John Upton
San Francisco
Profiles
Bay Bridge eyebar fix
Hetch Hetchy series
Earthquake anniversary
Cosco Busan oil spill→
Power plant debate
Radioactive air pollution
Gas pipeline safety
johnupton@gmail.com
latest at sfexaminer.com
Cosco Busan oil spill
In November 2007, fuel spilled into San Francisco Bay after a container ship struck the Bay Bridge, killing wildlife, closing beaches and poisoning the water.
Cosco Busan oil spill ship operator faces $10M fine original / top
By John Upton
San Francisco Examiner, Feb. 19, 2010
A Hong Kong-based shipping company is expected to be fined $10 million Friday by a federal judge for its role in a 2007 oil spill.
Fleet Management Inc., which was the operator of the Cosco Busan when two of its fuel hulls were torn open after colliding with a Bay Bridge tower, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor violation of the U.S. Clean Water Act.
The company also pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and making false statements - both felonies - after a crew member altered navigation documents.
Bar pilot John Cota of Petaluma is serving a 10-month prison sentence for his role in the spill.
Snowy plovers able to survive 2007 oil spill nearly unscathed original / top
By John Upton
San Francisco Examiner, Jan. 25, 2010
Snowy plovers largely survived an oil spill massacre that devastated bird populations more seriously than previously reported, according to a federal study.
Nearly 6,700 ducks, loons, cormorants, gulls, pelicans and other birds were likely killed by the toxic fuel that gushed out of the Cosco Busan's hulls Nov. 7, 2007, after the container ship was piloted in heavy fog into a Bay Bridge support tower, according to a new report.
The death toll was determined by multiplying the known bird body count by a factor of roughly 2.3.
The 2.3 figure was determined by studying how long bird carcasses persisted on beaches, how difficult they were to find and how many of the deaths were caused by factors unrelated to the oil spill.
But nearly all Bay Area snowy plovers - tiny white-and-brown birds that nest in sand dunes and are listed federally as a threatened species - survived the devastation, according to the findings.
Results of a two-year study that tagged and monitored oiled and nonoiled snowy plovers after the accident suggest that "nearly all survived the spill," the report said.
The study, which will form the basis of restoration plans that must be funded by maritime companies linked to the spill, concluded that 2,996 acres of coastline were exposed to oil.
The maritime companies linked to the spill do not agree with all the study's findings, the report said.
Bar pilots might be unfit for duty original / top
By John Upton
San Francisco Examiner, Nov. 27, 2009
More than two years after a medically unfit bar pilot plowed a cargo ship into a Bay Bridge tower, the waterway remains vulnerable to further oil spills because other bar pilots may be unfit for duty.
The nearly 60 local bar pilots who guide ships through San Francisco, San Pablo and Suisun bays came under intense scrutiny in late 2007 after a colleague, Capt. John Cota, directed the Cosco Busan container ship into the bridge, causing a 53,500-gallon oil spill.
National Transportation Safety Board investigators concluded that Cota, who is serving a 10-month federal prison sentence in Arizona for his role in the accident, was an ill man whose use of powerful painkillers and other prescription drugs contributed to the environmentally devastating accident.
The Coast Guard revoked Cota's license after it learned of his long list of medical problems, which included sleep apnea and recent surgeries, and California lawmakers introduced new regulations designed to help weed out medically unfit bar pilots.
Under the new regulations, bar pilots must have their health checked annually by an approved physician.
However, the California Board of Pilot Commissioners for San Francisco, San Pablo and Suisun bays has failed to fully implement the regulations, California State Auditor Elaine Howle found.
Three new bar pilots were issued licenses before undergoing a physical exam, Howle found after surveying seven new bar pilots. One of them piloted 18 vessels for more than 28 days before he received a physical examination.
Additionally, the licenses of six out of 14 surveyed bar pilots were issued or renewed after their physical exams were performed by non-approved physicians, Howle wrote in an audit report released this week.
The audit also faulted the board for failing to investigate accidents as promptly as required by California law.
The board is taking steps to improve its compliance with state law, President Knute Miller wrote in a response to Howle.
"The audit report provides the board with a road map to the way ahead," Miller wrote.
Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco-San Mateo, whose legislation triggered the audit, said Wednesday that he was saddened by its findings.
"We just cannot be careful enough," he said.
