New report examines national oil pollution threat from shipwrecks

May 20, 2013

14 May, 1942, U. S. Army Air Corps photographs of the burning tanker Potrero del Llano location.

Download here (Credit: Images courtesy of National Archives, College Park, MD )

NOAA presented to the U.S. Coast Guard today a new report that finds that 36 sunken vessels scattered across the U.S. seafloor could pose an oil pollution threat to the nation’s coastal marine resources. Of those, 17 were recommended for further assessment and potential removal of both fuel oil and oil cargo.

The sunken vessels are a legacy of more than a century of U.S. commerce and warfare. They include a barge lost in rough seas in 1936; two motor-powered ships that sank in separate collisions in 1947 and 1952; and a tanker that exploded and sank in 1984. The remaining sites are 13 merchant marine ships lost during World War II, primarily along the Atlantic Seaboard and Gulf of Mexico. To see a list of the ships and their locations, visit: http://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/protect/ppw/.

The report, part of NOAA’s Remediation of Underwater Legacy Environmental Threats (RULET) project, identifies the location and nature of potential sources of oil pollution from sunken vessels. Knowing where these vessels are helps oil response planning efforts and may help in the investigation of reported mystery spills--sightings of oil where a source is not immediately known or suspected. “This report is the most comprehensive assessment to date of the potential oil pollution threats from shipwrecks in U.S. waters,” said Lisa Symons, resource protection coordinator for NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries. “Now that we have analyzed this data, the Coast Guard will be able to evaluate NOAA’s recommendations and determine the most appropriate response to potential threats.”

“The Coast Guard is pleased to receive these risk assessments from our partner agency NOAA and looks forward to our continued coordination on the matter of potential pollution associated with sunken vessels in U.S. waters,” said Capt. John Caplis, the Coast Guard’s chief of marine environmental response. “Coast Guard federal on-scene coordinators receiving the risk assessments will carefully review the data and incorporate it into their area contingency plans.”

In 2010, Congress appropriated $1 million for NOAA to develop a list of the most significant potentially polluting wrecks in U.S. waters, including the Great Lakes, specifically addressing ecological and socio-economic resources at risk. Those funds were not intended for oil or vessel removal.

NOAA maintains the internal Resources and UnderSea Threats (RUST) database of approximately 30,000 sites of sunken material, of which 20,000 are shipwrecks. The remaining items are munitions dumpsites, navigational obstructions, underwater archaeological sites, and other underwater resources.

Initial screening of these shipwrecks revealed 573 that could pose substantial pollution risks, based on the vessel’s age, type, and size. This includes vessels built after 1891, when U.S. vessels began using fuel oil; vessels built of steel; vessels over 1,000 gross tons, and any tank vessel.

Additional research about the circumstances of each vessel’s loss narrowed that number to 107 shipwrecks. Of those, some were deemed navigational hazards and demolished, and others were salvaged. Most of the 107 wrecks have not been directly surveyed for pollution potential, and in some cases little is known about their current condition.

To prioritize and determine which vessels are candidates for further evaluation, NOAA used a series of risk factors to assess the likelihood of substantial amounts of oil remaining onboard, and the potential ecological and environmental effects if that oil spills. Risk factors include the total oil volume onboard as cargo or fuel, the type of oil, and the nature of the sinking event. For example, a vessel that was struck by multiple torpedoes would likely contain less oil than a vessel that sank in bad weather.

After this third level of screening, 87 wrecks remained on the list developed for the Coast Guard’s area contingency plans. Among this group, NOAA determined that 36 shipwrecks are candidates for a “Worst Case” discharge event in which the shipwreck’s entire fuel oil and oil cargo would be released simultaneously, and recommended that 17 of these wrecks be considered for further assessment and feasibility of oil removal.

Six wrecks are potential candidates for a “Most Probable” discharge event, where a shipwreck could lose approximately 10 percent of its fuel oil or oil cargo. To date, known oil discharges from shipwrecks are typically in the “Most Probable” category or smaller.

