San Francisco Bay Oil Spill
By Sejal Choksi, San Francisco Baykeeper

In the early morning fog of November 7, 2007, the Cosco Busan, a 902-foot long cargo ship, collided with a Bay Bridge base tower spilling 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel into San Francisco Bay. Initial reports from the vessel captain and the U.S. Coast Guard indicated that the 100 foot gash in the ship’s fuel tank leaked only 140 gallons of fuel. Within the first hour, however, the oil had spread over a third of a square mile and dizzying fumes forced offices along the San Francisco waterfront to close.

The Coast Guard failed to acknowledge warning signs of the spill’s real magnitude and delayed warning the public, local officials and the California Office of Spill Prevention and Response until hours later. The public was not notified of the true extent of the spill until 12 hours after the accident. In the days after the spill, response agencies continued to mismanage cleanup efforts. Spill response and communication protocols were disregarded, and the spill went largely uncontained.

San Francisco Baykeeper was immediately out on the water documenting the extent of the spill and the response efforts. Up to five days after the spill, oil slicks continued to appear on the bay. We witnessed harbor seals poke their noses up through the fuel to try to breathe and seabirds floundering on the shore coated in oil. In a phone call to the O’Briens Group, the private company in charge of spill cleanup, Baykeeper learned that the company had failed to set up a hotline or formal procedure to handle information from on-the-water witnesses of major oil slicks. The company also claimed it had no more resources to spend on cleanup efforts.

Due to bureaucratic bumbling among local and federal agencies, most offers of volunteer labor and donated supplies were turned down. There were even instances where certified hazardous material volunteers were sent away. Several citizen groups, frustrated by the delay, initiated guerrilla cleanups, by buying their own safety equipment and arranging for hazardous waste pickups. Six thousand Bay Area residents contacted San Francisco Baykeeper to voice their frustration that the government agencies were not putting forth adequate cleanup efforts, were failing to disseminate up-to-date information and were not even answering telephone hotlines.

San Francisco Baykeeper mobilized citizens and became a clearinghouse for volunteer opportunities. Although 1,500 of our volunteers were eventually trained and outfitted to handle the hazardous waste from the spill, thousands of others were simply turned away as officials declared shorelines clean. Baykeeper continues to follow up on our members’ sightings of oiled wildlife and tarred shorelines to make sure that the polluter is held accountable for every last drop of oil.

While the collision thankfully did not harm the Bay Bridge, it will impact San Francisco Bay ecology for years. Bunker fuel oil, the gooey byproduct from gasoline refining, is toxic to aquatic organisms even in small amounts, and as the winter bird migration picks up steam, thousands of birds may ingest contaminated fish and invertebrates. More than 1,000 dead birds have been recovered and the International Bird Rescue Research Center estimates that as many as 20,000 more may die in the next few months. The fall run of Central Valley chinook salmon and the December herring spawning season are threatened, and the Dungeness crab catch season has been delayed so that crabs can be tested for contamination before being sold to local restaurants and grocers.

Partly in response to Baykeeper’s eye-witness testimony of the mismanaged spill response at hearings held by U.S. Congress members and state legislators, federal and state elected officials have pledged to investigate why the Cusco Busan accident happened in the first place and to improve oil spill response. A criminal investigation has been launched by the National Transportation Safety Board, and the Coast Guard is conducting its own internal investigation, with a report promised within 90 days. Baykeeper will participate in these investigations to help identify gaps in regulations enforcement and response that resulted in the bay’s largest vessel oil spill in a decade. Vessel traffic is on the rise in the San Francisco Bay, and Baykeeper will be working hard in the next few years to ensure that proper measures are in place, and enforcement is strong, to prevent this type of spill from ever happening again. w