Old bridge bumper technology means future oil spills likely original / top
By John Upton
San Francisco Examiner, Nov. 5, 2009
Two years after a rigid bumper system on a Bay Bridge tower ripped open two fuel tanks of a wayward cargo ship, the dangerously outdated technology remains in use.
After the Cosco Busan crashed into the Bay Bridge and spilled 54,000 gallons of oil Nov. 7, 2007, the damaged bumper system - which is in place to protect the span's towers from ships - was rebuilt with the same 1930s technology, despite newer designs being available.
The section of bridge currently under construction will also incorporate the antiquated designs.
The bar pilot steering the Cosco Busan two years ago mistakenly guided the container ship through heavy fog toward a tower of the Bay Bridge instead of through the passage between towers. The vessel avoided directly striking the bridge section, but the bumper system in place to protect the concrete tower gouged an 8-foot-deep, 212-foot-long gash in its hull during the collision.
It was through that massive opening that the 54,000 gallons of toxic bunker fuel gushed into the Bay, causing an environmental disaster.
The spill killed wildlife - including plants, fish eggs, birds and seals - and led to commercial fishing seasons being canceled the following two years.
Such collisions are rare, but they are seemingly inevitable: It was at least the seventh time that a Bay Bridge tower has been struck in 50 years, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. A tugboat, a barge, a ship and a small military seaplane are among vehicles that have collided with a tower.
In the 1930s, fenders were incorporated into the Bay Bridge - which was designed by Caltrans predecessor California Department of Public Works - to protect it from collisions, but they were not designed to protect fuel-carrying ships that might bang into them.
The bumper system crumpled during the Cosco Busan accident, as it was designed to do, and it was rebuilt by Caltrans at a cost of $1.5 million. But newer technology that has prevented Cosco Busan-type oil spills was not used.
Modern bridge bumper systems are designed like modern car bumpers, to absorb and dissipate energy from a collision to minimize damage to a bridge and to a ship. The old style of bumpers simply provide a buffer to protect a bridge tower.
Modern bumper technology is widely credited with averting an oil spill in Maine and minimizing a spill in Boston Harbor.
In September 1996, 170,000 gallons of oil spilled into the waters off Maine after the Julie M, a 560-foot oil tanker, crashed into a bridge.
The span was later replaced with the $130 million Casco Bay Bridge, which was built using $7 million worth of modern fenders that were credited with averting an oil spill in 2002, after they absorbed a blow from an oil tanker, Maine Department of Transportation Senior Engineer John Buxton told industry magazine Professional Mariner following the collision.
The Casco Bay Bridge bumper system is surrounded by gravel- and sand-filled pillars, some as wide as 60 feet, that are attached to the channel floor and coated with slippery plastic to redirect a ship and absorb its energy without necessarily stopping it. The final line of defense is heavy-duty rubber surrounding the bridge's towers.
Despite evidence that modern bumper systems could help prevent a future oil spill in San Francisco Bay, the western span of the Bay Bridge will retain the 1930s-era bumpers, according to Caltrans spokesman Bart Ney.
Bumpers on the new eastern span will also follow the same general design that was used on the western span, 2003 bid documents show. Ney said bumper systems exist that are designed to better protect ships, but Caltrans hasn't made any decisions to redesign the Bay Bridge bumpers, which engineers call fenders.
"Our current fender system adequately protects the bridge," he said.
The old-fashioned design of the bumper systems has been criticized by UC Berkeley engineering professor Abdolhassan Astaneh-Asl.
"If a ship hits this bridge and spills oil in the Bay, Caltrans should be taken to court," he said.
Pleas for brighter-colored bumpers fall on deaf ears
Black plastic pieces that broke off the damaged bumper after the Cosco Busan struck a tower of the Bay Bridge were hazards for ships in San Francisco Bay, but pleas to make the bumpers easier to spot after future accidents have been ignored.
Several pieces of black plastic weighing 15 tons each that were torn from the bumper system during the Cosco Busan collision floated several inches beneath the water, making the navigational hazards difficult for authorities to locate.
One of the pieces, a 20-foot chunk of metal-encrusted plastic, drifted out through the heavily trafficked Golden Gate before floating 20 miles south to Half Moon Bay, where it washed up on a remote stretch of Redondo Beach.