The report, including 87 risk assessments, is not intended to direct Coast Guard activities, but rather provide the Coast Guard with NOAA’s scientific and technical assessment and guidance as a natural resource and cultural heritage trustee.

The Coast Guard, as the federal On-scene Coordinator for mitigating oil spills in the coastal marine environment, the Regional Response Teams, and local Area Committees, as established under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, will review and incorporate the assessments into regional and area marine environmental response contingency plans. The individual risk assessments not only highlight concerns about potential ecological and socio-economic impacts, but also characterize most of the vessels as historically significant and many of them as grave sites, both civilian and military.

Funding for any assessment or recovery operations determined to be necessary is dependent upon the unique circumstances of the wreck. If a wreck still has an identifiable owner, that owner is responsible for the cost of cleanup. Coast Guard officials say that if no responsible party exists, the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund would likely be accessed.

To view the report, 2012 Risk Assessment for Potentially Polluting Wrecks in U.S. Waters, visit http://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/protect/ppw/.

As America’s maritime first responder, the Coast Guard protects those on the sea, protects our nation from threats delivered by sea, and protects the sea itself. By executing our marine environmental protection responsibilities, the Coast Guard reduces the risk of harm to the marine environment by developing and enforcing regulations to prevent and respond to maritime oil spills and hazardous substance releases.

NOAA’s mission is to understand and predict changes in the Earth's environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and to conserve and manage our coastal and marine resources. Join us on Facebook, Twitter and our other social media channels.

View the original article here

Officials ponder hurricane threat at GOP convention in Fla.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) – The Republican National Convention scheduled in Tampa for late August would be among the casualties if the area were threatened then by a hurricane, Florida Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll said Wednesday.

AP

An infrared satellite image shows Hurricane Frances spinning northeast of Tampa in 2004. The four-day GOP convention is scheduled for Aug. 27 to 30, smack dab in the middle of Florida's hurricane season.

AP

An infrared satellite image shows Hurricane Frances spinning northeast of Tampa in 2004. The four-day GOP convention is scheduled for Aug. 27 to 30, smack dab in the middle of Florida's hurricane season.

"Public safety — that's going to be the number one priority," Carroll said. "We can have the convention again."

However, rescheduling a national political convention could be difficult heading into Labor Day weekend and with the Democratic National Convention slated for Charlotte, N.C., the following week.

Carroll said Florida Gov. Rick Scott, who returns Thursday from a trade mission to Spain, would make the call if the GOP convention were threatened by severe weather.

"This is his state, and public safety is primary," Carroll reiterated.

State emergency workers have spent recent days tracking a fictitious Category 3 Hurricane Gispert that would hit Tarpon Springs, just north of Tampa, two days after the convention is scheduled to begin.

"We'd be dealing a lot with storm surge issues down there," said Bryan Koon, the state's emergency management director. "We're also working on a high number of potential evacuations."

The four-day GOP convention is scheduled for Aug. 27 to 30, smack dab in the middle of Florida's hurricane season. Two of the most damaging hurricanes to hit the U.S. reached Florida in late August. Hurricane Katrina made landfall north of Miami on Aug. 25, 2005 while Hurricane Andrew came ashore with 145 mph winds just south of Miami on Aug. 24, 1992.

Florida heads into the official six-month storm season that begins June 1 having evaded a hurricane on its shores for an unprecedented six straight years. And the forecast for a seventh straight year without a hurricane is also encouraging.

"I want to remind Floridians that 20 years ago the same prediction was made," Carroll said. "In August 1992, Florida was forever altered. Hurricane Andrew changed the landscape of Florida."

Maj. General Emmett R. Titshaw Jr., adjutant general of the Florida National Guard, said Wednesday that he presently has 9,000 available troops for assistance if needed.

"The team that's in place is prepared to handle the various emergencies that we foresee," Carroll said.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

View the original article here

US: No tsunami threat from East Coast quake (AP)

ATLANTA_ U.S. officials say there is no threat of a tsunami along the East Coast after an earthquake centered in Virginia rocked the region.

