About a month after the Penn Maritime barge poured more than 9,000 gallons of heavy Number 6 fuel into Narragansett Bay, local environmentalists are breathing a sigh a relief. According to some in the industry, the spill — which came only a week after an $8 million settlement was announced between several parties stemming from the 1996 North Cape Oil spill in Block Island Sound – could have been much worse.
”The effects on the bay look to be short term,” said Curt Spaulding, executive director of Save The Bay. “The oil has not killed or contaminated a lot of fish or birds and the effects we believe, have generally moved out of the bay.”
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The Penn Maritime accident is the third to affect local waters in 12 years. In 1989, the World Prodigy Oil Spill dumped more than 300,000 gallons of oil off Brenton Reef in Newport, and in 1996 the North Cape ran aground off the South Kingstown coastline dumping close to 828,000 gallons of home heating oil into Block Island Sound.
But according to Spaulding, the response time is quickening and the clean-up effort is becoming better organized.
Stephen Morin, Environmental Response Administrator for the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management agreed. “It’s an unfortunate fact that practice makes perfect,” he said. “All the lessons we have learned we have been able to apply to future problems.”
Many of the changes have been the result of revisions in both state and federal laws.
”The laws have gotten stronger,” Spaulding said. “If you spill in Rhode Island waters, you will pay.”
In 1996, following the North Cape Oil Spill, the General Assembly passed a law, which created a fund for expenses related to oil spills. According to Morin, money for the fund comes from a “nickel a barrel” tax on all oil delivered by sea.
“Having the fund has really allowed us to prepare,” he said. “We have been able to buy skimmer boats and train people to use them. One of those boats was on the scene of this spill within an hour after it happened – we were prepared.”
Ralph Boragine, director of the Rhode Island Seafood Council, a non-profit organization that represents Rhode Island’s fishing industry, especially seafood retailers agreed.
”We have spent the years since the North Cape getting ready for the next spill,” he said. “Everything was in place. This one didn’t have the huge damaging effects that we have had in the previous ones, because we are more prepared.”
Environmentalists agree that still more could be done to protect the state’s greatest natural resource, but they seem to disagree on the means.
One of the most popular ideas, though also one of the most controversial is the idea of dredging portions of Narragansett Bay to accommodate larger tankers.
According to Ed O’Donnell, Army Corp of Engineers project manager for the Providence River Dredging Project, over the years the channel has been filled as sand and silt moved down with the tides, and certain areas no longer have the 40-foot authorized depth. As a result, many tankers bringing oil to northern points of the bay must stop at its mouth just off the coast of Jamestown, to unload cargo onto lighters (oil-carrying barges).
”Tankers can come in at high tide, or off-load their cargo,” O’Donnell said. “Dredging would make it so that tankers could bring in full loads without depending on tides, or off-loading.”
“If the channel were clear, we wouldn’t need barges at all, tankers would be able to come up the bay,” Boragine said. “Dredging is one of our biggest problems and no one wants to deal with it.”
But according to O’Donnell it’s not that no one wants to deal with it, the problem is keeping environmental impacts low. But, he said, there are plans to dredge a portion of the Providence River starting at the Hurricane Barrier and moving south six miles.
”We are still looking at the impacts dredging would have on the bay,” he said. “The problem is there hasn’t been a suitable disposal site in Rhode Island and that is making it more difficult.”
Spaulding, who agrees that dredging may be needed in parts of the bay, is reluctant to say it will help prevent future oil spills.
”Dredging had nothing to do with any of the three spills,” he said. “No one has proved that dredging will reduce the number of barges versus tankers. It’s really an argument to say do it faster and I don’t think that argument holds a lot of water.”
Spaulding’s concern about dredging is preserving the bay’s natural environment.
”There is a huge environmental risk associated with dredging,” he said.
Spaulding along with some local legislators does support a federal legislative initiative requiring barges to be built with double-hulls.
After the North Cape Oil Spill, the General Assembly passed a law requiring double-hulls on all barges. The legislation was designed after a similar new Coast Guard regulation expected to take effect in 2007, but the local legislation had a quicker time frame. However, federal courts have decided in a Washington state case that state laws cannot supersede federal statutes. Therefore the Rhode Island legislation is considered null and void.
Still Senator John A. Celona (D-North Providence) announced that he plans to introduce legislation early in 2001 requiring double-hulled barges in Narragansett Bay, where he asserts state jurisdiction would prevail.
”We must enact legislation as soon as possible requiring double hulled-barges,” he said.
”This is exactly the kind of a spill that a double-hulled barge could have prevented,” Morin said.
But for Boragine and the people, whom his organization represents, whatever the solution is, it needs to come before the next disaster.
”When we look at what this oil spill costs and what the North Cape costs, we see money that people will never get back, whether they get some insurance claim or not,” he said. “These things need to be fixed.”