The Army Corps of Engineers, which is responsible for salvaging floating debris in the Bay, appealed publicly after the crash for brighter colors to be incorporated into the replaced bumper system to make the plastic easier to locate following accidents.
Caltrans has so far ignored those pleas.
Oil spill devastated Bay herring original / top
By John Upton
San Francisco Examiner, Oct. 31, 2009
As San Francisco Bay herring fishermen prepare to sit out the winter season due to a crash in fish populations, new data show that the majority of eggs laid near shore were killed or hideously deformed due to the November 2007 oil spill.
The eggs studied were exposed to toxins contained in the 54,000 gallons of fuel that gushed into the water after the Cosco Busan container ship crashed into a Bay Bridge tower.
Pacific Ocean herring are normally a prolific species of baitfish eaten by seals, sea lions, birds and other marine life, and they are caught in gill nets by fishermen who sell the roe to exporters.
Their numbers have plummeted locally and across California in recent years, prompting state regulators in September to cancel this winter's commercial season.
All herring eggs laid on rocks, piers and eelgrass covered with oil from the Cosco Busan spill were virtually wiped out.
Eggs laid in other parts of the Bay were also heavily impacted by toxins contained in the oil, according to a draft report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The toxins, called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, were detected in Bay shellfish in levels dangerous to anybody who ate them for four months after the spill, according to the report.
Impacts from the spill on similar fish species were likely similar to the impacts on herring, the report said.
The report was obtained by attorneys representing some of the herring fisherman in a class action lawsuit against shipping companies associated with the Cosco Busan, along with the bar pilot, John Cota, who was piloting the ship the day of the accident.
At the end of October, a judge set a September trial date for the lawsuit.
The report is being finalized as part of an effort to quantify the spill's impacts. Researchers involved in the study are barred from discussing it due to pending litigation, according to NOAA counsel Christopher Plaisted.
Affected herring embryos died because they suffered deformed tissues or spines, or because their hearts beat irregularly, according to the report. Many died without hatching.
Less than half the sampled eggs laid by herring in Sausalito hatched, and 25 percent hatched at Peninsula Point, but all those hatched embryos were born with deadly abnormalities, according to the report.
Impacts were not as severe in Keal Cove, where less than 15 percent of eggs produced healthy fish, and further north in San Rafael Bay, where healthy fish hatched from 74 percent of eggs, the report showed.
Some of the fishermen represented in the class action lawsuit are descendents of Italian immigrants who settled near Cannery Row in Monterey, according to attorney Stuart Goss.
"They have deep roots," he said. "This oil spill may well have completely annihilated that."
Cosco Busan pilot's appeal rejected original / top
By John Upton
San Francisco Examiner, July 29, 2009
John Cota, the Petaluma bar pilot who crashed the Cosco Busan cargo ship into the Bay Bridge in 2007, causing a devastating oil spill, will spend 10 months in prison after an appeal was rejected.
The sentence, which was the longest possible term of imprisonment possible under a plea deal struck between Cota and federal prosecutors, was imposed July 17. Prosecutors said in court that Congress changed environmental laws in response to the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill off Alaksa.
"In the wake of situations like the Exxon Valdez spill," U.S. District Judge Susan Illston said in court before announcing the sentence, "the Congress has changed the law and has criminalized some behavior which previously might be treated as a civil matter."
Cota's attorney, Jeffrey Bornstein, appealed against the sentence by arguing that there was no evidence that Congress had that intention.
In a ruling released Tuesday, Illston rejected the appeal.
"Defendant's point is well taken in that criminal penalties for negligent discharge of pollutants were available before the Exxon Valdez," Illston wrote. "The Court nonetheless remains convinced that the sentence it imposed was appropriate."
Cota was ordered to report to prison by 2 p.m. on Sept. 18.
New fines sought in Cosco Busan spill original / top
By John Upton
San Francisco Examiner, June 9, 2009
Federal prosecutors are belatedly scrambling to secure tens of millions of dollars in fines from an international shipping company for misdemeanors related to the 2007 Cosco Busan oil spill.
Fleet Management Inc., which was operating the container ship when it clipped the Bay Bridge in November 2007, offered last month to plead guilty to environmental misdemeanors stemming from the disaster, which led to a 53,500-gallon fuel spill that killed wildlife and fouled habitats.
Those charges ordinarily carry a maximum penalty of hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.
