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01/21/97
PART THREE: Polluters, state join to study spill's impact
The North Cape spill is the first to be treated under new rules, and the process is being watched closely by oil experts around the country.
By PETER B. LORD
Journal-Bulletin Staff Writer
This is the third of a three-part series that looks back at Rhode Island's worst oil spill.
The lobsters were the most obvious victims.
Soon after the barge North Cape ran aground on Moonstone Beach on Jan. 19, 1996, spilling 828,000 gallons of light home heating oil, an estimated one million lobsters, large and small, washed ashore.
Next came the birds. A total of 291 dead birds were collected, and another 114 injured by the oil were rescued -- but almost all of them died too.
The oil poured into seven of South County's pristine salt ponds: Point Judith, Potter, Cards, Trustom, Ninigret, Green Hill and Quonochontaug.
And then, within just a few days, it looked like the oil was gone.
Scientists later determined the oil was driven below the surface by heavy surf, creating a several-mile-long diluted blob that sloshed back and forth along the South County shoreline for weeks before finally seeming to dissipate. It took nearly six months before the last traces would leave lobsters more than three miles offshore and 254 square miles of the Block Island Sound fishing grounds could be fully reopened.
Now scientists are looking for subtle, long-term consequences. How many lobsters died and never reached the beaches? How long will it take the lobster population to recover? How many birds washed away? How healthy are the salt ponds?
Their work is secret. But they promise to reveal their findings soon.
Then the public will have a chance to comment on how the polluters should fix what they broke.
If this were like nearly every other oil spill, we'd probably never know what really happened.
After most spills, oil companies and governmental agencies each hired their own experts, tried to determine how many fish or birds were killed and then went to court to hammer out a dollar settlement. The process would take years and lawyers thrived.
The environmental damage settlement for the World Prodigy spill in 1990, a relatively minor spill that caused negligible damage to wildlife, took four years of negotiations. Little of the half-million dollar settlement has been spent to rectify the environmental damage.
As in any other spill, the owners of the North Cape, Ekloff Marine and its insurers, are liable for the ecological harm they caused.
But this spill came just as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued new rules designed to get environmental damage remedied faster and more effectively. The rules call for polluters to work cooperatively with federal and local interests to assess spill damage, to recommend cures and to carry them out.
This is the first spill to be treated under the new rules, so it is attracting attention from oil experts around the country.
GARY S. MAUSETH, chief scientific consultant for the companies responsible for the spill, says he has worked on more than 80 oil spills and he's used to being considered the "bad guy" because he represents oil companies.
But he also insists -- and local officials agree -- that he cares about the environment and wants to see things made right. After he flew over the disastrous Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989, he says, he was so upset he threw up.
When Mauseth arrived in Rhode Island on the second day of the North Cape spill, there was still a lot of uncertainty. "There was so much energy, but where was the oil?" Only a handful of people work on restoring oil spill damage, and soon another one arrived. Frank Csulak, a biologist and oil spill restoration expert with NOAA, had just driven up from New Jersey. The two went out to dinner and started making plans.
One of Mauseth's first decisions was to recruit J. Stanley Cobb, a biologist at the University of Rhode Island and the region's top lobster expert, to assess the damage.
During the next few weeks a response team came together. Csulak requested $540,000 from a special Coast Guard fund and a trustee council was formed with representatives of NOAA and U.S. Fish & Wildlife.
Uncertain that the cooperative effort would protect the state's interests, the state Department of Environmental Management was reluctant to join at first. But DEM signed on a few months later, after initial studies showed there was signficant damage and federal agencies proposed adding dozens of scientists for more research.
Mauseth attended their meetings and offered his expertise, and the insurance company's money -- about $1 million so far. Although not a trustee, he repesents the interests of Ekloff and its insurance companies in the environmental assessment.
Working collectively, they spent nearly $2 million hiring university scientists and experts from the state and federal agencies.
URI scientists got a lot of work. Other experts were recruited from as far away as California. The trustees said they had the freedom to choose the best.
Within a few months the trustees focused their research on four areas: lobsters and clams, sea birds, the salt ponds and the economic losses to recreational fishermen and beach users.
Each group was assigned to determine the damages, and then recommend ways to repair them.
So far, every study but one has been jointly approved by Mauseth and the trustees. One study of winter flounder used techniques Mauseth believes are experimental. But the trustees went ahead with it anyway.
The lobster work continues to get top priority. And it's a lot more complicated than counting dead animals on the beach.
`It's more cosmic than you think," says Stephen Morin, DEM's trustee. "You have to study the lobster lifespans, the present population, the time it takes to recover."
DEM biologists measured 18,000 lobsters -- providing an unprecedented glimpse at the size distribution of the local population.
Morin said disagreement may erupt any time over interpreting the new rules, but the hope is to get all sides to at least agree on what was harmed so arguments can focus on solutions, not the damage.
Mauseth said he supports the new methods. "It's much to our benefit to participate with this. [The trustees] have to explain the conclusions to the public, but I have to explain them to [the insurers in] London so they understand why we're spending their money. It's much cheaper to cooperate."
After the Exxon Valdez disaster, Mauseth recalls, he arrived at a polluted Alaskan beach where five teams of scientists were collecting samples. Each team represented a special interest and there was no cooperation. Hundreds of millions of dollars was spent assessing the damage, and many of the conclusions conflicted.
With the North Cape, all sides agree on what must be looked at and on who should do it.
IT HASN'T GONE completely smoothly.
For instance, Mauseth hired Cobb, the URI lobster expert, before all the parties agreed to work cooperatively.
In no time, Cobb was called by a lawyer from the governor's office who wanted to know why a state employee was working for a polluter the state was probably going to sue.
"It was awkward," Cobb recalls. To him this was another research project, no matter who was paying the bill. But he says it took months for a university lawyer to work out a contract with Ekloff's lawyers. Now, the results of his work go to the joint committee anyway.
Mauseth is still upset that the state closed the fishing grounds before setting standards for when they could be reopened. There are no such standards in the United States. While state health officials drew up their own standards, Mauseth tried to show what's used in other countries. He flew in an expert from Scotland, but state officials didn't embrace his recommendations.
IN THE NEXT few months, after the damages are made public, the public will be asked for suggestions on how to correct them.
"We've lost some birds, so how do we put birds back?" says Mauseth. "This is where the scientific jazz is. Everyone has their own ideas. The trick is to come up with good, cost-effective remedies. It's all new science."
What are the possible solutions?
One expert says that after every spill someone recommends building an aquarium. But the trustees are only joking about an aquarium in this case.
Remedies used elsewhere include restoring salt marshes, creating artificial reefs, building boat ramps and marine pump-out facilities, stocking fish or building hatcheries.
Ekloff could do the work itself. The state may not receive any money, but the idea is the environmental repairs could be done more quickly and efficiently if the government isn't involved.
Bob Smith, president of the Rhode Island Lobstermen's Association, said last week that he is anxious to hear what the scientists come up with.
Last summer you could swim at Moonstone Beach and wade in the salt ponds and find no signs that the largest oil spill in state history had taken place just a few months before.
But the lobstermen know otherwise.
Smith said that in some locations he fished, "The bottom marine life is gone, no sea grass. Nothing."
"Visibility-wise, you'd never know it happened. It's what we don't see out there that's the disturbing thing," he said. "There are places that some of us fished this year that didn't even get one-third of what we normally get."
Smith wonders what future catches will be like. When will things be like they were before the spill?
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