The National Weather Service's West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center said the location of the quake was far enough inland that it didn't threaten to trigger a tsunami on the coast.

Director Paul Whitmore said the center has gauges up and down the East Coast and none of them were detecting tsunami activity.

View the original article here

Strong quake hits eastern Japan, no tsunami threat (AP)

TOKYO – Officials say a strong earthquake has hit near Japan's eastern coast, but there is no danger of a tsunami.

Japan's Meteorological Agency says the quake struck Monday evening and registered a preliminary magnitude of 6.0. It was centered off the coast of Ibaraki, about 140 miles (220 kilometers) east of Tokyo, at a depth of 20 miles (30 kilometers).

The agency says there is no danger of a tsunami. No injuries or damage have been reported.

Some 20,000 people died or were left missing across Japan's northeastern coast after a massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11. The disaster damaged a nuclear power plant, forcing another 100,000 people to leave their homes because of a radiation threat.

View the original article here

US nuclear lab to reopen after wildfire threat ends (AFP)

LOS ANGELES (AFP) – Officials at the Los Alamos National Laboratory said they will re-open the nuclear research center on Wednesday after it was closed in late June due to an encroaching wildfire.

The site in the southwestern state of New Mexico, where the atomic bomb was developed during World War II, "appears to have escaped serious damage from the Las Conchas fire," read a lab statement Sunday.

The site "will re-open to employees on Wednesday, July 6" following "the largest wildfire in New Mexico history," the statement read.

"Only senior leaders and essential services will be be permitted at the Lab on Tuesday," it added.

Flames reached laboratory property on June 27, but caused no damage. However the lab closed down temporarily, in part because the nearby town of Los Alamos, where half the lab employees live, was forced to evacuate.

All hazardous and radioactive materials were accounted for and protected during the shutdown, as were key lab facilities such as its proton accelerator and supercomputing centers, officials said.

Firefighters on Sunday gave the all-clear for the town of Los Alamos, and the 10,000 residents that had been ordered to leave began streaming back home.

The fire, the largest in New Mexico history, currently measures more than 121,000 acres (49,000 hectares). As of Sunday, it was 11% contained and had destroyed dozens of homes, according to the government-run New Mexico Fire Information website.

View the original article here

Soggy Midwest faces new summer threat: more rain (AP)

ALAN SCHER ZAGIER and DAVE KOLPACK, Associated Press Alan Scher Zagier And Dave Kolpack, Associated Press – Thu Jun 23, 3:00 pm ET

MINOT, N.D. – The reservoirs are full. The dams are open wide. The rivers have already climbed well beyond their banks. Throughout the Missouri River Valley and other parts of the upper Midwest, there's simply no place left for any more water.

That brings a new threat to the nation's water-logged midsection: more rain. In a region already struggling with historically high water, the return of heavy storms could intensify the flooding and turn a soggy summer into a tragic one for a dozen states that drain into the Missouri.

"We know what's coming down the river, and what's going to continue to come down the river," said meteorologist Wes Browning of the National Weather Service office in St. Louis. "But what we don't know with any certitude, beyond five to seven days, is the amount of rainfall. That's really going to drive this flood."

The peril began unfolding during the spring, when storms dumped an unexpectedly large amount of rain across Montana. That precipitation, combined with unusually heavy snowmelt, caused a vast volume of water to build up behind dams in the United States and Canada.

The Army Corps of Engineers and Canadian authorities have been releasing water through those dams for weeks, inundating many low-lying, mostly rural parts of Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri and North and South Dakota. Now the river valley is saturated, and the arrival of any more water could create an even larger disaster.

Many people expect to spend an anxious summer watching the skies and monitoring forecasts.

Terry Higedick, who farms 2,500 acres in central Missouri's Boone and Cole counties, has had plenty of time to prepare. He sold his excess corn and soybeans or put them in a grain elevator. His heavy equipment has been moved to higher ground.