But shortly after the company offered to plead guilty and before a judge accepted the plea, prosecutors filed papers seeking additional penalties under the Alternative Fines Act, which can be used to recoup financial damages from criminals.
Prosecutors may seek up to $40 million in additional fines, according to U.S. Department of Justice spokesman Jack Gillund.
After Fleet Management attorneys opposed the additional fines, prosecutors argued this week in court papers that the government has done "nothing improper" and is "free to bring new charges which enhance the penalties at any time pre-trial."
A hearing on the matter is scheduled for June 19.
The Hong Kong-based company could also be fined millions of dollars if convicted on felony charges that its officials misled investigators, and it's facing hundreds of millions of dollars in cleanup and environmental-restoration costs.
The sentencing of Capt. John Cota, who piloted the ship into the bridge and faces up to 10 months in prison and $30,000 in fines after pleading guilty to environmental misdemeanors, has been delayed till July 17.
Prisoners of the Cosco Busan original / top
As a judge prepares to sentence the chief culprit in the 2007 oil spill, his detention will still be briefer than that of the innocent witnesses who helped prevent a much greater catastrophe.
By John Upton
East Bay Express, May 27, 2009
When Liang Xian Zheng took a job working as the boatswain on the Cosco Busan, the seasoned seaman knew the $29.50-a-day gig would send him out to sea for six to ten months. He also knew it meant undertaking a wearisome 1,000-mile journey from his home in Beijing, China to the port of Busan in South Korea, where the container ship was based. But what Zheng couldn't have known was that, two weeks after boarding the cargo ship and ably performing his duties as a lookout during a crisis, he would be trapped in a foreign land on an exotic legal warrant, in misery and legal purgatory, until months after his seafaring expedition was supposed to have ended.
During the foggy morning of November 7, 2007, the Cosco Busan's port side scraped for sixteen seconds against a protective fender that buffered one tower of the Bay Bridge. The fender sliced a 212-foot gash in the ship's hull, tearing open two fuel tanks and producing an environmental disaster. Most of the two tanks' 60,000 gallons of fuel, which made up a small portion of the 1 million gallons pumped into the ship's bunkers to power its journey back to South Korea, gushed into San Francisco Bay. The cheap, black bunker fuel - heavier than water and cut with diesel to make it runny enough for engines - closed beaches; halted crabbing and fishing; killed fish eggs, seals, and thousands of birds; and raised cancer-causing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons to unsafe levels in shellfish. After initially underestimating the size of the spill, the Coast Guard waited until dusk before it called in its oil-spill cleanup specialists. More than half of the spilled fuel sank, evaporated, washed out to sea, or became buried beneath shoreline sand. Cleanup efforts cost more than $70 million, and the environmental impacts are still being calculated.
The ship's operator, Fleet Management, quickly lawyered up. Today, it faces criminal charges and civil lawsuits related to allegations that its crew contributed to the crash, was inadequately trained, and doctored documents to mislead investigators. But Zheng and his fellow sailors also soon discovered that they too needed legal representation.
Fleet Management's attorneys brought three downtown San Francisco lawyers into the case to represent Zheng and five other crew members whose testimony was sought by the government. The attorneys instructed the men to not talk to the media or cooperate with preliminary investigations. They secured the men immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony, and struck a deal that kept the sailors out of incarceration but trapped in Northern California until long after the ship and their eighteen colleagues had left US waters.
Immunity was valuable for some of the sailors, who clearly failed to fulfill their duties. Master Mao Cai Sun meekly abdicated control of his ship to a pilot who was affected by pharmaceuticals. First Mate Kongxiang Hu left his post as lookout to eat breakfast. Second Mate Shun Biao Zhao failed to plan the ship's course out of the bay and then forged his colleagues' signatures on a plan drafted after the accident. And Third Mate Hong Zhi Wang failed to monitor the ship's path using GPS.
But there was no evidence of wrongdoing by the lower-ranking Zheng, who was detained as a witness because he was serving as lookout and first spotted the bridge, or against his underling, Helmsman Zong Bin Li, who was dutifully operating the rudder under direction of the pilot on the morning of the accident.
Nonetheless, for the year that followed the crash, all six men, including the blameless Zheng and Li, were shuttled between San Francisco hotel rooms and an apartment by an employer charged with crimes for which the crew members were held as witnesses, not suspects. They were kept in Northern California on so-called material witness warrants.
