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4.7.99 00:00:50
Oil spill restoration faces delay
 Revisions in the 1996 North Cape disaster response include a change in the shellfish replacement plan, and mean the project probably will not begin this summer.
By Arial SABAR
Journal Staff Writer
Projects to heal environmental wounds from the North Cape oil spill would begin a year later than planned and take a vastly different approach to restocking lost shellfish, the government has proposed.
The changes to the North Cape restoration plan are in response to a flood of public comments and, in particular, a new scientific study showing that far fewer baby quahogs grow to adulthood than government officials had estimated.
The revised plan also addresses criticisms from the North Cape's insurers, West of England. But the changes seem to have brought the insurer and the government no closer to the bargaining table over the scope and cost of the projects, now estimated at $27.6 million.
``I'm not sure we are close enough yet on the major issues to make a settlement work,'' said Stephen Morin, a top official at the state Department of Environmental Management and the state's delegate on the government panel that authored the restoration plan.
The barge North Cape, towed by the tug Scandia, ran aground on Moonstone Beach in South Kingstown on Jan. 19, 1996, spilling 828,000 gallons of home heating oil into storm-stirred coastal waters.
The barge owners, Eklof Marine, of Staten Island, N.Y., pleaded guilty to criminal negligence in the spill, which killed about 19 million surf clams, 9 million lobsters, 2,300 birds, and large numbers of fish. It was the worst spill in Rhode Island history and the first in the country to test new provisions in the federal Oil Spill Act of 1990, which requires polluters to put animals back into the environment in numbers equal to those killed.
A panel of state and federal officials, known as the North Cape trustees, released a first draft of the restoration plan in September. The revised plan, announced Monday, is expected to be followed by a final version next month.
After that, West of England will have three months to decide whether to pay the cost of the projects. If it refuses, the Coast Guard would provide the money and could then sue the insurer in court for reimbursement.
The insurer's Providence lawyers, Deming and Richard Sherman, did not return phone calls left at the end of the day yesterday.
The biggest change in the proposed restoration plan involves the project to replace the 19 million shellfish destroyed by the spill. Instead of seeding coastal ponds around Narragansett Bay with baby quahogs, government officials have decided to use oysters, which are less expensive and grow more rapidly than quahogs.
The government dropped the quahog project after reviewing a new study by the University of Rhode Island that showed far greater numbers of juvenile quahogs would be needed than first expected. Morin said that the greater costs could not be justified in view of the availability of a cheaper shellfish species.
The revisions, and the time required for public comment and a response from the North Cape's insurer, mean that the projects are unlikely to begin before next year. The original plan was to start them this summer.
Other changes include slightly reduced estimates of the number of chicks the lost sea birds would have hatched over their lifetimes.
Also, the lobster project would now introduce just 1.2 million new female lobsters to the Bay, without the original proposal for an additional 300,000 males.
The change stems from a plan to etch a V-shaped notch in the lobsters' tails to mark them off-limits to fishermen. Morin said that fishermen complained that the benefits of the extra male lobsters were outweighed by the trouble of having to check both males and females for the notches.
With the proposed changes, the overall cost of the projects drops just slightly, from $28.3 million to $27.6 million.
The public has until April 26 to comment on the revised plan, which can be viewed on the DEM Web site, www.state.ri.us/dem/, under ``Program updates.'' Comments should be sent to Industrial Economics, Inc., 2067 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, Mass. 02140.
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