Lawmakers to tighten rules on water hazards

PHILADELPHIA – Federal lawmakers examining the November oil spill on the Delaware River vowed Tuesday to tighten maritime regulations after learning that mariners are not required to report the loss of potentially hazardous objects in navigable waterways.

The pledge came after Coast Guard officials revealed that divers had found two additional objects on the river bottom – a concrete slab and a large anchor – that they believe contributed to the spill, which so far has cost $94.5 million to clean up.

The obstructions were found this month in the anchorage area of the Citgo Petroleum Corp. refinery in West Deptford. Divers there last month found a cast-iron piece of pump housing that investigators initially believed was the sole culprit in ripping open the hull of the oil tanker Athos I.

At a congressional hearing in Philadelphia, Coast Guard Rear Adm. Sally Brice-O’Hara said whoever had dropped the pump housing and other objects into the river was not required to report the incidents, though regulations say they “may” do so.

“I can assure you that will be remedied,” said Rep. Frank A. LoBiondo, R-N.J., chairman of the House subcommittee on Coast Guard and maritime transportation.

The hearing was held to get to the bottom of lingering questions: What exactly caused the Nov. 26 spill? Who is responsible? How effective and timely were containment efforts? Were cleanup resources adequate? And what can be done to prevent another spill?

“What else may be out there that we don’t know about?” LoBiondo asked during a break in the three-hour hearing at the Independence Seaport Museum on Penn’s Landing.

Committee members were surprised to learn that the pump housing had been found by a diver who backed into it, not by sophisticated underwater sonar surveys, as previously reported.

An estimated 265,000 gallons of oil gushed from two holes in the hull of the Athos I — a 6-foot-long gash and a nearly 2-foot-wide puncture.

On Monday, the Coast Guard pulled a large, heavily corroded anchor typically used by deep-draft ships from the river bottom near the Citgo dock.

“It is bent on one of its flukes, and it does show evidence of some scrapes and damage,” Brice-O’Hara said. “It has been on the bottom for a while.”

Divers also discovered an 8-by-4-foot concrete slab sticking up about 2 feet from the river bottom.

Forensic testing this month by the National Transportation Safety Board matched the paint on the concrete and the paint on the hull of the Athos I. Tests also linked red paint on the piece of pump housing to the hull.

Investigators found blue paint on the anchor but have yet to determine the paint’s origins.

“What we know today is that the Athos I struck something and it caused a tear in the ship,” said Coast Guard Capt. Jonathan D. Sarubbi, who oversees Philadelphia’s port. “What we don’t know is the sequence of events of how that happened. … We have to kind of reconstruct what happened.”

While the anchor and concrete slab did show up on sonar scans as anomalies, divers did not go for a closer look until this month because both objects were more than 40 feet deep, Sarubbi said. At the time of the accident, the Athos I was drawing about 36 1/2 feet of water.

Investigators have determined that the tanker listed about 8 degrees to the port, or left, side after an initial impact, causing the ship to dip to about 41 feet and run aground, Sarubbi said.

“There is potential that she either scraped along the bottom or maybe hit something else while she was in that damaged state,” he said.

On Jan. 7, the Coast Guard inspected the hull of the Athos I, which is dry-docked at Atlantic Marine Inc. in Mobile, Ala. Eventually, the damaged piece will be cut out and shipped to Philadelphia for further examination.

The Athos I is a single-hull ship, meaning there is one layer of steel on the bottom. Brice-O’Hara told the committee that the investigation should help determine whether the spill would have occurred if the Athos I had a double hull.

Under federal law, single-hull ships will be phased out by 2015, but lawmakers Tuesday questioned whether they should take steps to ban single-hull ships on the Delaware River now.

Mike Hanson, spokesman for Tsakos Group, which operates the Athos I, did not return phone calls seeking comment.

The subcommittee also examined whether sufficient booms had been installed to contain and absorb the spilled oil. Environmental groups have been critical of the response by the shipping company’s contractors, as some tributaries along the 57 miles of river that were affected were not boomed off until after oil began to enter them.

Sarubbi gave the booming effort a grade of “B, B-plus” when asked to evaluate it by Rep. Rob Andrews, D-N.J.