A Ford truck parked on Harbor Drive leaked an unknown quantity of diesel into Valdez Harbor this morning (Friday). Crews with the United States Coast Guard and Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation were attempting to clean up the liquid fuel before it washed with rainwater into storm drains just above the ocean. KCHU’s Shahmeer Azmat was on the scene and has this report. Click on the picture to hear the audio. A transcript follows.
By 10AM Friday morning a rainbow sheen of diesel had spread in Valdez Harbor from A dock to G dock, and was continuing east. Sarah Von Bargen, city harbormaster, notified national and state authorities to initiate spill response.
SARAH VON BARGEN: “So when we first came on to work at about 7:30 this morning, we noticed that there was quite a large sheen in the water. At that point, we started making phone calls to the National Incident Response Center. After that then we called DEC and they got involved. We had already had a phone call from one of our other boaters who had actually been parked close by and noticed where he thought that the actual spill was coming from which ended up being a red Ford truck in our parking lot. However, because of where the leak was coming from and obviously the rainwater it was getting into our storm drains.
Boom had been placed across drainage outflows leading into the harbor and absorbent pads were used to gather diesel on the street. Authorities could not determine how much fuel had leaked from the truck. Fuel tank capacity on the 2017 Ford Super Duty is listed at 48 gallons on the company’s website. The owner of the vehicle was assisting response crews with clean-up efforts and declined to comment for this story.
Lieutenant Commander Aaron Riutta of the Coast Guard Marine Safety Unit Valdez was among the responders. He described a collaborative effort with the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation to contain the diesel fuel.
AARON RIUTTA: “We do have some equipment. So both ADEC and the United States Coast Guard does have some pre-positioned equipment that we can deploy. A lot of it you can see here. So ADEC has actually deployed some of their equipment, some of their absorbent pads and boom, to help clean up as much as possible.”
Riutta said that pollution responders had prioritized containing the source of the spill before addressing clean-up efforts. Though the diesel spill continued to spread across the harbor, Sarah Von Bargen described limited options for its recovery.
SARAH VON BARGEN: “If it was something in the water more like an actual oil spill where we could have absorbents or sweeps or boom in there help try and pick any of that up, then the crew would have been out in the skiffs trying to do as much damage control as possible, pick up as much of the oily base. But because of the fact that it’s diesel, there’s nothing that our absorbents can really do on the water to pick it up.”
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However, Lietuenant Riutta was optimistic about the diesel’s quick degradation after the Friday morning spill.
AARON RIUTTA: “It seems like it’s fairly light ends which means basically it’s going to get taken care of in the environment pretty readily.”
The Coast Guard and Alaska Department of Conservation respond collaboratively to fuel spills and sheens throughout Prince William Sound. Officials described the clean up efforts that are more frequent and challenging in the spring when rain and melting snow carry fuel to the ocean.
AARON RIUTTA: “A lot of what we’re going to be doing is ultimately looking to protect the environment. So whenever we get a report of any kind of a spill of oils or other materials that might be hazardous to the environment, we’ll take those calls, sending out a team to go investigate what happened, what’s the source, the extent of the spill. And then try to identify who might be responsible for it and then to see what kind of plans they might have in place.”
Friday morning’s spill was not an isolated event. The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation had responded to another sheen in the harbor of unknown origin the day before. Lietuenant Riutta said clean-up efforts can occur multiple times per week.
AARON RIUTTA: “Spills will happen. We recognize that, but we just want to make sure everything is being done in the proper way to protect the environment.”
Reporting in Valdez for KCHU, I’m Shahmeer Azmat.
