The long-awaited restoration plan for the Aug. 24, 1998 Tesoro Hawai`i oil spill will have to wait a bit longer. “It’s not ready to be implemented yet. The Department of Justice still has the consent decree. Everyone, including Tesoro, has
The long-awaited restoration plan for the Aug. 24, 1998 Tesoro Hawai`i oil spill will have to wait a bit longer.
“It’s not ready to be implemented yet. The Department of Justice still has the consent decree. Everyone, including Tesoro, has signed off on it. We’re awaiting the lodging of the consent degree. We are quite anxious for it,” said Gail Siani, an environmental specialist for NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) in Seattle.
Twenty-eighth months ago, there was a hose failure at Tesoro’s single-point mooring at Barber’s Point, near Honolulu.
At the time of the spill, Tesoro estimated the loosed oil at 420 gallons.
According to the report prepared by the Natural Resource Trustees for the Tesoro Oil Spill – comprised of the U.S. Department of Interior, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, NOAA and the state of Hawai`i after a joint cleanup effort by The United States Coast Guard, the Hawai`i Department of Health and Tesoro – the parties agreed they had found all the recoverable oil in the vicinity.
However, about 12 days later, dead, oiled birds began coming ashore on Kaua`i’s northeastern beaches, more than 100 miles from the area of the spill.
Oil was also reported washing up at Barking Sands, Polihale, Nukoli, Fuji and Kipu Kai beaches.
Within a week, the Coast Guard had, through chemical analysis, identified the Tesoro oil as the Kaua`i culprit.
Tesoro officials upgraded their estimate of the spill to approximately 4,914 gallons.
A cleanup was conducted by the Coast Guard, Tesoro and private contractors.
Under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, trustees are empowered “to recover the cost of rehabilitating, replacing, restoring or acquiring the equivalent of the injured natural resources ‘primary restoration’ and the diminution in value of those injured natural resources ‘compensatory restoration,’ and reasonable assessment costs.” Before the final plan was committed to paper, public comment was solicited from June 7 2000 to July 10 this year.
The plan was made available on the Web, the Administrative Record and in hard copy by request. In addition, a public meeting was held on Kaua`i at the Kapa`a Library June 21.
The Natural Resources Damage Claim awaiting Justice Department action encompasses compensatory restoration actions for potential injuries to natural resources that include: l Intertidal and subtidal habitat in the affected areas.
l Endangered Hawaiian monk seals.
l Seabirds.
l And loss of recreational activities and services in affected areas.
Compensatory actions include predator control, removal of fishing nets from shoreline in the general area impacted by the spill, funding for beach cleanup activities to compensate for lost or diminished human use during the spill, and subsequent cleanup operations.
Kaua`i was the island most affected by the Tesoro spill. The estimated value of lost visitor services were settled on at $10,000, which Tesoro agreed to place in a beach debris cleanup fund to clean recreational beaches in the areas on Kaua`i impacted by the spill.
Tesoro was “cooperative in many respects,” according to Siani.
Other costs haven’t been determined, she said.
“In the mid-1990s, we converted to restoration-based settlements. The cost depends on the project. We complete the project whatever it costs. It’s quite variable, but the resource is the ultimate beneficiary,” Siani said Monday.
Previously, she noted, projects with firm numbers up front sometimes ended three-quarters finished “if the money ran out.” The cleanup fund and other planned restorative efforts now simply await the Justice Department’s action.
Staff writer Dennis Wilken can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 252) and dwilken@pulitzer.net
