U.S. Coast Guard officials came to Haines Tuesday to investigate an oily discharge that persisted for three days near the Lutak Dock.
Described as a “mystery sheen” by the Coast Guard, ferry terminal workers this week said they suspected the source may have been two barges or a tugboat that had been moored against the dock since Friday, waiting to be loaded with local gravel.
The tugboat’s captain, John “Bigfoot” Eilertsen of Wrangell, said in an interview Monday he too was baffled by the oil.
“We can’t figure it out. We shut everything off when we come into port so we don’t have any problems. We try every way we can to protect the environment,” Eilertsen said.
The oil, visible both as a sheen and as a coating of “chocolate milk on the water,” was reported to the national oil spill reporting center Sunday after it was discovered by ferry employees at about 9 a.m.
On Tuesday afternoon, a rainbow sheen could be seen along the entire face of the dock, extending south past the terminal property and stretching offshore 50 feet or more. A strong diesel smell hung in the air.
“There’s a lot of oil and it’s still here, that’s the problem. It’s not going away,” ferry terminal worker Pete Wing said Monday. “This should not be allowed. I subsistence fish right out here.”
Two Coast Guard officials flew over the dock Tuesday and also took samples of oil that will be compared to oil aboard the vessels.
“The fact that this is the third day of reports of sheening in the water there does give us concern. We’re opening the oil spill liability trust fund to do a further assessment of what is going on there,” said Coast Guard Lt. Latarsha McQueen, chief of incident and management division in Juneau.
By that time the Coast Guard arrived in town Tuesday, the tugboat and one of the barges were heading south, bound for Wrangell.
Tugboat captain Eilertsen said his crews had hosed down the decks of the two barges during the weekend, and some oily residue may have been on the deck, but it wasn’t enough to remain in any puddles on their decks.
Water around the dock was “blotchy” with a “cocoa look” when he discovered the oil early Sunday. “We were on this side of that.”
Coast Guard officials said their initial response to the discharge was based on a report Sunday by borough harbormaster Ed Barrett that perhaps five gallons of diesel had spilled and a sheen there was about five feet by 40 feet. Barrett later downgraded his estimate of the spill volume to a lesser amount.
They said Barrett also advised them that he had tried using a sorbent boom and that it was ineffective on the sheen.
Barrett said in an interview Monday that he saw an oil sheen emanating from between the two barges when they were tied to the face of the dock. He said rust washed off the decks of the vessels may have been responsible for the brown discoloration in the water.
He said he’d received reports of “clotted material” on the water and beach there but didn’t see any during an inspection 10 a.m. Sunday.
Barrett’s report of a continuing sheen Monday and Tuesday caused state and federal officials to look more closely, Coast Guard officials said. Barrett said Tuesday that reports of the size of the sheen had fluctuated. He also said beads of oil surfacing off the face of the dock Tuesday suggested liquid soap may have been used to sink the oil.
Ferry terminal workers said they believed the discharge was serious immediately. Wing said they called all the agencies they could think of, including the office of state Rep. Bill Thomas, to report the matter. Borough assemblyman Scott Rossman also came out for a look, Wing said.
The spill was intense enough to nauseate crew aboard the ferry Malaspina and coat large sections of water around the terminal Sunday with what resembled chocolate milk, Wing said.
“You can see the sludge. It sticks to your hands,” he said, dipping his hand into a three-foot-long splotch of the chocolately residue at the beach adjacent to the ferry terminal Monday.
Sheen extended from the north end of the dock to the old tank farm fuel dock, and patches of the “chocolate milk” up to about 40 feet long could be seen Monday afternoon less than two miles north of town.
Chrystal Smith, a specialist with the state’s Division of Spill Prevention and Response, and Cheyenne Sanchez, an environmental technician, inspected the spill Tuesday morning and spoke to the tugboat captain.
Smith said diesel fuel tends to evaporate off the water, a process accelerated by warm, sunny weather like this week’s. “Why it’s been here a couple days, I’m not sure. It’s hard to tell if it’s shaded in enough (to inhibit evaporation) or what’s going on.”
The state would try to pinpoint the source of the oil if the sheen continues, Smith said. Ironically, she was in town this week to make a routine check on three containers of oil spill response equipment stored about 100 feet from the spill and an equal distance from an oil spill response barge stored on Lutak Dock.
Eilertsen said he’d recently acquired the 210-foot barge that was being loaded with gravel Monday. It previously had been used as a houseboat and was originally a refrigerated vessel used during the Vietnam War, he said.
A four-foot deep mound of soil and debris at the bow of the vessel would be disposed of on shore, Eilertsen said. He said he’d recently cut a house off the vessel’s deck.