http://www.thearcticsounder.com/article/1413scientists_lessons_from_spill_reflect_on
Scientists: Lessons from spill reflect on future
March 28th 1:38 pm | Carey Restino
With all the talk about the Exxon Valdez oil spill surrounding its 25th
anniversary this week, a group of panelists met to talk about what was
learned from the spill and the following science and had some strong
messages for rural Alaska about how it could strengthen its pre-planning
and response measures.
Alaska Natives need to be involved in contingency planning for spill
response, the panelists said, and more testing should be done on the
impacts of dispersants in the cold waters of Alaska. And those who live
near Arctic waters should be concerned about the effectiveness of
current spill response tactics in Arctic waters.
"Arctic spill response is basically smoke and mirrors," said Riki Ott,
marine toxicologist and activist at a panel discussion Monday at the
University of Alaska Anchorage. "It's not going to work."
Ott and others on the panel said they were concerned about the
preauthorization of the use of dispersants by the U.S. Coast Guard in
federal waters, including the waters off the Aleutian Islands, which see
heavy shipping traffic, and the federal oil leases in the Beaufort and
Chukchi seas.
Dispersants haven't been tested in Alaska's cold waters, said John
French, an environmental toxicologist, and the patterns of water
movement in Alaska mean that spraying dispersants offshore, where they
are currently authorized, might be more detrimental than spraying them
close to shore. French said in Alaska, water and nutrients move from the
deeper areas of the ocean toward shore.
If you spray dispersants offshore, the nutrients impacted may disrupt
the entire shoreline food chain, even up into the freshwater streams
where fish spawn. At the very least, the interactions need to be studied
further to see the potential impact, presenters said.
"We need to know what the interactions are in the ocean before we draw
conclusions about what to expect," French said.
The use of dispersants in Alaska's waters were a concern to several on
the panel following the Gulf oil spill, where they were used extensively
and in ways they had never been used before. The scientific community is
only just now, four years later, starting to have an understanding of
the impacts the dispersants had on that environment.
Native voice not heard in Alaska oil spill response planning
Carl Wassilie with Alaska's Big Village Network said dispersant use
should be a concern, especially for Native populations that depend on
the ocean for their subsistence harvest. He said the further one gets
from the urban grocery stores, the more populations should be paying
attention to what oil spill response plans are in place as they could
have a disproportionate impact on populations that depend on traditional
food sources. He criticized federal agencies for not including Native
populations properly in the discussion about spill response plans.
"There was plenty of opportunity to include tribes and citizens in
planning," Wassilie said.
According to Wassilie, 13 tribes in Alaska have passed a resolution
calling for a ban on the use of dispersants and asking for a seat at the
table of the Alaska multiagency response team which makes decisions
about how to respond to disasters such as oil spills.
"We're concerned about the exclusion of Alaska tribes," he said.
Current spill plan could impact 15 species, feds say
Rebecca Noblin of the Center for Biological Diversity said the center
regularly brings legal action against state and federal governments for
not complying with regulations under the Endangered Species Act that
call for analysis of any clean-up plan's impact on threatened and
endangered species. Typically, she said, federal agencies don't respond
until legal action is brought against them, but in the case of Alaska,
that wasn't the case. Following the plan to use dispersants in the
Arctic, the center filed notice that the U.S. Coast Guard and the
Environmental Protection Agency needed to asses possible impacts to
endangered species, the federal agencies responded.
"They came back and said, 'You're right, we're going to do it,'" Noblin
said.
The agencies recently completed their assessment and said there are 15
species that are likely to be adversely affected by the oil spill
response plan, including whales and sea otters, she said.
While Noblin said it is concerning that so many species are being
considered at risk from cleanup efforts, it's also good that the EPA and
the Coast Guard are thinking about the situation realistically.
The next step is to send these recommendations to the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Department and see what strategies the agency comes up with.
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