night by the state Fish and Game Department.

BP wanted to spray up to 100,000 gallons of Corexit--a chemical dispersant made by Exxon and put in limited use during the Valdez oil spill, according to Fish and Game.

At best, the 100,000 gallons would have broken up 4,200 gallons of oil, and perhaps as little as 350 gallons, said Dwayne Maxwell, a water quality biologist at the agency. Moreover, he said that it would have been sprayed on the leading edge of the slick, away from shore, and would not have protected the shore.

Dispersants also are toxic. “When you combine the toxicity of dispersants with the toxicity of oil, you have a compound that is potentially more toxic to marine organisms than the oil by itself,” Maxwell said.

Clean Coastal Waters, the industry oil spill cooperative, brought in a plane from Arizona Thursday night and was standing by to begin spraying the dispersant, but the mission was scrubbed.

“We were not able to use all the tools at our disposal. We’ve got a tremendous investment (in dispersants). We have a $150,000-a-year plane and $500,000 in dispersant inventory,” said Roy C. McClymonds, general manager of the cooperative.

But, even with all the tools that are available, it is doubtful that any cleanup can be fully effective.

“The best way to deal with an oil spill is to never let it happen,” said Al Alabaster of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

ENVIRONMENTAL TV--Even as the oil slick spreads off Orange County, there’s a push afoot to make 1990 television’s year of the environment. F1