Such warrants became popular several centuries ago, to secure needed evidence when prosecutions were delayed and there was no alternative to in-court testimony. In the 20th century, they became useful for obtaining the testimony of foreign citizens or people smuggled into the United States. Under President George W. Bush, use of the warrants against seafarers involved in pollution-related trials rose, according to Douglas Stevenson, the policy and advocacy director at the 175-year-old Seamen's Church Institute. "There's really not any mechanism, once a foreign citizen goes home, for being sure they'll come back when they're needed for a trial," Stevenson noted.
Attorneys for the Cosco Busan crew argued in court that their clients' constitutional rights were being violated. However, the Supreme Court has never ruled on the constitutionality of this obscure legal tool. "Initially, they didn't get lawyers," noted Ricardo Bascuas, a University of Miami law professor who has written on the subject and who once represented a material witness arrested after 9/11, when the Bush administration used such warrants to detain Muslims suspected of having links to radical groups and jihadists. "It was a group of people that had no incentive to complain, so there are not a lot of cases on it."
Material witness laws can turn bystanders into prisoners. And they add the prospect of in-country confinement to the other risks that must be weighed by would-be whistleblowers. Four Filipino sailors aboard the Rio Gold cargo ship learned that lesson last May, when they were slapped with material witness warrants and held in Northern California after reporting their boss and employer for offshore oil-dumping crimes. The archaic warrants also provided rogue Bush administration officials with a legal device with which to incarcerate Muslims without proof of any wrongdoing. The sad case of Liang Xian Zheng and Zong Bin Li shows how such warrants can be abused.
-----
As boatswain, Zheng was the Cosco Busan's highest-ranking unlicensed sailor. Although he lacked the English skills needed to obtain a license, he was an experienced and well-trained seaman. After graduating from a Beijing high school in 1988, he spent a year at maritime academy. Among his lessons: How to serve as a lookout on a ship's bow. After graduation, Zheng scored a job as a cadet at China's COSCO Shipping Company. He had worked on nine ships when an agency recruited him for a stint aboard the Cosco Busan.
Unlike better-certified colleagues on that fateful assignment, Zheng didn't speak English, apart from nautical words and basic commands needed for his trade. When Fleet Management contracted to operate the Cosco Busan, the Hong Kong-based company, which operates about 200 ships, decreed that English would be the working language for the all-Chinese crew. That effectively barred Zheng and others from reading onboard safety and operating procedures. The crew was trained in company policies aboard the ship by fly-in fly-out Fleet Management official Varminder Singh, an Indian who spoke English but not Mandarin. Master Sun translated for non-English speakers during the crew's initiation, which lasted during the two-week-long trip from Busan to Long Beach and then to Oakland.
At 6:15 a.m. on November 7, 2007, 45 minutes before its scheduled departure from the Oakland Port, Singhan departed the Cosco Busan, leaving its journey back to South Korea in the hands of Master Sun and his crew. But the crew didn't plot a course from Berth 56 out through the Golden Gate, which violated the policies in which they had just been trained. The oversight may have seemed irrelevant since an experienced local pilot would board the ship to take it out of the bay.
The 59-year-old bar pilot assigned to the Cosco Busan, John Cota, was a brusque, unhealthy man with a hot temper, an alcohol problem, and a history of driving under the influence. It was his seventh consecutive day on piloting duty, and he had managed just ten hours of sleep over the prior two nights. At 4 a.m., the Petaluma man's alarm clock rang out, and by 6 a.m. he pulled over at the fog-draped pier in the Port of Oakland. He boarded the ship just five minutes after the instructor Singh disembarked; was greeted by the crew; commented on the fog, which reduced visibility to one-eighth to one-quarter of a mile; and turned down an offer of a coffee or a soda.
Cota radioed the Vessel Traffic Service and said he would take the ship through the Delta-Echo span of the Bay Bridge, which is on the San Francisco side of Treasure Island. Two hours later, the Coast Guard-run service, which acts like a flight control tower except that it spends most of its time watching vessels and very little time controlling them, failed to warn Cota that he was sailing the container ship into a bridge tower instead of through the span.
