473,500 gallons of oil missing in river spill

473,500 gallons of oil missing in river spill

By Wendy Ruderman
Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer

An estimated 473,500 gallons of crude is missing from a damaged oil tanker in the Delaware River, the Coast Guard said yesterday, indicating that the weekend spill could be considerably worse than thought.

The amount is roughly 15 times greater than the 30,000 gallons of oil that ship's engineers said had spewed from the Greek tanker as it maneuvered into a marine terminal owned by Citgo Petroleum Corp. in West Deptford.

It remained unclear yesterday whether all of the missing oil had spilled into the Delaware River. Some of the heavy crude may have collected in an empty ballast tank on the port side.

A leak of all 473,500 gallons into the Delaware would be a "worst-case scenario," said Coast Guard Capt. Jonathan D. Sarubbi, who is overseeing the investigation and cleanup.

The worst spill on the Delaware occurred in 1989 when a tanker ran aground in Claymont, Del., dumping 300,000 gallons of oil into the river.

Michael Hanson, spokesman for the company that manages the ship, said he did not think the spill would be much worse than initially believed.

"It's not just gushing out of there," he said.

By yesterday, the spill had spread significantly, affecting patches of shoreline in a 44-mile stretch from the Salem nuclear power station to the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge.

The hardest-hit sections, however, remained along the 10 miles between the southern end of Little Tinicum Island and the Schuylkill, Coast Guard officials said.

The oil sheen reached within three miles of drinking-water intakes for South Jersey and Philadelphia.

The drinking water is not currently threatened, but precautions are being taken, Bradley Campbell, commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, said yesterday. Officials are testing the drinking water regularly.

"It's close enough that we need to be alert," Campbell said.

Investigators had yet to determine what ripped the hull of the Athos I open.

But some speculated that the hull had struck a 14,000-pound, 141/2-foot-wide propeller that fell off a dredge boat owned by the Army Corps of Engineers in April and was not recovered.

Local history buffs even mused that the ship had gotten snagged on an iron-spiked booby trap placed in the river to skewer British ships during the Revolutionary War.

Ed Levine, oceanographer for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who is assisting in the investigation, said officials had not ruled out the role of tides, which would have been lower than usual because of a full moon Friday night. Tide charts show that the spill was discovered about 90 minutes after low tide in that section of the river.

The number of cleanup workers has swelled from 557 to 730, who helped place 40,000 feet of booms designed to block the oil's spread, particularly into ecologically sensitive tributaries. Workers have recovered about 6,300 gallons of oil, officials said.

Between 500 and 1,000 birds are believed to have been "oiled," Campbell said. Most are common birds, such as Canada geese, gulls and ducks.

Two pairs of bald eagles on Mantua Creek and Monds Island in New Jersey are partly covered with oil. The birds are still mobile, and rescue workers were trying yesterday to develop a plan to capture and clean them, Campbell said.

Workers scrambled to stay ahead of the inclement weather expected overnight. Environmentalists feared that heavy rain could slow the cleanup, and that strong wind from the north could push the spill farther south.

The company that manages the ship, Tsakos Shipping & Trading in Athens, has agreed to pay for the multimillion-dollar cleanup, which is expected to take months.

So far, nearly 100 claims have been filed against Tsakos. Claimants include 75 owners of pleasure boats coated by oil, four private-property owners with dock damage, and 10 commercial vessels that were delayed when the Coast Guard shut down marine traffic after the spill.

International shipping records show the Athos I also had caused oil pollution eight months ago. A report said the tanker was detained in Korea in March after black oil that had filled the bottom of its engine room was pumped overboard using an "illegal connection."

On this trip, the Athos I was loaded with 325,000 barrels, or nearly 14 million gallons, of heavy crude from Venezuela. Tugboat operators spotted the leak about 9:30 p.m. Friday as they guided the 750-foot ship toward the Citgo dock, located where the Delaware River and Mantua Creek converge.

On Sunday, divers found a six-foot-long gash and a nearly two-foot-wide puncture in the hull. The Coast Guard is studying a videotape of the damaged hull.

The two holes appear to jut inward, indicating the damage was caused by an object in the water, rather than by an explosion on the ship, Sarubbi said.

Citgo is responsible for keeping the waterway around its dock clear of debris and deep enough for ships. Spokeswoman Kate Robbins said the company had measured the depth and checked for protruding objects in October.

"We can ensure that there is an unobstructed path for vessels," she said yesterday.

Robbins said Citgo had dredged the terminal area in 1992. But Merv Brokke, spokesman with the Army Corps of Engineers, said permit records indicate Citgo had not dredged the port since 1982, when a contractor removed 4,000 cubic yards of material.

The Port of Philadelphia was partially opened to traffic yesterday, with 12 ships entering and three ships departing. An additional 25 ships were waiting to come in, while 23 were waiting to depart, creating a "significant backlog," Sarubbi said.

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Contact staff writer Wendy Ruderman at 856-779-3926. Inquirer staff writers Tom Avril and Joe DiStefano contributed to this article.