Massive Bay Area oil cleanup shifts focus
Crews turn to the shoreline as many large deposits in the water are recovered. U.S. Attorney's office is investigating possible civil or criminal penalties.
SAN FRANCISCO — With several federal agencies investigating an oil spill caused by a ship that struck the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge last week, the massive cleanup effort shifted to the shoreline today as officials announced that crews had captured most large deposits of fuel floating on the water.
More than 12,000 gallons of the nearly 58,000 gallons have been recovered by booms, but thin layers of oil remained in San Francisco Bay and some of it has sunk, officials said. Thick, tarry deposits fouled beaches from Berkeley to as far away as Point Reyes National Seashore in Marin County.
More than 400 volunteers were trained and equipped to collect the hazardous heavy fuel oil, while investigations continued into the collision that ripped a long gash in the hull of the Cosco Busan, a Hong Kong-based container ship.
As the National Transportation Safety Board looked into the cause of the crash, the U.S. Attorney's office in San Francisco was examining the circumstances to determine whether civil or criminal penalties are warranted.
Coast Guard Rear Adm. Craig Bone, meanwhile, told reporters that the ship had been detained because his agency's initial investigation found problems that made it unsafe for the vessel to sail. He said the problems related to the "bridge resource management team," which include the Chinese crew as well as the American pilot who was charged with guiding the vessel through the bay's busy waterways.
Bone declined to specify the nature of the problems or to speculate about whether they caused the crash or contributed to it.
"If the vessel were to relocate, you don't want the potential for a reoccurrence," he said.
Officials said the cleanup already has cost millions of dollars and is far from complete. And Bone continued to defend the speed and aggressiveness of the effort, despite criticism from elected officials and environmental groups.
"We did throw everything we had at it and haven't backed off since," he said. "We had more capacity and a quicker response than on most spills."
However, he acknowledged that San Francisco Bay -- with its powerful tides, frequent fog and vast natural resources -- may require different standards for safely controlling ship movements. "The real issue is to prevent [a repeat] of what happened," he said.
Federal officials will be examining audio communications between the ship's crew and the Vessel Traffic Service, the Coast Guard's equivalent of air traffic control, which monitors ship traffic in San Francisco Bay.