But despite daily updates on dam releases and sophisticated forecasts, he has few reliable ways to estimate how much rain will fall over the next few months — or how high the floodwaters will rise.

"It makes it impossible to plan," he said. "We're kind of stuck in that mode."

In Minot, the danger came from the Souris River, a little-known channel that flows south from Canada without entering the Missouri River basin. On Thursday, crews worked furiously to raise earthen levees in a last-ditch effort to protect at least some neighborhoods, even as officials acknowledged they could not prevent significant damage to North Dakota's fourth-largest city.

The workers on the levee and National Guard troops were the only people to be seen in the endangered areas. As many as 10,000 residents, or about one-fourth of Minot's population, evacuated ahead of the community's worst flooding in four decades.

Thursday's effort also focused on protecting critical infrastructure, including sewer and water service. If those utilities were to be knocked out by floodwaters, more evacuations could be necessary. Parts of the city were already under several feet of water, including a trailer park near the river.

The weather service's Climate Prediction Center issued its three-month outlook for rain on June 16. Above-normal rain was anticipated over a large swath of the Great Plains covering much of the Dakotas, Iowa and Nebraska.

In the worst-case scenario, that rain would gush into the already full river system and produce widespread, near-record flooding from Kansas City to St. Louis.

A case in point: a mere 2 to 3 inches of rain last week in northern Missouri pushed the Mississippi River up 6 feet within days near Hannibal. In Minot, the Souris is expected to top a city record set in 1881 by more than 5 feet.

Flood projections in Missouri are similarly dire. In the state capital of Jefferson City, for instance, the predicted crests of 6 feet to 14 feet above flood stage would wash out roads, breach levees, close railroads, threaten power plant operations and shut down major highways. Experts can't say with certainty if water levels will rise that high, but are warning residents to be prepared.

Right now, those projections are simply "good long-range planning information," Browning said. "From this point on, it depends on what's coming out of the sky."

And the threat looms not just in the amount of rain but also its intensity. A half-inch of rain every day for a week would be far different than a severe thunderstorm that dumped 5 inches of rain in a few hours.

Browning compared the two scenarios to a homeowner watering his lawn.

"I could take two approaches. I could take out a sprinkler overnight with a nice steady, slow stream and nothing would go down the curb," he said. "Or I could do it with a fire hose in five minutes. I would get an inch of water in both cases. But the runoff into the gutter would be far more with the fire hose."

In Minot, the city already endured a major evacuation last month, when the Souris rose briefly to threatening levels. Though residents had been warned that another evacuation was possible, the river's second rise after heavy weekend rains shocked many people, including city officials.

"It's just an unprecedented amount of rainfall this spring in the whole basin," said Mark Davidson, a spokesman for the army corps in St. Paul., Minn. "We're all doing our best, but Mother Nature, she's just tough."

___

Associated Press Writer Doug Glass in Minneapolis contributed to this report.

___

Zagier reported from Columbia, Mo. He can be reached at http://twitter.com/azagier.

View the original article here

In South Dakota, some blame Corps for flood threat (AP)

FORT PIERRE, S.D. – Sitting atop a 6-foot wall of white sandbags hastily stacked to protect his home from the rising Missouri River, 82-year-old Helmet Reuer doesn't buy the official explanation that heavy rains caused a sudden flood threat.

Along with his neighbors in an upscale section of Fort Pierre, Reuer thinks the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers blew it, waiting until too late to begin releasing water through the Missouri's six dams to give itself a cushion against potential flooding.

"It's human error," Reuer said as rising water neared his trim gray house.

Corps officials insist otherwise. They say they were in good shape to handle spring rain and melt from a massive Rocky Mountain snowpack until unexpectedly heavy rains of 8 inches or more fell last month in eastern Montana and Wyoming and western North Dakota and South Dakota.

