San Francisco Oil Spill News

Cosco Busan operator offers to plead no contest

2008-09-06T21:42:00.000-07:00

The operating company for the container ship involved in last November's San Francisco Bay oil spill has offered to plead no contest to criminal charges of falsifying documents and negligence.

The Cosco Busan released more than 50,000 gallons of oil after it struck a support tower of the Bay Bridge.

In court papers filed Thursday, Fleet Management Ltd. of Hong Kong offered to accept convictions for six felony charges and two misdemeanors, but claimed the Nov. 7 crash was largely the fault of others.

Fleet Management could be fined as much as $1.5 million if U.S. District Judge Susan Illston accepts the no-contest plea. But the criminal charges could not be used to establish its responsibility for civil damages, which could be much higher.

Information from: San Francisco Chronicle, www.sfgate.com/chronicle

Oil Spill Update: Alcatraz Island Wildlife Impacts

2008-07-07T20:06:00.000-07:00

Seven months after the Cosco Busan oil spill, populations of breeding birds on Alcatraz Island - the largest bird-breeding ground in San Francisco Bay -- appear to be down, according to researchers. A number of factors -- from oil getting into the food chain to climate-related changes -- may be to blame.

Watch the ABC-7 (KGO TV) news story here.

Tar Balls Found on Alameda Beach

2008-06-18T09:48:00.000-07:00

from the SF Chronicle:

Crown Memorial State Beach in Alameda was temporarily closed Tuesday afternoon after tar balls - possibly remnants of the Nov. 7 Cosco Busan spill of bunker fuel - were discovered on a quarter-mile strip of sand. The beach is near sensitive habitat supporting the endangered clapper rail.

Although the source of the oil is unknown, other oil slicks believed related to the Cosco Busan spill have turned up in the bay this week.

Read the full story here.

Protect our beautiful bay from oil spills

2008-06-18T09:38:00.000-07:00

SF Chronicle editorial by Sejal Choksi, SF Baykeeper:

"The governor's proactive support for expanding the state's oiled wildlife response program, improving emergency response at refineries, and establishing a new program to clean up inland oil spills is a good first step toward protecting California waters and wildlife. But these three bills alone do not address the current flaws in California's oil spill response program. We urge the governor to go further in reforming California's oil spill response procedures by supporting the full package of oil spill bills in the legislature."

Read the full editorial and learn about all proposed bills.

SF: OIL SPILL PILOT ASKS JUDGE TO DISMISS THREE CRIMINAL CHARGES

2008-06-14T14:07:00.000-07:00

From CBS-5 News:

The pilot of the Cosco Busan asked a federal judge Friday to dismiss three of the four criminal charges filed against him.

Lawyers for pilot John Cota argued in papers filed with U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco that two charges of making false statements and one charge of polluting the bay should be dismissed because they are legally defective.

Illston will hold a hearing on the motions on July 18. Cota, 60, of Petaluma, is tentatively scheduled to go on trial in Illston's court on Oct. 20 on those three charges as well as a fourth count of killing migratory birds with the spilled oil.

Renegade Birders To the Rescue

2008-06-13T09:45:00.000-07:00

Flashback to November 2007: While official cleanup agencies dragged their feet, a small group of East Bay birders took matters into their own hands, rescuing oiled birds on the unprotected Richmond and Albany shorelines. Read their fascinating story here, from Terrain Magazine's Spring 2008 issue.

http://www.ecologycenter.org/terrain/article.php?id=13629

Governor Backs Oil Spill Bills: But Is it Enough?

2008-06-12T10:03:00.000-07:00

from the San Francisco Chronicle:

Gov. Schwarzenegger met with lawmakers to endorse three bills to improve emergency response guidelines as a result of the Cosco Busan spill in November, but spurned spill-response bills by Bay Area reps Loni Hancock (AB2031) and Mark Leno (AB2547). The latter's bill stressed investing in improved cleanup and response technologies:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/12/BA5M117KGF.DTL

Related stories & backgrounders:

Guardian UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/12/usa1

Mercury News (Lawmakers Advance on Spill Legislation): http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_9432262

SF Chronicle (summary of response bills): http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/08/BATF101B97.DTL

Newsblaze.com (summarizes what endorsed bills would do): http://newsblaze.com/story/20080612122735zzzz.nb/topstory.html

Tar Sands "Ponds of Death" Kill 500 Sea Ducks Returning to Canada

2008-05-02T11:34:00.000-07:00

Imagine an oil spill that never gets cleaned up, but only gets bigger and bigger, killing birds as they land at night. That's what's happening right now in Alberta, Canada, where the tailings ponds from tar sands oil extraction are creating lethal hazards for many species of ducks and songbirds. Scoter and scaup populations in Canada's Western Boreal Forest -- the world's largest land-based ecosystem, and the breeding grounds for billions of migratory birds -- are especially being impacted by these "ponds of death". This week alone, nearly 500 migrating ducks died in a Syncrude tailing pond, according to the Boreal Songbird Initiative.

