Miles of shoreline fouled after mystery spill

09:33 AM PDT on Sunday, October 17, 2004

From KING5.com, KING Staff and Wire Reports

SEATTLE - Despite a big cleanup effort involving hundreds of people, the oil continued to spread a day after a mysterious spill. What started in the South Sound has now spread north to Bake Island and even Seattle's Alki Beach.

Miles of state shoreline is now covered with a heavy sheen of oil, which started to spread from Vashon Island south to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Another 15 miles is coated with a light sheen of oil, U.S. Coast Guard Cdr. Mark Dix said Friday morning.

But the source of the estimated 1,000 gallons of oil that stained Puget Sound waters Thursday remained a mystery.

Dix said the Coast Guard had put together an extensive list of vessels or facilities that could have been a source of the oil - the exact type of which has not yet been determined - and was taking oil samples from all of them in the hopes of finding a match. Dix said some of the vessels the Guard wanted to contact had already left the area and efforts were being made to contact them at their next port of call.

The Coast Guard did not release the list.

In the meantime, cleanup crews have put out almost 19,000 feet of containment and absorbent booms.

The booms are being used to protect an ecologically rich area where grebes, ducks and other birds spend their winters.

AP

An oil spill, dispersed by tidal and wind action, creates a multi-colored sheen on the water on the beaches of Vashon Island.

The heavy-grade industrial oil can coat beaches, form tar balls and does not easily evaporate.

Wildlife agencies received reports that at least two birds were found coated in oil, one lightly and one heavily, said Joan Jewett, spokeswoman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

But on Friday, Washington Department of Ecology official Paul O'Brien said there were no confirmed reports of injured wildlife.

Ecology and the Coast Guard spill responders were sent to Dalco Passage Thursday between the south end of Vashon Island and Point Defiance in Tacoma, after someone on a tug boat reported thick black oil in the water, said Mary Ellen Voss, an Ecology spokeswoman.

Cleanup operations began around midday Thursday and 10 skimmers were deployed by several contractors by the end of the day, Altose said.

In all, there were 238 people involved in the response, 142 of them in the field.

The spill, though relatively small, was one of the few of significance to occur so far south in Washington's inland marine waters, and its impact was magnified because it has not been reported by whoever was responsible, Altose said Friday.

Because of strong currents in the area, "it was already on the run when we spotted it," he said.

A spill last December at a fuel terminal near Edmonds, north of Seattle, amounted to about 4,800 gallons.

The initial report, received by telephone about 1 a.m. Thursday, indicated the spill was roughly an acre in size. By late Thursday, Ecology officials said it had spread 5 to 6 miles, forming a U-shape around the southern end of Vashon Island, creeping into Quartermaster Harbor between Vashon and Maury islands and contaminating beaches on the southern parts of both islands southwest of Seattle.

Containment boom was placed in the Quartermaster and Gig Harbor areas, Altose said.

Bill Sibbitt, 51, of Indianola, a tugboat skipper, told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer he reported the spill to the Coast Guard after encountering "a solid pool of black oil" north of Commencement Bay.

"I just smelled this huge smell of oil and I thought, `Oh, God," Sibbitt said.

AP

Third-generation islander Doug Mish's hands are covered in oil after he used an oar to fend off clumps of oil from his family's beach near the Tahlequah ferry dock at the south end of Vashon Island, Wash., following an oil spill in Puget Sound Thursday, Oct. 14, 2004.

Even after dawn Thursday, it took several hours for thick morning fog to clear enough for spill responders to get out on the water and into the air to investigate.

"There's really very little that can be done in the dark," Altose said.

Kathy Fletcher, executive director of the environmental group People for Puget Sound, called the time lag a big disappointment.

"We know quite a lot about currents and tides in Puget Sound, and so even though it's dark ... knowing the approximate location of a spill could alert the agencies to the possibility of oil coming to shore in certain areas," Fletcher said.

Mary Nicholson, 47, who lives two doors from the Tahlequah ferry dock on Vashon Island, and said she awoke to the smell of oil.

She said she was careful to keep her dog, Chelsea, out of the water during a midmorning beach walk.

"I picked up this rock and this globby stuff was dropping off of it in clumps," Nicholson said. "It was really bad."

Wintering seabirds flock to the area because of a plentiful supply of herring and other forage fish that thrive in eelgrass beds along the shorelines, Fletcher said.

"One of the few fortunate things is the wintering seabirds have not come in their greatest numbers yet," Fletcher said. "When the birds do come in force, if the stuff they eat has been poisoned, that's going to be a bad situation."

If you see any oiled or injured birds or animals, call the Department of Fish and Wildlife at 1-800-22-BIRDS.

Crime Stoppers is offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of whoever spilled the oil. Anyone with information is asked to call 253-591-5959.

KING5's Jim Klockow, Arturo Santiago, Karin Czulik and The Associated Press contributed to this report.