A FEW FOULED SHORELINES WILL BECOME SCIENCE LABS

By CHARLES WOHLFORTH
Daily News Reporter

VALDEZ- A committee of scientists will begin to decide this morning what will live and what will die along the shores on Prince William Sound during the cleanup of spilled oil from the tanker Exxon Valdez.

They are advising Exxon about the kinds of pumps and hoses for washing oil off the shore and back into the water, where booms would pick it up. Because no one knows for sure what method is best, they are turning the Sound into a giant laboratory.

A squeaky clean shore would be one where highpressure washing has killed everything in the scientist's antiseptic language, "removing the biota." A dirty shore would continue to reintroduce oil into the ocean for decades, or even generations.

Exxon unveiled its plans at a meeting Saturday night. Andy Teal, who is running the operation, said a 90person work camp floating on a barge will be ready to go to Naked Island Sunday and begin flushing beaches with lowpressure water pumps.

Next week, two more barges will arrive to bring the total of workers to 230. They will blast oil off the rocks where seals and sea lions haul out to give birth in late May on Seal Rock, Applegate Rock, and northern Green Island. Teal said in a few weeks Exxon hopes to reach a work force strength of 500 people.

But before the work begins, Exxon needs permission from a committee of resource agency scientists. It needs a permit to start work from the state Department of Natural Resources, and permission to stop when the cleanup is over from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, Teal said.

The committee plans to take one piece of shoreline at a time to find the least destructive cleaning method. Resource agencies have already signed the guidelines assessing which few pieces of shoreline are too sensitive to touch, and the areas which should be cleaned first, such as the seal colonies.

Within the guidelines, the agencies will decide beach by beach on how far to go.

"Is this going to be the one we blast, or do we let it go?" posed Environmental Protection Agency expert Harry Allen, speaking rhetorically to a group of scientists.

"I think what they'll probably do is split the difference, try different things on different beaches, and make a scientific study of it," said Dave Faurot, of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

About 100 workers have rubbed individual rocks clean for 10 days, riding out and back daily on a chartered tour boat from Valdez. Their efforts have accomplished little more than to prove that they are wasting their time, but work continued on Naked Island Friday nonetheless.

Teal said the workers will be devoted to the flushing operation, but will still commute from Valdez.

Most of the Sound's shoreline probably will never be touched by any method of cleaning. Gregory Kellogg, who is in charge of the EPA team here, said the area that needs to be cleaned is roughly equivalent to the Atlantic Coast, except that it is more rugged and less accessible.

"Let's not kid anybody," he said. "The beach cleanup effort is going to take a horrendous amount of time and work, and anyone who expects the beaches to be free of oil when it's done is fooling themselves."

It doesn't matter how much manpower is thrown at the problem.

"It's clear that the number of people needed could not be in Valdez," said the EPA's Allen, an Edison, N.J., resident who is working and living with several other men in a recreational vehicle in the Bearpaw Camper Park. "The environment is not big enough. There aren't enough hamburgers at the Tastee Freeze."

So why bother? The question is nearly taboo.

"That's completely unacceptable to everybody," Kellogg said. "We can't do that. In the national press and public opinion, the people demand we do something. It's part of the healing process. But I hope we stop short of doing more harm than good."

The washing could do harm by eroding beaches, destroying archaeological artifacts, and killing creatures that live near the tide line. Beaches could be washed away and have to be shoveled back into their original shape. Methods that don't do as much harm, such as flooding the beach with lowpressure hoses, also don't do much good.

Exxon tested lowpressure washing Thursday on Eleanor Island. Pumps flooded the beach from the top while workers shot a squirt of water from below to agitate the rocks. Observers said the process was slow and removed oil only from an inchthick top layer of beach, leaving far more than it washed away.

Oil on some beaches has soaked into the ground a yard deep, and is thick and gooey at bottom.

Teal said the technique will work better in actual practice because the water will be left on for as much as a week at a time.

But an EPA manual of cleanup techniques says the lowpressure water technique should be used to flush lightweight oils that are not sticky, when contamination is light.

Besides being only marginally effective, lowpressure flooding caused erosion in the Eleanor Island test, observers said. Teal said that problem can be solved by using hoses with holes in them to spread the water out. But the EPA's Allen said earlier that erosion may be unavoidable.

"In strong winter storms you get that same kind of erosion, and it seems to me that some damage to the beach is going to be worth it to get the oil out," Allen said.

High pressure hoses and steam cleaning can kill everything in their path, and Teal said under Exxon's plan they will be restricted to areas where the oil absolutely must be removed, such as the seal colonies.

Colleen Burgh, a Department of Environmental Conservation member of the cleanup committee, said the group will work by consensus, but the DEC will have final authority on when cleanup is sufficient. She said each resource fish, tide pool, recreational area has a constituency in one of the agencies.

"It's going to be interesting," she said. "We haven't met on a beach yet where there's a conflict."

But there probably will be. "Every one of these techniques you're going to find people polarized, no matter what it is," Kellogg said. "This is a soft science."

He said the EPA probably will not allow chemical cleaners to be used at all.

The National Marine Fisheries Service is expected to stand up as an advocate for intertidal life, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game for the fisheries, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for birds and marine mammals. Biologists and archeologists will be on the scene of the cleanup to prevent errors, Teal said.

And, while it may be impossible to save the Sound, the scientists hope to gain by obtaining information on the methods used in the cleanup.

"I think it's going to be a learning experience to a great extent," said Mark Kuwada, of the Department of Fish and Game's habitat division. "The variety of shoreline types I don't think anyone can say what will be needed in different cases."

It is also unknown how much cleaning will help a stretch of shoreline. An area where all life is decimated to get rid of the oil would take a long time to regenerate, because the seeds of future generations would also be destroyed, said Tim Reilly, of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

But oil that is emulsified and buried in the sediments will not quickly degrade, and may emit toxins for 20 years, Allen said.

"You'd have to basically remove the beach to get every little drop of hydrocarbons out of it," said Burgh of the DEC. "It's going to depend on the beach, and what lives there, and its ability to heal itself."

Taking apart much of Prince William Sound is impossible, but taking apart some of it could begin next week.

"We need to make some decisions soon," said Dave McGillivary, of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, "because if we don't, the oil will begin solidifying, making it more difficult to clean, and essentially making the decision for us. Then we won't be able to do any cleaning."

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