SPILL WORK'S TOLL
SEA LIFE DIES ON BLASTED BEACHES

By CHARLES WOHLFORTH
Daily News reporter

VALDEZ- Hot water blasting of Prince William Sound beaches to remove Exxon's spilled oil kills almost everything in its path, according to a month old study that Exxon has yet to release.

It was always known that cleaning with a hard jet of hot water would hurt plants and animals that live between the high and low tide lines what's called intertidal life but Exxon technical experts and others said that with proper use of the equipment the damage would not be serious. Then, on July 22, the first scientific study of the treatment methods was undertaken. Biologists counted the living organisms on a beach in Herring Bay before and after it was treated with an Omni boom barge. The high pressure sprayers, now the primary tool against the spill, are normally used to pump cement through their long mechanical arms. As an oil treatment tool, they blast the beach two and a half times harder than a typical fire hose, with 500 gallons of 130-degree water every minute.

Biologists returning to the treated beach a week after the work found a rotting mess of dead sea life, said David Hall, who observed the test for the Department of Environmental Conservation. He said the smell of decomposing sea life was "almost nauseating."

Hall said biologists working at the site told him 90 percent of all the organisms in the study area had been killed.

The study was organized by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, which farmed out various aspects of the test in a cooperative venture. The National Marine Fisheries Service took underwater photos, while NOAA calculated how much oil was in the beach and how much was removed. Exxon biologists with the firm Dames and Moore conducted the biological study.

But although NOAA has produced a written report on its part of the study, Exxon still has not shared the biological data, giving the explanation that it was ''under review," said Jacqui Michel, who organized the work for NOAA.

"I sense a little hesitancy to release it," Michel said. "They can review it for a long time."

Exxon spokesman Joe Tucker said he did not know when the results would be released, and would not allow an interview with the biologists who did the work.

"The results of the tests are still being analyzed and we're planning to meet soon with NOAA and the other agencies involved in the test to discuss the results," he said in a prepared response to a request for the data.

Michel said Saturday that a meeting with Exxon scientists about the data had been scheduled for Sunday. Less than three weeks remain before all the work will stop anyway at Exxon's self-imposed Sept. 15 deadline.

Exxon's environmental science director on the spill, Al Maki, did not consent to a l0-minute phone or in-person interview which the Daily News requested Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in person,

in the form of telephone messages, and through Exxon's media relations office.

But Michel confirmed Hall's impression that the blasting in the test destroyed more living things than many had expected. "The intertidal biologist doing the work said there was high mortality." she said. But,

unlike Hall, she said she did not smell anything when she visited the site several days after the test.

Michel said there wasn't much damage where the equipment did not spray. The test went on only when the tide was high enough to cover the strip of beach richest in seaweed and animals, the lower intertidal area known as "the green zone." Operators of the booms are under orders not to spray the green zone, but several observers have seen the rules ignored.

Nonetheless, Michel, a geophysicist who has devoted her career to studying beaches affected by oil spills, believes the damage being done to shoreline life is not worth the benefit of removing the oil, which for the

last two months has been too sticky to remove without the severe methods.

"My personal opinion is that the sooner we stop treating the beaches, the better off the beaches will be." she said. "We're not doing a very good job."

The beach in the Herring Bay test, which was 90 feet long, contained 1,300 gallons of oil, according to calculations by the scientific team. About 150 gallons of oil was recovered in four hours, 20 minutes of cleaning.

The day of the test, the weather was cold and steady drizzle fell. The torrent of hot water created an impenetrable, foul-smelling fog on the beach. Afterward, the rocks on the surface were still lightly stained, but they were not sticky. They were warm to the touch, despite the weather. Underneath

the rocks, the oil remained.

Evidence exists that life below the low tide line and in the green zone is damaged even if it isn't subjected to a direct hit from the spray. Michel said washing spreads oily sediments into the previously clean sea

floor, possibly smothering organisms, introducing oil into the food chain, and exposing sea life to toxins for long periods of time.

Oil also sinks naturally when it bonds with sediments such as small gravel and sand. For months, experts insisted there was no sinking oil , as a result of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, while field workers and fishermen said they had seen it sinking. Bob Tworkowski, a Department of Environmental Conservation environmental technician in Kodiak, now keeps a jar of water on his desk with an oil blob sitting on the bottom.

''They say its not supposed to sink," Tworkowski said recently, gazing at the sunken blob.

NOAA spill response director John Robinson said he found a sunken oil blob of his own in Prince William Sound's Snug Harbor, but he does not consider sunken oil a widespread problem because most beaches in southcentral Alaska are made of rocks too large to easily move off the beach.

But where there is oil on the bottom, it could be a problem, he said. It is still toxic to creatures that are in contact with it for a long time, and on the bottom, away from the air, it will last much longer without weathering into relatively harmless asphalt, Robinson said.

Hall, whose job is to assess cleanup work, said he has found total devastation on some beaches caused by the impact of washing, including dead animals normally found in the green zone and below the tide line.

In Rua Cove, on Knight Island, he said, high pressure hot water did a thorough job of cleaning off a layer of emulsified oil that was still three inches deep a few weeks ago. But the work also left dead periwinkles,

dismembered star fish, and dislodged mussels whose shells had opened in death, but still contained their flesh.

"In the lower intertidal area, amongst the boulders and cobbles, there were crushed clams-- clams with the meat still inside," Hall said. "Often times you don't know the cause of death, but immediately after the test the meat was still intact. The whole lower intertidal area was littered with dead intertidal animals, and it smelled rank."

Michel's study persuaded workers to shorten their washing of beaches. But it is still more than she believes it necessary. Michel and Hall both said much of the work only makes the beach look better.

"Would we rather see an aesthetically pleasing site, or aesthetically have it look trashed, but know that the life that has survived the oil is allowed to live?" Hall said.

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