Digital Extra

But just one town over in Westerly, the oil's course seemed less of a threat and more a spectator sport. Officials there have oil boom equipment on standby, but not in place.

In South Kingstown, the community with the most severe environmental damage, officials are mourning a disaster that they could not prevent.

A small army of Charlestown volunteers, reluctant to greet the poisonous and stinking monster that ravaged South Kingstown's shoreline, has been keeping watch over the numerous inlets and coves in Ninigret Pond, as well as Quonochontaug Pond, in hopes that booms installed at the Charlestown and Quonochontaug Breachways are keeping the oil out.

But by yesterday afternoon, they learned some disappointing news: oil had seeped past the booms and into Ninigret Pond.

"Suddenly things are getting a little bit busy," said Gordon Fore, chairman of the town's Conservation Commission, who expected to attend last night's Town Council meeting to rally more volunteers for a Save the Bay beach survey.

An exasperated Town Council member, Forrester Safford, said Charlestown had no strategy in place to tackle the coastline emergency. Without such a plan, the town's environmental and economic health are in jeopardy, he said.

"We didn't really have an attack plan," Safford said yesterday morning. "There are a lot of people running around but nothing was being done."

His main concern is how the news of the spill will affect this summer's tourist season. Both Ninigret and Quonochontaug Ponds are popular boating and fishing spots that attract many out-of-state visitors.

"People are sitting down now saying, 'Where are we going to vacation this year? Rhode Island beaches or Cape Cod?' " Safford said. "We won't know what that effect will be. That could be devastating to our tourist industry."

Safford said the Town Council should force state leaders to declare the area's unpolluted beaches and shellfish a top economic priority.

"We can't afford to lose that," he said.

Meanwhile, dozens of Charlestown volunteers -- ranging from Police Chief Michael Brady to Central Beach resident Vincent Lanna -- pitched in to help.

Brady directed several officers yesterday to patrol the beach areas to stop strollers from gathering the contaminated shellfish or injured wildlife. Reports of injured or dead wildlife should go to police, who will contact state officials, he said.

Besides counting on the expertise of cleanup crews and town residents, Brady says he's counting on luck to keep the enemy oil from doing serious damage. After all, he said, his skills have more to do with solving crimes than environmental disasters.

"I'm not an expert in oil spills, I must have skipped those classes at the academy," Brady said.

Brady and Lt. Raoul Lefebvre helped coordinate a cleanup company's efforts to install booms at the two breachways, as well as within Ninigret Pond's more sensitive areas like Foster Cove.

Lefebvre's efforts won marks for creativity when he came to the rescue of boom-setting workers who couldn't drag their equipment across Charlestown Breachway's turbulent waters.

Using a fishing pole, he attached a weight to his line and cast it across the 100-foot gap so workers could attach their lines and set the boom in place.

David Monk oversees a volunteer troop known as the Salt Pond Watchers, who have been monitoring the numerous ponds that dot South County's coastline for more than 10 years. And since Friday night's accident, they have never been more vigilant, he said.

"When you call on them to say the pond is in danger, they say, 'OK, we're ready,' " Monk said.

With out-of-state cleanup crews in town, Monk said he also called on some longtime residents to share their intimate knowledge of the breachways. One person he called on was 68-year-old Lanna, an avid boater and recreational fisherman.

Lanna helped direct where the booms should be strung across the Quonochontaug Breachway, pointing out where and how the water flows between the ocean and the pond that locals call "Quonnie."

"There's so much that's enjoyable in that pond. All you have to do is sit down there and watch the sunsets and it's better than any Valium that you can prescribe," Lanna said. "To think that oil may kill all of that, that's just disturbing."

In contrast, Westerly officials seemed far less nervous than their Charlestown neighbors.

Michael Fay, chairman of emergency planning of Rhode Island's 3rd District -- which covers Narragansett to Westerly and Block Island -- said slight traces of oil had reached West Beach, near the Quonochontaug Breachway and the Westerly-Charlestown town line.

"But it's nothing to pose any danger," he said. "Westerly at this time is picking up booms as a precautionary measure for the Weekapaug Breachway, but it is not going to be deployed."

He said the boom material will be taken to the Misquamicut Fire Station, where it will stay while the slick is being monitored by the Department of Environmental Management and the Coast Guard strike team.

"So far, there's nothing in the Westerly area itself that's been endangered -- no wildlife that anyone has found," Fay said.

In South Kingstown, where the damage is concentrated, Town Manager Stephen A. Alfred could only voice disappointment.

"You spend so much time trying to buy land in the ocean area and have the federal government taking over private property to preserve the pristine area, you think you've done a great job in protecting something for future generations," Alfred said. "And in the stroke of one storm and one poor tug operation, it sets us back several years.

"But we won't look at this as defeat," he said. "We look at it as something we need to address in the future and find ways to prevent it."