"This is just a massive rain that fell in the exact wrong place at the exact wrong time," said Eric Stasch, operations manager at Oahe Dam, the huge structure that controls the Missouri's flow just above Fort Pierre and nearby Pierre, South Dakota's capital.

Crews have worked urgently all week to build up levee protections for the two cities, and say they expect to have 2 feet to spare. But Gov. Dennis Daugaard advised people in neighborhoods nearest the river to leave voluntarily in case levees don't hold, and hundreds have done so after a hectic week of moving possessions and adding sandbags around their houses.

They face weeks out of their homes until the river begins cresting in mid-June, with high water expected to linger for up to two months. The small town of Dakota Dunes, S.D., in the southeastern tip of the state, has also erected levees, as has Bismarck, N.D., though the situation is less serious there.

"I think they screwed up royally," former Gov. Mike Rounds said of the Corps, as he moved some possessions from the riverbank house he and his wife built and moved into after he left office in January. "I think they forgot their No. 1 mission, and that's flood protection."

People here were prepared for some higher flows, but many were startled when the Corps announced May 26 it needed to release water much faster than expected from the dams in Montana and the Dakotas.

Jody Farhat, chief of Missouri River Basin water management in the corps' Omaha District, said the agency made no mistakes and has managed releases in accordance with its manual. She said conditions on May 1 indicated peak releases at only a third of what they're now projected, and the reservoir system had full capacity to deal with flood control at the start of the runoff season. All that changed with the record rainfall in the upper basin and additional snow in the mountains, she said.

Farhat said heavy runoff from last year was released before the start of this year's runoff season, and discharges this spring were above normal even before the heavy rainfall upstream.

Corps officials declined a request for a one-one-one interview and provided some information by email, but in a teleconference Thursday, Farhat said the reservoirs had reached the desired levels before snowmelt was to begin.

"And what happened was we had this incredible rainfall event," Farhat said. "That was a rainfall event in May, and that was the game-changer in terms of system operations."

People who live in the flood-threatened areas say this wasn't supposed to happen.

The Missouri River dams were built to control periodic spring flooding and provide hydropower, irrigation and other benefits after Congress passed the Flood Control Act of 1944. Fort Peck Dam, in northeastern Montana, was already operating in 1940 and Oahe, a massive reservoir that runs from North Dakota to the dam near Pierre in central South Dakota, was completed in 1962. Big Bend, about 60 miles downstream from Oahe, was the last dam finished, in 1964.

This is not the first fight over Missouri River water management, but the dispute has more often been about too little water. A series of lawsuits was filed during a prolonged drought that started about a decade ago. Upstream states wanted more water left in the reservoirs to support a growing sport fishing industry, while states downstream wanted more water to support barge traffic on the free-flowing stretch from Sioux City, Iowa, to St. Louis.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider the legal fight in 2006, leaving intact a federal appeals court ruling that said navigation trumps upstream recreation and other interests when the Corps of Engineers manages the river.

In Montana, officials in downstream communities said some people faulted the Corps for not releasing water earlier from Fort Peck Dam, the first in the series of water-control structures on the river.

But Roosevelt County Commissioner Gary MacDonald said he was reluctant to blame the federal agency.

"That's the sentiment here of why did they wait," MacDonald said. "There's no better person for the average John Doe to blame out there than the Corps. They're taking the brunt of it because they're controlling the flow."

Back in South Dakota, Daugaard also declined to criticize the Corps, saying he had seen "no evidence that they're working other than in good faith" to deal with the situation.

At Oahe Dam, the quickening pace of the water releases through rarely used gates — more than 100,000 cubic feet per second and building — makes for a foaming, thundering spray that brought spectators by the carload before it was closed for safety reasons. But many here have no time to appreciate the river's power.

"I'm tired and I'm sick," Mike Richardson said as he loaded household items into a trailer to move them from his Fort Pierre house to higher ground. "I'm better off than a lot of people, I know, but I still can't help but feel sorry for myself. ... Somebody really dropped the ball on this deal."

View the original article here