[NYTr] Oil Spill Fouls Shores in San Francisco Area

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The New York Times - November 9, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/09/us/09spill.html


Oil Spill Fouls Shores in San Francisco Area

By FELICITY BARRINGER

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 8 — A South Korean container ship hit one of the
stanchions of the Bay Bridge in a dense fog on Wednesday, spilling
58,000 gallons of bunker oil.

Strong tides have since swept the slick through the mouth of San
Francisco Bay, fouling beaches up to 20 miles north of the city and
girdling Alcatraz Island with a belt of goo.

While every change of tide sent the oil to a different shore, the
largest concentrations were “one-and-a-half to two miles offshore, west
of the Golden Gate bridge,” said Lt. Rob Roberts of the California
Department of Fish and Game. Several beaches were closed by the spill.

Lieutenant Roberts said that of the 26 oil-covered shorebirds that had
been found, six were dead.

The spill, though just one two-hundredth the size of the Exxon Valdez
spill into Prince William Sound in Alaska, still hit a nerve in a
region whose self-image and international reputation is closely tied to
its bridges, cold blue waters, beaches and rocky bluffs — many of them
now touched by the oil.

The Coast Guard and the California Department of Fish and Game extended
yellow booms to keep the bunker fuel, one of the crudest and
least-distilled petroleum products, from various shorelines, including
the entrances to wildlife-rich estuaries north of San Francisco.

Wil Bruhns, a division chief with the San Francisco Bay Regional Water
Quality Control Board, said that the outward bound ebb tide carried the
slick “up the coast, where we’re getting reports of oil sheens and bad
smell and oiled birds.”

The ship, the Cosco Busan, owned by the Hanjin Shipping company of
South Korea, struck a pier on the bridge’s western side. The glancing
blow sheared off most of the protective fender of woodlike plastic,
which was nearly 3 feet thick and 10 feet wide, said Bart Ney, a
spokesman for the state transportation department.

Jessica Castelli, a spokeswoman for the nonprofit environmental group
Save the Bay, said worried residents had flooded her group with offers
to clean injured birds and oiled beaches.

Mr. Bruhns said that while he could not prejudge the investigation
being conducted by the Coast Guard, earlier accidents had led to
prosecutions.

“Lots of ships go around the bay,” he said, “and it’s really rare the
bridges get hit, even in fog. There is radar.”

Carolyn Marshall contributed reporting.