Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 9, 1994 TAG: 9401090024
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO LENGTH: Medium
Oil continued to seep from the barge Morris J. Berman, lodged just offshore from some of San Juan's poshest hotels in this tourist magnet, but at a far slower rate than on Friday. Cleanup crews were aided by generally favorable winds, which blew most of the escaping oil onto a one-mile stretch of beach rather than dispersing it farther up and down the coast.
Saturday afternoon, the U.S. Coast Guard supervised the positioning of a second barge to remove the remaining oil, as helicopters shuttled pumps, hoses and other equipment onto the crippled vessel. Divers inspected the barge from below, and private contracting crews hired by the barge's owner worked furiously stringing booms across hotel beach lagoons stained by thick gobs of oil.
"If we can get this pumping operation started, we'll be in good shape," said Coast Guard Rear Admiral Bill Leahy, commander of the 7th Coast Guard District in Miami. "We've been lucky; the weather's been pretty decent."
Leahy said it would take about 36 hours to empty the barge, which originally held about 1.5 million gallons of No. 6 oil. That is about one-seventh the 11 million gallons of crude oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez in Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989.
Puerto Rico officials, meanwhile, announced that the commonwealth Saturday afternoon sued the tugboat operator and the owner of the barge, New England Marine Services Inc., alleging unspecified environmental and economic damages. "We're alleging several things: unseaworthiness of the barge and tug, negligence, and possible violations of environmental regulations and other laws," said Pedro Pierluisi, attorney general for the commonwealth.
Coast Guard Cmdr. Robert G. Ross, the on-scene federal coordinator, characterized the spill as "significant" and predicted a protracted cleanup. "It's potentially a bigger spill than it has been and we are going to respond aggressively," said Ross. "This is not something that can be cleaned up in a matter of hours or days."
The barge ran aground early Friday about 150 yards offshore from Escambron Beach, in the Condado area of the city about two miles from the Old San Juan historic district. In the Caribe Hilton, whose oceanfront rooms offered a panoramic view of the grounded barge and cleanup efforts, the checkout line in the lobby was mobbed with tourists leaving, and the check-in line was crowded with oil-spill workers from the National Response Corp. arriving to take part in the cleanup.
"It's catastrophic, it's terrible," said Alberto Goachet, communications director for Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Rossello. "We don't like our island punished like this." But Goachet stressed that only about two miles of the island's 235 miles of beaches were affected.
The impact on Puerto Rico's vibrant tourist economy at the height of its season is "impossible to quantify," said Luis Fortuno, tourism chief.
by CNB