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11.1.98 06:40:05
Mending the wounds from R.I.'s oil spill
 Federal officials want to buy miles of northern New England lakefront in an effort to replace loons killed when the North Cape oil barge grounded off Moonstone Beach in 1996.
By Arial SABAR
Journal Staff Writer
ERROL, N.H. -- It takes a while to get to this little logging town.
Even after you've watched the bright lights of Boston fade in your rear view mirror, you have to motor for hours along twisting blacktop, through evergreen forests and past turnoffs for ski resorts and steak houses.
Until there's nothing but you and the woods and the Androscoggin River.
The people up here call it North Country -- a place where the quiet is rent only by the groan of 22-wheelers bound for the paper mills and where the menu at the Errol Restaurant says ``Home of the Moose Burger.''
Yet however remote this ragged edge of New England seems from Rhode Island -- 260 miles south -- scientists say it has a role to play in helping the Ocean State recover from the the worst oil spill in its history.
When the barge North Cape ran aground on Moonstone Beach in a pounding winter storm in 1996, the heating oil that gushed out killed an estimated 402 loons, a number equivalent to the entire adult loon population of New Hampshire. The sleek birds with the forlorn cry were just visiting Rhode Island for the winter when a chance oil spill made it their final resting place.
Using studies of tagged loons and measurements of wing size, scientists have theorized that the loons were native to northern New England, probably Maine or New Hampshire.
And now federal and state officials are asking the North Cape's owner, Eklof Marine Corp., to buy lake shoreline in the North Country to protect the mud-and-twig nests where loons lay their eggs. Among the places they're eyeing is Errol's sprawling Lake Umbagog.
According to federal officials, it is the first time the government has asked a company responsible for an oil spill to mend the environmental damage by buying land in a state other than the one in which the spill occurred.
The request, which Eklof has hinted it may refuse, was spurred by new federal oil spill rules meant to speed and strengthen the repair of the environment after a spill.
But loon project has already drawn blasts from the Rhode Island seafood industry and even some conservation groups, who question its cost -- $9.4 million, or about $23,000 per loon -- and ask why an oil spill that disrupted the lives of thousands of Rhode Islanders seems to be profiting a strange bird with an out-of-town zip code.
``In my mind it verges on absurdity,'' says Ralph Boragine, director of the Rhode Island Seafood Council, a trade group for the state's $750 million seafood industry.``I understand that loons were killed here but I can also be real selfish and say, `They weren't my loons.' ''
THE LOON PROJECT is just one part of a $28.3-million government plan to replace the millions of plants and animals -- mostly lobsters, clams and other small creatures -- killed in the North Cape spill.
The 210-page restoration plan, which took about 50 scientists two years and $2.5 million to produce, is the last unresolved chapter of the case.
Last year, Eklof Marine pleaded guilty to criminal negligence in the spill and paid $9.5 million in fines and penalties. It has also paid $5 million to settle a portion of the civil claims from individual lobstermen, fishermen and others who lost business because of the spill.
The government has yet to issue a final version of the restoration plan and some of its fine points could still change.
Boragine, of the Seafood Council, is critical of the government's, saying it may be good for loons but doesn't do enough for the other species killed in the spill, in particular commercially valuable lobsters.
But government officials respond that the restoration plan is meant to repair the environment, not reimburse lobstermen and shellfishermen for lost business.
And scientists say the loon project embodies the promise of a major oil spill law passed by Congress in 1990 amid concern about the handling of Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska the year before.
The regulations arising from the law, issued just two weeks before the North Cape spill in January 1996, require detailed scientific studies of the number of plants and animals killed in an oil spill. A key provision requires spillers to return the same number of organisms to the environment; scientists call the procedure``one-to-one restoration,'' and its cost is the responsibility of the spiller.
This is a major departure from the past. Before the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, the number of organisms killed in a spill weren't always rigorously documented, and didn't necessarily figure into negotiations between the government and the company responsible for the spill.
Instead, oil companies and government officials would go to court to dicker over a price tag for environmental damage.
The fight would often drag on for years, while the environment went unbandaged. When it was all over, interest groups would jockey for a piece of the settlement, which often reflected the market value of the lost plants and animals rather than the cost of projects to replace them.
And even when money was parcelled out, it did not have to be spent restoring exactly the same kinds of wildlife that were killed.
``One of the criticisms of the old way was the money was used to benefit particular interest groups,'' said Claude Cote, a senior lawyer at the state Department of Environmental Management. ``It became a popularity contest.''
THE WORLD PRODIGY tanker spill off Newport in 1989 is a case study, environmental officials say. It was only after seven years of legal fights, bureaucratic foot-dragging and pressure from Rhode Island shellfishermen that the first federal restoration projects were implemented, in 1996.
The North Cape is the first spill to fall under the new rules, and government officials say the loon project is a shining example of how those rules are supposed to work.
