Oil Spill

By now, anybody who can read the paper or watch TV is aware that a fairly large oil spill occurred in the San Francisco Bay on Wednesday when a Korean tanker collided with the Bay Bridge. If you paid attention, you also know the Coast Guard may have been a bit 'tardy' in its initial clean-up efforts.

Though it happened first thing Wednesday morning, the brunt of us weren't aware of it until Wednesday night when the reports of 147 gallons of bunker fuel swelled to over 58,000 gallons. Difference there, eh? In their haste to take responsibility for the clean up, on Thursday morning, the Coast Guard touted that the spill "extended as far north as Dillon Beach".

Now, Dillon Beach is where we have our boating resort, right at the mouth of Tomales Bay. It's also sixty-odd miles north of San Francisco Bay. We started fielding phone calls at seven thirty by anxious week-enders who had heard that the beach was summarily "Closed!" (News to us!!) There were no oil globs floating in the bay. There were no drips or puddles on the beach itself. There were no stricken oil-covered wildfowl or wildlife in danger of expiring. Why the fuss?

The news however, was full of recriminations, accusations, threats of pending lawsuits and the pervasive (though unspoken) talk of money, Money, MONEY! And that's what it is really about apparently. Who's going to pay for it? Who is going to get paid? Who stands to make a Buck off this environmental disaster? And, oh yeah, how much is it worth to me? What seems to be forgotten about in this haste to point fingers and assign blame is the beaches that need to be cleaned up. The wildlife that is expiring because there aren't enough people to pick them up and deliver them to the proper agencies who know how to handle the job, and the agencies themselves who are overwhelmed by the number of dead and dying animals because they aren't equipped to handle all of this.

I heard on the news this morning one reporter extolling a city official on the need to recruit volunteers. Volunteers to comb the beaches cleaning up the globs of oil washing ashore. Volunteers to help with the unfortunate wildlife that had been covered with the stuff. The city official reared back. Oh no! That wouldn't be possible. Don't you realize that takes money to do that. You have to give them gloves and plastic bags to protect their shoes. You'd have to give them bags to put the oil in. Unspoken, but clearly said, was also, And who will pay for the expensive hazardous waste removal of plastic bags of petroleum-based goo? You can't dump that in your landfills. You'd have to make out Hazardous Waste Manifestos and (again, unspoken) if you cart too much of that out it lands on the EPA's attention for explaining why you've carted out this much and bigger fines and fees for doing so. Hmmm, basically, what I'm hearing is that it's more than an environmental nightmare, there are oily 'strings' attached all down the line.

I hope the officials in San Francisco and California and the Federal Government can get this sorted out and a good clean up started. We're still having mild weather and calm seas which can only help the efforts (at least for now). But I doubt it will happen. Too many strings attached. Too much finger pointing. If it had happened on our beach, chances are, I would already have the brunt of it cleaned up. By volunteers. By people who love this land we live and work on. We'd leave the finger pointing and money grubbing to the Big Boys and we'd get out there and "Git 'er done!"