Are We Prepared For a Big Spill?

SEATTLE (KPLU) - The massive spill from a blown-out oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico has focused the world's attention on the damage large spills can do. There are no offshore oil rigs in Washington State, but an estimated 20 billion gallons of oil and other petroleum products are carried in and out of Puget Sound each year. So, how well are we prepared for a major spill?

Curt Hart, with the Washington Department of Ecology, is feeling pretty good about the state's ability to deal with oil spills.

"We've got a very strong and robust spill preparedness program," he says, "and we've got a very strong and robust spill prevention program."

Hart points to the state's requirement that all tankers have two hulls and redundant control systems to prevent steering and propulsion failures. There's a rescue tugboat stationed at the mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and tankers have to have tug escorts before they enter Puget Sound.

Hart says all this - and dozens of other requirements - is designed to prevent spills in the first place.

"Because all oil is poison," he says, "Once it hits the environment, the damage starts."

If oil does hit the water, the state has spill response equipment staged in nearly a hundred locations around the state, plus more than a thousand trained volunteer first-responders. The Coast Guard and the oil industry also have vessels and clean-up equipment they can put in the field to attack a spill.

So, does that mean we're pretty well covered? Bruce Wishart -- with the environmental group People for Puget Sound - says no.

"We are absolutely unprepared for a catastrophic oil spill."

Wishart says a spill of a million gallons or more would swamp the state's best efforts to prevent severe environmental damage.

"Even under the best case scenario," he says, "you rarely recover more than 20 percent of the oil spilled. So even with the equipment, there are serious problems.

The worst oil spill in state history happened in 1972, when a Navy ship grounded near Cape Flattery on the coast and dumped more than two million gallons of fuel oil.

Wishart points to a report issued last year by the governor's Oil Spill Advisory Council, shortly before the group was disbanded in a round of budget cuts. The report makes a raft of recommendations, including boosting equipment and trained personnel to recover more oil, more quickly. Critics of the report say it sets an unrealistic standard for oil spill response.

Curt Hart at the Department of Ecology concedes that a massive spill such as the Exxon Valdez - which dumped about 11 million gallons - would be a disaster despite the best clean-up efforts.

"We're as prepared as any state, and probably more prepared than any state, but can we guarantee that we will never have a catastrophic spill in Washington? The answer is no."

Hart says that makes it all the more important to do everything possible to prevent spills before they occur.