Eklof Marine ``does not owe the public or the citizens of Rhode Island $9.4 million,'' says Charles E. Hebert, an oil-spill response coordinator in the Rhode Island office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and an architect of the loon restoration project. ``What they owe the public are 402 loons, plus all the baby loons they would have produced for the rest of their lives.''
Government scientists say that if their research had justified it, they would have crossed more than just state lines.
``If we had good data that said these were Canadian loons,'' says Stephen Morin, an oil-spill expert at the DEM and an author of the government restoration plan, ``we would have gone to Canada.''
In 1996, trade groups for major petroleum, chemical and insurance companies sued the federal government to block the new oil-spill rules. But last November, a U.S. appeals court rejected much of the suit.
And now the petroleum industry is training a wary eye on the North Cape case, which many believe could set a precedent for future spills.
``The industry is watching this case very closely,'' says James R. Polson, editor of the Oil Spill Intelligence Report, an industry newsletter based in Arlington, Mass. ``One of the things they're very unhappy with is the idea that you buy property to make up for damage you cause in an oil spill. They think it's a potentially bottomless pit.''
Once the final restoration plan is issued in January -- by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and state DEM -- Eklof Marine will have 90 days to accept the plan or risk a court fight by rejecting it.
While the Staten Island, N.Y., company disputes some of the government's estimates on the number of lost animals and plants, there is no disagreement on the number of loons. Still, its lawyers hinted that the $9.4 million loon project may be a stumbling block.
``There is less disagreement on how many loons than on how to restore them,'' says Deming E. Sherman, a Providence lawyer for Eklof. He would not be more specific, saying it would be inappropriate to discuss a subject of negotiation.
VIEWED ACROSS A LAKE, loons are barely distinguishable from ducks. But up close, the impression changes.
Ruby-red eyes sparkle against a shiny black head. An irridescent green band slings the neck. Black and white pinstripes on the lower neck give way on the back to a window-pane pattern. The birds are a meter long from tail to beak, and can weigh up to 9 pounds.
It's easy to see why the word loon comes from the early Scandinavian word for clumsy: loons toddle when they walk, and look as though they might benefit from crutches.
But come fall, when ice begins to form in the lakes in the northern United States and Canada where they dive for small fish, loons take to the skies and fly south at speeds of up to 60 mph. Their wintering grounds run from Nova Scotia to the Gulf Coast of Florida.
Roughly 1,300 loons winter in the Ocean State, according to the Audubon Society of Rhode Island. Most winters, the birds can be seen floating along the coast from Quicksand Pond, in Little Compton, to Napatree Point, near the Connecticut border.
Lee C. Schisler Jr., the Audubon's executive director in Rhode Island, said that one of their favorite wintering spots is Moonstone Beach, in South Kingstown.
The loons' wail, a long, melancholy cry that ripples in pitch, was made popular in the 1981 movie On Golden Pond, filmed on Maine's Squam Lake. The cry is a fitting symbol for what befell the creatures on Moonstone Beach on Friday, Jan. 19, 1996.
AT ABOUT 2 P.M. that day, the tug Scandia, towing the North Capefive miles off Point Judith, caught fire in a raging storm and lost power in 30-foot seas. Four hours later, driven to shore by wind and waves, it struck Nebraska Shoal just off Moonstone Beach, in South Kingstown. An estimated 828,000 of toxic red heating oil streamed into the near-freezing water.
Large, breaking waves driven by rain and 50-knot winds pounded the oil to the beach's shallow bottom. The oil meandered down the coast and into coves and over channels. It crossed breachways into ecologically sensitive salt ponds. Fingers of sheen crept toward Block Island, 12 miles away.
Afterwards, the government closed fishing areas for five months. Lobstermen, shellfisherman, charter boat businesses and others who make a living from the water lost millions of dollars in business.
But the spill also exacted a toll on wildlife, even if scientists have characterized most of it as ``short-term'' rather than permanent.
Among the dead, the government says, were 9 million lobsters, 20 million clams and oysters, 11 billion worms and small crustaceans, 5 million fish, and 2,300 sea birds, including 402 common loons. The figures were based on counts of dead animals and projections from computer models.
While some loons died from poisoning, many simply froze to death. Heating oil breaks down the natural water-repelling oils on loon feathers, letting the cold ocean water seep through to the skin.
In the days after the spill, the sight of bedraggled loons awash on oil-streaked beaches made a heart-rending image.
Volunteers combed the beaches for the birds. At one spot, an opening in a stone wall was marked by a hand-lettered sign: ``Oiled Bird Drop Off.''
Dead birds were wrapped in plastic bags, tagged, and placed in freezers.
Injured ones were carried to the Narragansett public works garage, which became a kind of avian sick bay.
Inside, veterinarians and trained volunteers rubbed the birds' eyes with antiseptic ointments.
They scrubbed the animals with Dawn dishwashing soap and rinsed them in warm bubble baths. Some birds were wrapped in disposable baby diapers to keep them from ingesting the toxic oils by preening. Others had feeding tubes stuck down their gullets or were made to swallow Pepto Bismol as a tonic for oil-addled stomachs.
