Betrayed!

The pervasive feeling of dis-satisfaction most of us felt last week-end over the ineptitude of the various government agencies in handling the oil spill in San Francisco Bay has now been replaced with a downright sense of betrayal. Birds lie dying on the beaches. Volunteers who came to help were turned away or warned of arrest if they ventured onto oil covered beaches to clean up the goo. Authorities warned of toxic issues if one handled the oil or of dire consequences if you took matters into your own hands.

That left plenty of beachfront uncleaned and soiled with oil blogs. It has left piles of birds dead. And each day brings more birds up on the beaches. It has also left a lot of folks with a sense of outrage that such a thing could be happening here. Here, in the Bay Area, with a population that pays their taxes and expects the government to do their work. Here, where the environment enjoys a very high ranking in how things 'should be'. Here, where (until this week, at any rate) we thought that if The Worst should happen, then 'somebody' must be going to take care of it. But... they didn't. They haven't. And it appears, they aren't going to do it now.

Tonight, on local news, they showed a state assemblywoman who is screaming for hearings on who messed up and didn't handle the oil spill properly. She was hopping mad at the Coast Guard since they had primary jurisdiction in the clean up effort. She said they hadn't co-ordinated the efforts on down through the counties and cities and that's why nobody knew who was in charge and things were going into disarray. The Coast Guard handed the finger pointing off to another Federal agency, the National Transportation Safety Board, to decide who is at fault. They said it didn't matter to them if the State of California was going to have hearings on how poorly they did, they didn't have to answer to anybody in the state only the Feds, and they wouldn't bother to show up, thank you. One little city was screaming angry that nobody from the federal or state level had showed up to clean their beaches or look for oiled birds until six days after the tanker spilled its load. Counties are hiding behind their admissions of waiting for the feds or state to tell them what to do. Indeed, it doesn't appear that Anybody is really in charge.

For the population, this is scary and horrible. This is only an oil spill of fifty thousand gallons, mind you. This isn't a massive seven or eight Richter earthquake. Or something as terrible as a big bomb. If the government is handling this Oil Spill so badly, do you honestly think they would be able to handle a big disaster that much better? Maybe that's why we feel so betrayed and uneasy over the handling of this. We know, in our hearts, if Doomsday struck, we aren't going to be able to count on Uncle Sam or Arnold to lead us to safety. We're going to have to count on ourselves and band together, good and bad, to see to it that we survive.

The Bay Area folks shouldn't be that surprised. We have only to look back two years ago at Katrina to see how New Orleans fared to see what we've got going on in our front yard now. The people in New Orleans have been trying to get us to see what they've been forced to deal with since then and maybe we weren't watching. But, I betcha, we're watching now!

Who's In Charge?

The oil spill finally came to our beach today. An oiled sea bird was found on the beach and a concerned beachgoer brought him into our boathouse this afternoon. He had a smear on his chest and his feet were covered with oil (the bird, not the beachgoer) so my friend Kerry and I found a saltwater taffy box and put the bird inside and closed the lid. I heard last night that just picking them up could make the wild critters go into shock and die. Then, I did what any concerned citizen would do: I picked up the phone to call someone to help the stricken bird.

On Friday, I had gotten a list of phone numbers from Marin County Hazardous Waste in case we had any incidents of the oil spill reaching our beach. Knowing we were going into a three day week-end, it would be hard to get in touch with authorities. They had given me three phone numbers to use. One was for "Reporting Oiled Wildlife". It rang and was answered by a number of different languages (press this number for that language, etc.). Finally, a young man answered and said he was in the San Francisco Information Office (whatever that is!). I told him I was sorry but I'd been given that number to report oiled wildlife. He said, yes! (quite cheerfully), indeed, he could take a report. I gave him the details and he thanked me. I stopped him and asked him if he was going to send somebody to pick up the bird to care for it. He said, Oh! I only take reports. Let me ask my supervisor. In a few minutes, he returned to say, No, we only take reports. My supervisor thinks you should put it back in the water.

That sounded sort of counter productive to me. Wouldn't that be like adding to the oil spill rather than cleaning it up? So I thanked him and called a number for Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue. I figured they could help. Their number was answered by a machine which helpfully gave me the number of the Sonoma County Injured Bird hotline. A real person answered! Now I was onto something! I carefully explained my predicament. The lady listened but said she couldn't help me because I was in Marin County, not Sonoma County. I would have to call Marin Wildlife Care. So I did. This lady was quite sympathetic but said they had no volunteers who would drive forty five miles out to pick up the bird, and besides, she wasn't real sure where Dillon Beach was in the first place. But she would give me a phone number of somebody who would help. I dialed it. And voila! It was the San Francisco Information Office again! A complete loop!

Over the course of the next hour, I called the Point Reyes National Seashore Bear Valley station which was accepting oiled birds but (sorry!) they would not pick up and I replied, well, sorry!, at $3.60 a gallon for gas I'm not driving it thirty miles down Highway One in the rain. And I called the local fire house who helpfully told me to scrub it down with DAWN dishwashing detergent, but no, they didn't want it either.

Finally a woman from some San Francisco Wildlife organization called me back. She sounded like she'd just had it! It'd been a Too Long Day for her already. She said this oil spill was bigger than Prince William Sound when the Exxon Valdez spilled its load. She said San Francisco Bay would be empty of boats for the next six months. She said I needed to let every beachgoer know NOT to handle any oil globs or oiled birds for it was extremely toxic and likely to cause problems for anybody with weakened immune systems. She recommended I put the bird back in the water and not let anybody pick up any more.

So, at five o'clock, I took the saltwater taffy box with the oiled bird in it and walked down under the dock. I opened the box and he stuck his head out. His little black shoe button eyes slitted at me in disgust. "Sorry, Buddy," I told him, tipping him out of the box onto the sand. "You're on your own. Good luck to you." He took a wobbly step back into the water and then sat down to rest.

He probably won't be the only dead oiled sea bird on our beach tomorrow. But I'm all out of ideas for how to help them. So much for relying on 'Authorities' to help you when there's a problem.

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!"