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10.6.98 06:42:53
Oil-barge rules face Senate vote
 Spill prompts tough industry regulations
By Arial SABAR
Journal Staff Writer
New safety rules for oil barges and tugs have been included in a Coast Guard bill bound for passage this week, marking what officials say is a crucial step in protecting the New England coast against environmental disasters such as the North Cape oil spill.
The rules, part of a bill the U.S. Senate could approve as early as today, would apply to coastal waters from New York to Maine and force a growing but largely unregulated industry to adopt some basic safety measures, a few as rudimentary as having a working anchor on board.
Rhode Island enacted the same rules two years ago, in the wake of the North Cape spill, making its oversight of the tug and barge industry among the toughest in the country.
The new legislation would hold the rest of the New England coast to many of the same standards, a move that experts say will foster greater compliance by barge and tug operators, and give the rules more muscle by placing enforcement in the hands of the federal government.
And by setting standards that would apply only to the Northeast, the law would give special protection to a region with great numbers of waterfront residents, a large concentration of sensitive marine habitats, and turbulent weather that makes seafaring a different proposition than it is on, say, the Mississippi River.
The addition of the proposed rules to the annual Coast Guard authorization bill was announced at Point Judith Light yesterday by aides to Sen. John H. Chafee, who were joined by state environmental chief Andrew McLeod and Save the Bay Executive Director Curt Spalding. (Chafee, who co-authored the rules with Sen. Joseph Liberman, D-Conn., was scheduled to be there, but aides said he canceled to attend a friend's funeral.)
The backdrop for the short news conference was Block Island Sound, where the tug Scandia and barge North Cape ran aground on Moonstone Beach during a winter storm on Jan. 19, 1996. The spill of 828,000 gallons of home heating oil killed several hundred seabirds and millions of lobsters and surf clams. It was the worst spill in state history.
Yesterday, there was no trace on the calm, sun-spangled waters of the slick that once darkened them. But the environmental and economic costs of the spill continue to reverberate across Rhode Island, where state officials are asking the barge operator, Eklof Marine, to pay $28.3 million to restore the damage to wildlife, and lobstermen are pursuing the company for the loss to their livelihood.
Oil spills have always been a risk in Rhode Island, where a petroleum barge enters Providence Harbor almost every day.
Under the Chafee-Liberman rules, the barges would need a working anchor. Tugs would need an extra tow line, plus equipment to lasso a barge should it break loose from a tug cable.
Also, some barges would need to be accompanied by a second tug boat. And tug operators would have to draft a plan before each trip showing that they've taken into account the weather and their equipment needs, among other things.
The rules are a direct outgrowth of recommendations authored early last year by a task force of barge operators, environmental advocates and regulatory officials from almost every northeastern state. The group, known as the Regional Risk Assessment Team, was convened by the Coast Guard in the aftermath of the North Cape spill -- a time when it was coming under growing pressure to examine the safety of tugs and barges.
That such seemingly small steps toward regulation have produced so much fanfare among environmentalists is a token of how successful the industry has been in the past in fending off such efforts. Experts said that since the late 1970s, petroleum producers have increasingly favored barges over tankers because barges are saddled by fewer regulations and are cheaper to operate.
On the night of the North Cape spill, for instance, the tug and barge were in compliance with federal rules even though an anchor was out of order and the tug's fire-extinguishing system was inoperable.
``There's definitely a difference between the way the tug and barge industry is regulated and the way we regulate tankers,'' said an aide to the Senate environment committee. ``I mean,'' the aide added, ``I can't imagine going out on my little sailboat without a working anchor.''
Experts say that the proposed rules would pave the way for closer oversight of the industry. If they pass the Senate and the House, as expected, the Coast Guard would have until the end of the year to put them into effect.
``This is a foot in the door with the barge and tug industry,'' said Dennis W. Nixon, the director of the graduate program in marine affairs at the University of Rhode Island and a special prosecutor for the state in the World Prodigy oil spill of 1989.
``What it's saying to them is, the reason we've decided we need to have these regulations is that we are shocked that you continue to have vessels like the North Cape that have continued to operate in our waters without a fundamental safety system like an operable anchor.''
Industry officials have insisted that the safety problems on the Scandia and North Cape were rare exceptions in a trade that has done a commendable job of policing itself.
Linda O'Leary, an official with the American Waterways Operators, noted that the trade group participated in the task force whose recommendations gave rise to the proposed new law. And she said that the group's members, which make up about three-quarters of the Atlantic tug and barge industry, voluntarily adopted those recommendations last year. ``All our members are already in compliance,'' she said yesterday.
Still, she said the group welcomed the new regulations, saying they preclude a crazy quilt of laws from state to state, and discourage irresponsible barge operators from seeking out states with lax regulations.
The group, however, has not hidden its distaste for more stringent forms of regulation, such as the recommendations by a Coast Guard investigator and the National Transportation Safety Board that barges undergo routine government inspections and be equipped with remote-control fire extinguishing systems.
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