In all, 68 loons washed up on beaches in South County and Block Island after the spill, 14 of them dead.
Of the 54 wounded, just one was eventually returned, in good health, to the water. The others either died from their injuries or were given lethal injections on the belief that they were too badly hurt to survive on their own in the wild.
Government officials turned to scientific studies of other spills to project what they believed was the actual number of loons killed in the North Cape spill, recovered or not. They put that number at 402.
In the days after the spill, as more and more birds were carried to the freezers, rescue workers at the Narragansett town garage struggled against a growing sense of hopelessness.
On one evening, recalled a biologist who was there, four volunteers wept softly as they stroked the feathers of a loon they had failed to save.
ALONG THE MAIN ROAD through Errol, near a white church and the Knot Just Logs gift shop, stands a brownish pool of water. A splintery wooden sign at the water's edge says, ``Charlie Demers Children's Fish Pond: 14 Yrs. Old and Younger: 2 fish per day.''
If this is perhaps the smallest water body in Errol, the biggest is just a few miles away: Lake Umbagog, spanning 8,500 acres and straddling the border with Maine.
In addition to supporting osprey, warblers and New Hampshire's only nesting pair of bald eagles, the lake is one of the most important breeding grounds in the Northeast for the common loon. Thirty pairs of the birds now nest around the lake in the warm months.
Lake Umbagog, government officials say, is one lake where they may want Eklof Marine to buy shoreline. The lake is mostly undeveloped now. Paper companies own some of the surrounding spruce forests, and officials believe they may be tempted to sell waterfront parcels to luxury home developers as a way to boost profits at a time of growing competition from overseas.
Under the government's $9.4 million proposal, Eklof would spend almost $7 million buying land or conservation rights around 33 loon nests on Lake Umbagog or other lakes in Maine or New Hampshire. The rest would be spent on administrative fees, the salary of a field biologist for 10 years, a $1.9 million emergency fund, and a 16-foot work boat.
SCIENTISTS SAY the logic behind buying land is simple: studies show that loons raise less than a third as many young on waterfront land laced with summer cabins than they do on undeveloped land.
The government believes that if it buys land threatened with development before developers do, it is buying ayslum for loons, who will raise more chicks than if market forces prevailed.
Andrew R. Major, a biologist in the New England field office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife office, in Concord, N.H., and a designer of the loon project, says that buying land in another state was a ``last resort.'' Scientists could identity no way in Rhode Island to boost loons' birth rate or slow their death rate.
``If there's any way we could have done something for loons in Rhode Island, we would have done it,'' he said. ``We just got to the point where we couldn't come up with anything else.''
An idea to buy up all the gill-netting licenses in Southern New England -- loons can get trapped in them -- surfaced at one meeting. But government officials said it was scrapped because it would have cost more than buying land in Maine, and the government is required to find the least expensive means of restoration.
But even some loon preservation groups are raising questions about the land-buying plan.
Harry Vogel, executive director of the New Hampshire Loon Preservation Committee, says it was public education that helped double the state's loon population over the last two decades. Even as the state's population grew by more than a third and boating licenses doubled, he said, the loons have thrived, many on lakes whose shores have grown crowded with cottages.
Vogel says he has no particular objection to purchasing land but said he was dismayed that the restoration plan includes no provisions to teach New Englanders about such threats to loons as lead fishing sinkers. One study has shown that more than half the dead loons collected in the Northeast died from the sinkers, which loons accidentally swallow while hunting for fish.
``Simply buying up areas of shoreline is no guaranteee that these water bodies will remain pristine,'' he said, citing Lake Umbagog as an example of a lake that has been attracting a growing number of boaters and fishermen.
The architects of the restoration plan said they considered public education, which would have been far less expensive than land acquisition. But they said they rejected it because its benefits were impossible to quantify.
Still, what some find hard to stomach is the steep price tag of the loon project, especially when other species in the restoration plan, such as shellfish, cost pennies each to replace.
``I don't understand why loons are more precious to the environment than lobsters are,'' says Boragine, the director of the Rhode Island Seafood Council. ``I think that's the thing that aggravates me the most is that things like loons . . . have a warm fuzzy feeling to them.''
But scientists react by saying that loons are the primadonnas of waterfowl. They are so expensive to replenish because they require a lot of space and are not prolific breeders. On lakes with developed shorelines, for instance, research has shown that a pair of loons will successfully raise a chick just once every five years. Under the government's restoration project, it will take 100 years to restore the lost 402 loons -- and the chicks they would have had -- to the environment.
But perhaps most importantly, loons happen to like the same valuable waterfront real estate human beings do.
``If you don't want to spend a lot on loons,'' says Cote, the DEM lawyer, ``crash your boat where there are a lot mallards, which are cheap birds and breed like flies.''
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