Oil spill closes port

Coast Guard Magazine, March, 2005 by Krystyna Hannum

The wind was cold enough to chill the breath of the dark figures stuck outdoors. A nearly full moon glimmered off the river, which cut a path between shorelines filled with trees. The tree line stepped short at the CITGO Asphalt Refining Company facility in West Deptford, N.J. As the river flowed past the facility, the current momentarily slowed as it struck the piling of a pier.

Two tugboats were assisting a tanker as it prepared to moor. Under the night sky, a tugboat crewmember noticed something wrong. The 750-foot ship seemed to be leaning to one side in the calm, river waters, and oil, thick and black enough to be seen against the already dark water, was pouring up from under the ship.

The Athos 1, a Cypriot-flagged oil tanker, had been attempting to dock around 9:15 p.m. Nov. 26 along the Delaware River. Immediately, the Athos 1 and CITGO workers activated response plans as a third tug came to help secure the tanker, which had lost all power to its engines following the port list. The tugs positioned the ship in the nearby anchorage while a response contractor from CITGO strung boom around the stricken vessel.

Fifteen minutes later, Captain of the Port and Commanding Officer of Marine Safety Office Philadelphia, Capt. Jonathan Sarubbi, was awakened by a phone call from the duty watch stander, who reported that oil was gushing from a tanker known to have 13 million gallons of oil aboard.

The seriousness of the event was immediately apparent. "I knew we had to quickly implement our contingency plans to minimize the effects," said Sarubbi.

Less than two hours after the report, Lt. Blanca Rosas, assistant chief for marine environmental protection at MSO Philadelphia, was on a Station Philadelphia 41-foot utility boat heading to the scene. The 41-footer didn't get far. The incoming tide had pushed the sticky oil north toward Philadelphia. Still about three miles away from the leaking tanker, the thick black muck threatened to kill the small boat's engines, and the crew was forced to return back to the station. Rosas headed to the CITGO facility in a vehicle and was met there by CWO2 John Nay, the duty investigation officer from the MSO.

From the CITGO pier, Rosas and Nay, and several MSO personnel, were able to get underway on a launch and make way through the oily mixture to the tanker. Rosas, the lead for spill response, immediately was concerned with ensuring the deployed boom surrounding the tanker was working, and getting boom set up around neighboring creeks and marshland. While Rosas worked on operations, Nay set off to find the cause of the spill.

"When we got there, we wanted to take a ride around the vessel and try to determine what's causing the list and if the boom was working. After that, my main job was to discover why the leak occurred," said Nay. And it was not apparent to anyone at the time what had caused the leak.

"Everyone was baffled about what caused this. The crew was baffled; the master was baffled," said Nay. "Yet, though the master [of the Athos 1] was dumfounded, he did take immediate actions, which really prevented further oil from escaping."

Nay, who was previously assigned to the Atlantic Strike Team, had been involved in oil spills this size and larger, but this is the first case of this scale that he has investigated.

"It appears the crew did everything properly," said Nay. "This case is unique from my perspective because normally a spill this size is caused by an obvious human or mechanical error."

Another distinctive factor setting this case apart was the number of agencies involved, said Sarubbi. Oil from the Athos 1 touched the inland waters and shores of Philadelphia, Delaware and New Jersey. The size and location of the spill prompted representatives from several agencies, together with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Army Corps of Engineers, Environmental Protection Agency, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, and Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control to form a unified command.

The overnight hours were filled with business both on the water and at the MSO where the unified command was taking shape. As more responders arrived to the tanker, boom was deployed across 12 environmentally sensitive areas, oil-skimming vessels began the task of on-water oil recovery, and assessment teams started walking the New Jersey and Pennsylvania shorelines. By the time the sun rose, it was apparent that several thousand gallons of oil had been spilled.

Like a domino effect, the oil spill led to vessel traffic restrictions. The river had been shut down to all vessel-transiting traffic. With the Port of Philadelphia being the sixth largest port in the United States, this caused Sarubbi more than a little concern.

"I knew closing the port was a serious matter because of the stature of the Port of Philadelphia," he said. "We knew that we couldn't keep it closed for long." Yet, there were many objectives that needed to be addressed and handled, including ensuring the publics' health and safety, the recovery of impacted wildlife and environment, the cause of the spill, and of course, the oil clean-up.