The threat is only going to worsen: Canada is banking on tar sands extraction as a big source of income, and is even boasting of its excellent environmental record to the US in order to "sell" tar sands as a "safe" form of oil extraction.

Learn more here: http://www.borealbirds.org/news_pages/news_list.php

Legislation seeks to avert another oil spill

2008-04-08T09:26:00.000-07:00

from the San Francisco Chronicle:

A package of bills that seeks to make improvements in preventing and responding to oil spills such as last year's Cosco Busan cargo ship accident in San Francisco Bay passed a legislative committee April 8th.

Read full story here.

Oil spill pilot says Coast Guard shares blame

2008-04-04T10:05:00.000-07:00

From SF Chronicle:

"Lawyers for Capt. John Cota, pilot of the freighter Cosco Busan, claim that the Coast Guard shares responsibility for the accident that caused a huge oil spill in San Francisco Bay last fall."

Full story

Dead Birds Still Washing Ashore at Richmond Marina

2008-04-02T17:56:00.000-07:00

A local birder reports that she found six dead seabirds - scaup and grebes - along the breakwater north of Vincent Park several weeks ago.

While the oil appears to have been cleaned off the rocks at the marina, we spotted two horned or eared grebes frantically preening themselves today in the harbor at the north end of Vincent Park.

Save the Bay: Time to Get Trash out of our Bay

2008-04-01T21:16:00.000-07:00

From David Lewis, Save the Bay executive director:

"San Francisco Bay is under daily assault from pollution. In addition to the 58,000 gallons of bunker oil that the Cosco Busan spilled last November, and millions of gallons of sewage overflows this winter, an alarming toxic brew flows unfiltered into the bay and ocean every day from our streets through storm drains and creeks."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/01/EDCJVRPRT.DTL

Pilot in SF Oil Spill Pleads Not Guilty

2008-03-21T21:20:00.000-07:00

From AP:

"The pilot of a container ship that spilled thousands of gallons of oil into San Francisco Bay last November pleaded not guilty on Friday to breaking two federal environmental laws."

Read the full story.

Pilot Charged in SF Bay Oil Spill

2008-03-17T21:12:00.000-07:00

From Reuters:

The pilot of a container ship that hit the San Francisco Bay Bridge last year and spilled 58,000 gallons of oil was charged on Monday with violating federal pollution laws.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/03/17/sf.oiltanker.pilot/

Sewage and Oil Spills May Have Doomed Marin Birds

2008-02-15T15:18:00.000-08:00

Necropsies performed on several dead birds found in Richardson Bay last week revealed that although the direct cause of death for one of the birds was found to be avian cholera, the birds were also emaciated. Some scientists now believe that a combination of the oil spill and the over 5 million gallons of sewage have conspired to deprive scoters, scaups and bufflehead of their usual food source.

Read the full Chronicle story.

65 Dead Birds Recovered at Richardson Bay

2008-02-08T21:43:00.000-08:00

As if scoters, scaup and grebes haven't suffered enough in the San Francisco oil spill, here come two humongous raw sewage spills in quick succession to further damage the wildlife in ecologically rich Richardson Bay, designated an Important Bird Area by Audubon California:

posted by Graham Chisholm (Audubon California) to the North Bay Bird list:

"The Richardson Bay Audubon Center staff and volunteers have recovered
65 dead birds in the past 14 days, including 21 on Friday. Below is
an article from Saturday's Chronicle.

We'd like to know if others are seeing dead birds around Richardson
Bay or elsewhere in the North Bay. Collecting specific location
information (date, time, location, species) would be useful. Please
share with Kerry Wilcox, Sanctuary Manager, at kwilcox@audubon.org"

Read the full SF Chronicle story here.

Bad Moves After Oil Spill

2008-01-29T12:01:00.000-08:00

from the San Jose Mercury News:

"A cascade of bad luck and human error hampered the cleanup and generated confusion almost from the moment the Cosco Busan cargo ship sideswiped a tower of the Bay Bridge on Nov. 7 and spilled more than 50,000 gallons of bunker fuel into San Francisco Bay, an independent review found."

Some enlightening details from this report:

The Coast Guard officer in the Bay Area trained to estimate the size of oil spills was out of town and junior officers grossly underestimated the size of the spill.
The incident command was not told of the true size of the spill for more than seven hours after it happened.
A state official who had the ability to measure the size of the oil spill couldn't get to the damaged ship just one mile away for two hours and 20 minutes because his agency, the state Office of Spill Prevention and Response, had no boat to take him there. The official, Roy Mathur, eventually hitched a ride with a boat delivering sandwiches to the 900-foot ship, one of the reviewers said.

Read the full story here.

Figuring Cost of Oil Spill Will Take Years

2008-01-23T12:38:00.000-08:00

from the San Francisco Chronicle:

State agency representatives said it could take years to calculate the cost of the oil spill to the Bay's natural ecosystems, recreation and tourism, and fisheries.

