Flawed Charts No Excuse for Oil Spill, Experts Say

The captain and mooring master of the American Trader, which spilled 394,000 gallons of oil into Orange County coastal waters on Feb. 7, were foolish to depend on 15-year-old charts for the area and bear most of the responsibility for the spill even if the charts they were using prove to be flawed, lawyers and shipping experts said Thursday.

Questions about the accuracy of the charts have played a major role in the investigations of the spill, and owners of the vessel have said their evidence suggests that the charts are to blame, absolving the crew. Coast Guard investigators have acknowledged finding preliminary indications that the water may have been as much as five feet shallower.

But the comments from legal and shipping experts Thursday indicate for the first time that the captain and crew might have acted imprudently whether or not their charts were incorrect.

“Blind reliance on a chart can be very foolish,” said Navy Lt. John Aggas, a member of the Naval Science Department at the California Maritime Academy in Vallejo. “That’s simply not a prudent thing for a mariner to do.”

Aggas said that a captain and mooring master who had any reason to suspect that they were operating in questionable waters would be expected to proceed slowly and be in a position to quickly bring the ship to a halt if on-board depth gauges, called Fathometers, indicated that the water was shallower than reflected on the charts.

The charted depth of the Huntington Beach mooring is at least 51 feet, and the tanker approached the mooring just after a very low tide. The American Trader draws 43.7 feet fully loaded with 23 million gallons of crude oil. Its owners say it was drawing 43 feet when it struck its 12.5-foot-tall, 6-foot-wide anchor, puncturing its hull. Ships with drafts of greater than 43 feet are not allowed to use the mooring because of the risk that they might strike bottom.

Coast Guard and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officials are conducting soundings to determine depths around the Huntington Beach mooring. Charts for that area were last updated by NOAA in 1975.

Officials at American Trading Transportation Co., which owns the ship, say the chart may no longer accurately reflect the depth of the ocean. An inaccuracy, they say, may have lured the ship’s masters into thinking that they had enough water to navigate safely.

But even supposing that the depths were misleading, marine experts disputed the claim that inaccurate charts would excuse the ship’s grounding. Entrusting the safety of a multimillion-dollar cargo to a 15-year-old survey of the ocean bottom would be unusual and risky, mariners and lawyers agreed.

Several knowledgeable mariners and lawyers said the American Trader’s captain, Robert La Ware, and mooring master John Keon, who was guiding the ship under the captain’s supervision, should have realized that they were operating with a very small margin for error and asked for a special bottom survey before approaching the facility.

Keon had worked the Huntington Beach mooring for five years without incident, according to officials at Golden West Refining, which owns the pipeline facility 1.3 miles off the coast of Huntington Beach.

“If I were a captain and I had that type of condition, I would call and get a survey before I came in,” said one local harbor official who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.

Neither Keon nor La Ware radioed ahead for a survey to check the bottom around the mooring, according to Roger Kemple, a spokesman for Golden West. The refining company has “no record of them making such a request,” he said.

“A prudent master would keep careful track of the depths in the area of the mooring, and would send his mate out in a boat to do their own soundings,” said Howard Sacks, an admiralty lawyer who is representing gill-net fishermen in their case against American Trading and British Petroleum, which owned the oil. “Reliance on the depth on the chart is really no excuse.”

Sacks has already filed a motion to depose the captain about the events that led to the accident. Depositions were scheduled for Thursday, but lawyers agreed to a postponement.

La Ware had been aboard the tanker until Thursday afternoon, when the vessel arrived in San Francisco for repairs. He is expected to be unavailable for questioning by lawyers for at least six weeks, Sacks said. When that deposition is given, lawyers for the state and federal government are likely to sit in, though not necessarily to participate, said John Saurenman, a deputy state attorney general in the Los Angeles office.

Dep. Atty. Gen. Sylvia Cano Hale said prosecutors hope to settle any damage claims stemming from the Feb. 7 spill without going to court, instead modeling their approach on a 1989 settlement with Shell Oil Co. after 432,264 gallons of oil spilled in Martinez and flowed into San Francisco Bay and the environmentally sensitive Suisun Marsh.

“We are attempting to use that same framework to resolve any legal matters in this case,” Cano Hale said in an interview. “We want to settle this short of a long, expensive trial. But we always retain that option. . . .”

Officials in several Orange County cities, including Huntington Beach and Newport Beach, also will be asked to join the settlement negotiations. However, any final decision by the attorney general’s office on a possible suit probably won’t be made until mid-April when the first preliminary damage assessment is completed by the state, she said. That report will evaluate the spill’s effects on the county’s coastal environment.

Although Saurenman said evidence of inaccuracy in the government-prepared charts might make the state’s legal case “stickier,” he tentatively agreed with shipping and admiralty law experts that differences between the charts and the ocean floor would not by themselves exonerate the captain and crew.

“You can get shoaling. You can get actions from a ship’s propeller that shift things around on the bottom,” said one local shipping expert who also only spoke on the condition that he not be identified. “Those things happen, and you know they’re not on the chart, so you do your own soundings.”

The area near the Huntington Beach mooring, other oceanographic experts added, is particularly vulnerable to shifts in the bottom terrain because sand tends to build up offshore there during the winter. That makes the depth shallower during those months.

“The profile of the bottom is changing almost daily out there,” said Dick McCarthy, senior marine geologist with the California Coastal Commission. “There’s a lot of movement, and some days it may be just a couple of inches, but some days it may be a couple of feet.”

Because conditions on the ocean floor can change frequently and invisibly, the Port of Los Angeles often updates old charts for the harbor to avoid hazards that result from shifting sands and debris stirred up by construction in the harbor.

“If one of the pilots comes in and says ‘I got a little close out there,’ we’ll go and check it out,” said Chuck Ellis, a spokesman for the port. Ellis added that while there is no set schedule for those checks, dozens are undertaken every year.

Likewise, at the Port of Long Beach, soundings are often made in response to comments by mooring pilots. Also, captains who approach the harbor with fully laden vessels will often call ahead and ask for a special survey of the bottom so that they can be sure their vessels will not run aground.

In cases where ships draw enough water that entering their berths would be a close call, port officials said they will often insist that the vessels wait until high tide. American Trader approached its mooring just after an exceptionally low tide.

Staff writer Steven R. Churm contributed to this story.

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LAWSUITS FILED IN THE OIL SPILL

The Sportfishing Assn. of California and United Anglers of California, which represent more than 80,000 members, sued British Petroleum Oil Shipping Co. U.S.A. and American Trading Transportation Co. in Orange County Superior Court on Feb. 9. They allege that negligence by the defendants caused at least $1 billion in damage to wildlife, property and the sportfishing industry. The lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount in damages.

On Feb. 13, former Rep. Chet Holifield, who represented Whittier in Congress but now lives in Newport Beach, filed a class-action lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles against British Petroleum Oil Shipping Co. U.S.A. and American Trading Transportation Co. The lawsuit alleges that thousands of people have been affected by the defendants’ recklessness and lack of equipment to staunch the spill. Holifield seeks an unspecified amount in damages and a court order to halt the use of the ill-fated mooring where the spill occurred.

A group of 11 gill-net fishermen in San Pedro filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Feb. 14 against British Petroleum Co., BP American Inc. and American Trading and Transportation Co. Branko Sindicich and the others charge that they have been deprived of their livelihoods because the oil spill has destroyed, at least temporarily, fisheries and marine habitat. Their lawsuit seeks at least $10 million in punitive damages and an unspecified amount for loss of wages and property damage.

Source: State and federal court records.