SPILL STUDY: BURIED OIL DOING LITTLE HARM

By CHARLES WOHLFORTH
Daily News reporter

ANCHORAGE- Oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez 15 months ago will remain buried in sheltered Prince William Sound beaches for 10 years or longer, and beach life will take three to eight years to recover, according to the first governmentsponsored study to take a position on the issue.

But the report says the buried oil is doing little harm.

"There is no evidence that subsurface oil is causing a serious impact to intertidal or subtidal organisms, either by direct contact or by indirect contact through adverse effects on nearshore water quality," according to a summary of the report by John Robinson, chief of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Hazardous Material Response Branch.

NOAA wrote the report to evaluate the potential use of a rockwashing machine to dig up beaches, clean the material, and replace it.

The report concluded that although it will take a long time for beaches to recover, it would take even longer if Exxon used a rock washer.

State officials say the report is wrong to discount excavating beaches. Exxon officials say it is wrong to predict that oil will remain for so long.

The study is the first to provide the public with a government estimate of how long the Exxon Valdez spill will remain in the environment. It is not part of the state and federal governments' spill damage studies, which will cost $70 million for two years' work and are being kept secret because they will be used as evidence against Exxon in court.

The NOAA study says oil will remain buried in sheltered Sound beaches for 10 years or more, and on exposed shores there two to four years. On the Kenai Peninsula, oil on sheltered beaches will persist three to five years, and on exposed beaches one or two.

But it will not necessarily hurt the animals living there.

Analysis of the water next to subsurface oil showed it contained only one part of the most toxic oil molecules per billion parts of water not enough to hurt animals Robinson said.

That means life on the shores will return to normal before the oil is gone, the report says. For sheltered areas, it will take five to eight years; for exposed beaches, three to five.

Fish species that reproduce slowly could take 30 years to recover, if they were harmed at all, the report said.

The predictions are based on an analysis of other oil spills adjusted by five factors expected to make recovery of this spill faster or slower than others.

Exxon's technical manager, Bob Mastracchio, said the company's data shows recovery is going so fast that the entire process will take roughly three years less than the NOAA report predicts.

But Robinson said the environment's recovery is slowing down.

The state's spill response coordinator, Randy Bayliss, said there is not enough evidence for NOAA to reach its conclusions.

Robinson got in some trouble with his own agency for reaching his conclusions. He said he was asked by NOAA lawyers to write a letter which is dated Monday, two days after the report was released stating that its conclusions represent his own best judgment and not that of the broader agency.

He said the lawyers were afraid the report could hurt the government's cases against Exxon, for which the $70 million in studies are to provide evidence.

"I don't have too much appreciation for the lawyers' point of view on this," Robinson said. "The agency supports the findings, and they understand why I had to discuss certain damage."

Robinson got away with reaching the conclusions because the study was intended to guide spill cleanup decisionmakers on whether or not they should excavate beaches and put rocks in a washing machine. It said they shouldn't.

Robinson's summary said a beach washer would delay biological recovery by two years.

The cleaning would kill everything on the beach and change its natural construction. Erosion tends to leave larger rocks on the surface, where they tend to stay put. It would take one to three years for that sorting to reestablish itself, and in that time organisms would be ground up and killed by the moving rocks, Robinson said.

Bayliss, who still favors excavating beaches, attacked Robinson's objectivity.

"We are aware of John Robinson's bias against shoreline treatment," Bayliss said. "Last summer he made several statements to the press that the cleanup should be left to Mother Nature, and that was when oil was ankledeep. So I think he has a closed mind, or not an open mind."

Robinson said he did oppose the use of highpressure, hotwater blasting late last summer, because it was shown in a NOAA study to kill almost everything on the beach while removing little oil. But he said oil was not ankledeep a that time.

He agreed with Bayliss that he is conservative about beach treatment.

"I don't think bias is the right word, but I am conservative, and it comes from my experience that the longestlasting damage from oil spills comes from cleanup methods," he said. "All of the lasting damage I've seen some has been minor and some fairly major has been cleanuprelated."

The group Robinson heads is the lead national agency in providing scientific cleanup advice after oil spills.

Robinson said some of the damage he fears has already taken place in the Sound. Last month, at the state's urging, cleanup workers used a backhoe to dig up a beach at Sleepy Bay, on the north end of LaTouche Island. They were anxious to speed up work on beaches next to salmon spawning streams.

Robinson said that was as bad as, and maybe worse than, using a rock washer.

Exxon's Mastracchio agreed that it was a mistake and was environmentally destructive.

"There was a suggestion by the state to do some excavation, and it turned out to be quite a bit of excavation," Mastracchio said. "And the excavator probably should have put a stop to it and said, "This doesn't make sense.' But everyone was involved, and we have to take some of the blame."

Coast Guard Capt. Dave Zawadzki, chief of staff for the federal cleanup team, said the treatment in Sleepy Bay didn't look too bad to the people working for him. He said four streams remained to be cleaned Monday afternoon, and all would be done by the state's deadline, today.

Zawadzki said Rear Adm. David Ciancaglini, the chief federal cleanup official, will decide late next week whether to use a rockwasher.

Mastracchio said NOAA's conclusions on the rock washer confirmed Exxon's own, but he will not stop a $1 million test of the equipment in Anchorage later this month.

Bayliss said the state could attempt to compel Exxon to use a rock washer, but the company could delay such a compliance order until next spring. He said the state wants a smaller rock washer than the 150footlong, 100tonperhour model Exxon has designed.

Redesigning the machine would take until next spring, Robinson said.

"If they don't do aggressive mechanical cleanup this year, I expect they will be back to clean the 20 or so beaches with subsurface oil next year," Bayliss said.

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