A bird recovery plan could include restoration of nesting grounds that might be in Canada, Mexico, New Zealand or elsewhere, economists said.

Read the Chronicle article.

Tar Still Dots Some East Bay Beaches

2008-01-22T09:08:00.000-08:00

Although the Berkeley Shoreline officially re-opened Wednesday, tarballs and other oil residue is still showing up in parts of the Marina. Meanwhile the Albany and Richmond beaches remain closed for ongoing oil monitoring and assessment.
Read the Berkeley Daily Planet story.

San Francisco Oil Spill: Upcoming Public Hearings

2008-01-20T16:17:00.002-08:00

From Steve Hampton of OSPR (posted to North Bay Bird email list):

"Contacts:
Al Donner, (916) 414-6566 al_donner@fws.gov
Steve Hampton, (916) 323-4724 SHAMPTON@OSPR.DFG.CA.GOV

Cosco Busan oil spill restoration agencies
Schedule two public meetings to obtain public input
Jan. 22 Oakland and Jan. 29 Mill Valley
Meetings are distinct from clean-up

Restoration of the natural resources injured by the Cosco Busan oil spill
in San Francisco Bay will be the focus of two public meetings, on Tuesday,
Jan. 22 in Oakland and on Tuesday, Jan. 29 in Mill Valley.

The Jan. 22 Oakland open house will take place from 11 am to 1 pm in the
First Floor Auditorium in the Elihu M. Harris State Building 1515 Clay
Street Oakland. The Jan. 29 Mill Valley open house will take place from
6:30 to 8:30 pm in the Cascade Room of the Mill Valley Community Center,
180 El Camino Alto, Mill Valley.

The meetings will be conducted by State and Federal Trustee Agencies
(trustees) responsible for restoring the injured resources, after
assessing ecological injuries and human use losses caused by the spill.
The trustees will brief the public on the restoration process, answer
questions and seek information from the public about injuries resulting
from the spill.

A primary purpose of the meetings is to provide an opportunity for the
public and other organizations to learn about the restoration process and
to provide any additional information and data they collected. Because the
focus of these meetings is on injury assessment and ultimate restoration,
these representatives will not be able to address questions about the
immediate response to the spill."

OIl Spill Bills to Be Presented

2007-12-06T12:16:00.000-08:00

From the Sacramento Bee Capitol Alert:

"Assembly Democrats will roll out legislation today in response to last month's oil spill in the San Francisco Bay. Bay Area Assembly members Loni Hancock, Sally Lieber, Mark Leno, Ira Ruskin and Jared Huffman will present their package at a San Francisco press conference. They'll be overlooking the bay, of course.

Not to be outdone, five Senate Democrats sent a letter Wednesday to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger requesting the state auditor conduct an investigation into the spill. Sen. Carole Migden, who will face off against Leno in next June's Democratic primary, announced her own oil-spill legislation on Wednesday that would reduce clean-up response time from six hours to two."

Why cleanup of oil spill lagged

2007-11-25T14:30:00.000-08:00

From the Christian Science Monitor:

Local crabbers and fishermen who could have helped respond to the oil spill were kept out of the loop this time, partly due to organizational weaknesses following the Coast Guard's reorganization post-9/11, say Congressional investigators.

Read the full story.

Oil spill response gets flunking grade

2007-11-25T12:50:00.000-08:00

San Jose Mercury News editorial:

"It's clear that the emergency response to the Nov. 7 oil spill in San Francisco Bay - marked by delays, miscommunication and inadequate coordination - deserves a flunking grade. It resulted in a modest-size spill turning into an ecological disaster for potentially years to come.

Lawmakers and government officials must now work to ensure that spill prevention and response are beefed up. And that there are better safeguards and readiness for future spills."

Read the editorial

Why Bolinas Booms Failed

2007-11-24T19:01:00.000-08:00

Detailed piece from the Point Reyes Light on why and how attempts to place booms across Bolinas Lagoon failed:

http://www.ptreyeslight.com/cgi/news.pl?record=143

Coast Guard turned down San Francisco's help after oil spill

2007-11-23T09:17:00.000-08:00

From the Associated Press:

"A high-ranking Coast Guard officer says his agency turned down an offer of help from the San Francisco Fire Department shortly after the oil spill in the San Francisco Bay.

Rear Admiral Craig Bone says the Coast Guard rejected the city's offer to send out their fire boat after the cargo ship Cosco Busan crashed into the Bay Bridge on November 7th.

The 58,000-gallon oil spill has contaminated miles of fragile coastline around the bay, killed hundreds of birds (ed.: as of 11/21/07 at 8:00 pm, at least 2,000 birds have been found dead or died or were euthanized after rescue) and shut down fishing in the affected area.

Bone says the Coast Guard is investigating what happened to make sure authorities react more effectively in the future.

Federal prosecutors are conducting a criminal probe into the spill."