Disposal of Dirty Ballast by Tankers Scrutinized : Environment: State and federal agencies are monitoring the practice amid critics’ fears that toxins are being dumped into Alaskan coastal waters.

State and federal agencies have tightened their oversight of the disposal of dirty ballast water by oil tankers into the coastal waters of Alaska, while officials continue investigations into what appears to be an industrywide practice.

Tankers are routinely transporting oily ballast water from the West Coast to the marine terminal at Valdez, Alaska, where the water is run through a treatment plant and dumped into the harbor, according to industry sources and documents obtained by The Times.

Some tankers whose ballast was restricted by environmental regulators came back a second time to dump the same ballast, records show. Other tankers transferred their dirty ballast to ships headed north for discharge into the plant. Some dumped ballast water in the open ocean en route to Valdez.

Critics argue that some of the ballast water shipped to Alaska may contain toxic concentrations of hydrocarbons and other materials that the treatment plant was not designed to filter out. Such substances, they say, may be winding up in the state’s coastal waters, where they could pose a risk to wildlife and the marine environment.

Oil industry officials deny that that is the case or that the practices pose any environmental risk. So far, government regulators have turned up no hard evidence of improper disposal.

Still, there has been enough concern that industry and government officials are scrutinizing the process. The federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation have launched detailed probes of theindustry practice; the state’s findings are due this month.

In addition, the EPA has begun restricting the types of ballast accepted at the treatment plant. Also, the state department has begun periodic sampling of ballast discharges.

Regulators are also investigating two instances of allegedly improper waste-water disposal. Moreover, U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez) has asked the congressional General Accounting Office to investigate the Valdez ballast-water treatment plant’s operations.

Others have criticized regulatory oversight as being lax, and federal officials have acknowledged some shortcomings, though they deny a lack of vigilance.

“I think we could have done a better job of examining and asking hard questions about what wastes were coming in there and (of) writing a tighter permit,” acknowledged Harold Geren, chief of the water permits and compliance branch in the EPA’s Seattle office.

Despite heightened awareness by regulators, however, the industry remains largely self-regulated.

At the center of the issue is the Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., a company owned by a consortium of major oil companies that operates the Valdez terminal, the treatment plant and the 800-mile trans-Alaska pipeline.

“All we’ve really found out is that there is an enormous sense among the population that there is no (independent) monitoring there at all,” said Michele Brown, executive director of the Citizens Oversight Council on Oil and Other Hazardous Substances in Anchorage, one of two citizens groups slated to receive state grants to monitor waste-water discharge. “Alyeska is kind of a sovereign state and provides self-monitoring that is invariably self-serving.”

Alyeska disputes that, arguing that regular testing ensures that only water meeting EPA guidelines is returned to the sea.

The company says that the marine environment around the plant falls within those parameters. “We have found no long-term impacts,” said Alyeska spokeswoman Marnie Isaacs in Anchorage.

Allegations of illegal waste-water disposal have been circulating for months. But the controversy is heating up Congress debates opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration, prompting environmentalists to again question the oil industry’s environmental record in Alaska.

At issue is the water carried by oil tankers in their empty cargo tanks to stabilize the big ships as they steam north to Valdez to pick up oil for transport. Before a tanker can load oil in Alaska, it must unload the ballast.

But such water can contain oil and diesel fuel flushed from tanks, decks, bilges or engine spaces. In some cases, the water can also contain detergents used to clean out cargo tanks.

Such “tank washings,” “slops” and “dirty ballast water”--as the liquid is known in the industry--may have large concentrations of oil and sludge, as well as such toxic hydrocarbons as benzene, ethyl benzene, toluene and xylene. Chronic exposure to such chemicals can kill wildlife and cause long-term damage to the marine environment, critics say.

Critics argue that the Valdez ballast water treatment plant--set up mainly to separate oil from water--was never intended to process the type or amounts of dirty ballast water now flowing into it. Alyeska says it processes 16 million gallons of such ballast daily.

“The fact is, we don’t know what happens and we don’t know how that facility treats that waste,” one industry source said.

“In this case, that entire permitting process has been bypassed,” said the source, who declined to be identified for fear of retribution. “This is a very different type of waste than (clean) ballast water, and there are real questions about whether that treatment system works or doesn’t work.”

Oil industry officials say the plant operates under strict guidelines. But critics point out that Alyeska itself tests the liquid flowing out of the plant into the waters off Valdez, as provided under the plant’s federal permit. The EPA periodically monitors Alyeska’s procedures, but does not conduct its own testing. The state has only recently begun sampling ballast water going into the treatment plant.

Because of the tightened oversight, two series of tanker shipments have fallen under investigation by both the EPA and the state Department of Environmental Conservation:

* In March, one Alaska-bound oil tanker chartered to British Petroleum, the Tonsina, took on dirty ballast water from three other tankers, including two Atlantic Richfield Co. ships that also had been under charter to BP. The transfer occurred in Los Angeles Harbor, internal BP records state.

When the Tonsina arrived in Valdez in early April, it was denied permission by the EPA to discharge anything but the water portion of the slops. But records gathered by Alaska Sen. Curt Menard show the tanker returned later in the month with some of the same ballast and subsequently unloaded it at the plant.

Critics question whether the return trip wasn’t an attempt to circumvent the EPA’s initial restrictions.

Officials at BP’s marine unit and at Keystone Shipping, operator of the Tonsina, confirm that some of the same ballast was discharged. But they say that the second discharge was made up only of water that was not unloaded during the first voyage, and that no crude or sludges were dumped.

* Also in April, the tanker Exxon New Orleans, owned by Exxon Corp., took on tank-washing slops from its sister ship, the Exxon Long Beach. The New Orleans, like the Tonsina, was given permission to discharge only the water portions of its ballast at Valdez.

In early May, the tanker made a return trip to Valdez and discharged some of the same tank washings, according to a report by the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. At that time, the state took samples of the ballast water. Results are still being analyzed.

Exxon maintains that both ballast discharge operations fell within regulations. Moreover, “all Exxon Shipping Co. operations are in compliance with applicable laws, regulations and permits, including the EPA permit for the Alyeska facility,” Exxon spokesman Les Rogers said.

Also under scrutiny by environmentalists is the oil industry’s practice of dumping ballast water off the Alaska coast. Pages from log books maintained by tanker crews indicate a pattern of such dumping. On three occasions--in November, 1990, and March and April of this year--one tanker dumped loads of ballast water from oil tanker cargo tanks off the coast of Alaska, according to log entries obtained by The Times.

The log entries, required by the Coast Guard, identify the discharges as “clean ballast.” But critics contend that such water--because it was carried in cargo tanks, rather than in ballast tanks--probably contained some oil.

A Coast Guard official acknowledged that the agency has no mechanism for verifying the accuracy of such log entries or for testing offshore discharges.

The discharges took place in a tanker traffic lane just south of Cape Yakataga, the site of a huge bird kill last August, in which more than 1,000 waterfowl were found to have died within a period of two weeks. Alaskan environmentalists have questioned whether offshore dumping may have contributed to the mysterious kill, though there is no evidence so far to link the two.

Oil industry officials have steadfastly denied any improper disposal along Alaska’s coast.