THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 29, 1997 TAG: 9701290477
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 65 lines
An estimated 6,000 gallons of wastewater contaminated with TBT, a highly toxic paint additive, spilled into the Elizabeth River last week following a shipyard accident, officials confirmed Tuesday.
Workers at Norshipco, the large riverfront shipyard near downtown Norfolk, caused the spill when they inadvertently punctured a plastic holding tank with a forklift, said Arthur Polizos, a company spokesman.
The tank, about the size of a gasoline delivery truck, was filled with ballast water and traces of TBT that had been collected earlier from a Navy warship drydocked for repairs at Norshipco, Polizos said.
The tank held less than a teaspoon of TBT, which stands for tributyltin, a tin-based chemical sprayed on ship hulls to control barnacles. The material is strictly regulated at ports throughout the world, and was banned on most small vessels in Virginia in the late 1980s.
As testimony to its fierce toxicity, the tiny amount of TBT in the holding tank was enough to create a mixture that, when unleashed on the Elizabeth River, violated state water-quality standards 1,000 times over, said Frank Daniel, regional director of the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.
Still, little immediate damage to water quality or marine life has resulted from the spill, Daniel said, noting that no fish kills have been reported. TBT in sufficient doses can kill small fish and shellfish, but is more commonly known to cause reproductive problems in marine life.
Daniel expected the watery mix to quickly dissipate within the long branches of the Elizabeth River.
``To my knowledge, this type of accident has never happened before, and we certainly hope it doesn't happen again,'' Daniel said.
While acknowledging the spill as a fluke, Daniel said Norshipco likely will face some type of state enforcement action, which might include a fine.
The shipyard apparently did not keep adequate safeguards - called best management practices, or BMPs - to limit chemicals and other wastes from washing into the river, Daniel said.
The Elizabeth, with numerous shipyards and boat repair shops lining its urban shores, already suffers from some of the highest TBT levels of any waterway in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
It also is one of three river systems - including the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore Harbor in Maryland - labeled as toxic ``hot spots'' by government leaders of the overall Chesapeake Bay cleanup. The label means the three waterways are most in need of help in reducing toxic pollution.
Michael Unger, a TBT researcher at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, described the spill as harboring ``some very high concentrations'' of TBT.
In assessing any long-term effects from the spill, Unger said the key factor is determining how fast the TBT flowed into the river. The faster it hit the Elizabeth, the greater its chance of ``shocking'' the river, he said.
According to Norshipco, the accident occurred last Monday, a state holiday, between noon and 12:30 p.m. No cleanup was ordered afterward, the company said, due to the ``nature of the spill,'' meaning that the wastewater washed straight into the river and began to dilute. ILLUSTRATION: WHAT IS TBT?
TBT is a tin-based chemical sprayed on ship hulls to control
barnacles. It is extremely toxic. The small amount that was spilled,
less than a teaspoon, violated state water-quality standards 1,000
times over.
KEYWORDS: TOXIC SPILL NORSHIPCO TBT