Like other bar pilots in San Francisco Bay, but unlike pilots in other harbors, Cota wasn't required to carry a laptop computer laden with navigation equipment. Instead, he relied on the Cosco Busan's array of onboard electronic maps and radars. But he struggled to use them. "It's not plotting, Captain," Cota told Sun after readjusting and testing the radar for forty minutes. "I've tried to plot this target five times but it never plots. It didn't plot - that's not good for fog." Eventually, he set sail. He later abandoned the radar altogether after the display appeared to him to grow distorted, and relied instead on the ship's electronic map, which marked hazards and safe passages with symbols. Investigators have concluded that the radar was working properly, and recordings show that its display did not become distorted.
In an exhaustive accident report published more than a year later, investigators for the National Transportation Safety Board concluded there was another reason for the bar pilot's difficulties. A urine sample subsequently provided by Cota, who had already been involved in thirteen shipping accidents, including nine where he was counseled or blamed afterward, tested clean for cocaine, marijuana, and other illegal drugs. But it was destroyed without being tested for any of the legal pharmaceuticals that prescription records show that he had possessed, such as traces of any of the 124 hydrocodone tablets, better known as Vicodin, which he obtained from two pharmacists following dental surgery a month earlier. In the two months before he swaggered onto the Cosco Busan, Cota filled prescriptions for Darvon, Valium, Talwin, Imitrex, Ativan, Provigil, Zoloft, Lomotil, and Compazine, or their equivalents. Many of those drugs are addictive, and at least six degrade cognitive performance.
When the ship pulled out of its dock an hour behind schedule, Zheng, the boatswain, had already spent more than four hours checking and fixing lashings that local longshoremen had sloppily strapped around the containers. He joined the Chief Mate, Kongxiang Hu, on the bow to help him serve as lookout. He soon grew alarmed by the ship's fast speed in thick fog.
In China, the Cosco Busan would not have sailed in such fog, Hu told Zheng in Mandarin. Yet in a failing that investigators later blamed on the Chinese crewmembers' cultural reluctance to challenge authority, none of them, including Master Sun, complained to the brash American pilot about his speed in heavy fog. Nor did they ask where he was taking their ship. At 8:13 a.m., Sun radioed Zheng and Hu to confirm that they were serving as lookouts. Seven minutes later, Hu abandoned his lookout duties and, without telling Sun, went inside to eat breakfast, leaving the lower-ranking boatswain Zheng alone as the ship's only lookout.
Zheng peered nervously into the thick fog. Inside, Cota didn't realize that he was lost. The northwest-bound ship was drifting too far west across the face of the bridge as Cota tried to line it up to pass through the Delta-Echo span. Disregarding the radar and unable to see through the fog, the pilot relied on the ship's electronic map. He started directing the ship, as it appeared on the map, toward a pair of red triangles that he thought marked the center of the 2,200-foot span between the Delta and Echo towers.
If Cota had moved the mouse cursor over one of the triangles, he would have learned its meaning.
To figure out that each of the red triangles symbolized a floating buoy, rather than a bridge span, he also could have been expected to call upon his 26 years of piloting experience. Each triangle was a familiar electronic representation of the hand-drawn fin that was long-ago adopted by mariners as the symbol for a conical buoy. Instead, at 8:22 a.m., Cota asked Master Sun what the triangles meant.
In accounting for Cota's perplexing confusion, NTSB investigators eventually concluded that "the higher-level cognitive effort and perceptual skills" needed to interpret the Cosco Busan's standardized radars and maps "were precisely those capabilities that would have been degraded" by the drugs that Cota had possessed. None of Cota's difficulties using the radar or reading the map would have been expected of any pilot with sober and effective cognitive functions, the investigators concluded. In other words, they concluded, he was tripping on prescription meds.
Sun told Cota that the triangles were symbols for the bridge, which Cota took to mean the center of the bridge span. Neither of the men turned around to ask Third Mate Wang, the ship's navigational systems expert, to interpret the symbols. Wang says the pair spoke English too quickly for him to catch their conversation.
Blinded by fog and by his inability to use the ship's working radar, Cota began turning the ship in an apparent effort to navigate between the two red triangles, thinking they marked the center of the bridge span. In fact, the triangles marked buoys that were bobbing fifty feet apart on the north and south sides of the concrete Delta tower. The tower was directly between them.
At 8:27 a.m., when the ship was one-third of a mile from the bridge and moving quickly at ten knots, the four-person Vessel Traffic Service team on Yerba Buena Island noticed Cota was off course.
"Our initial thought," Watch Supervisor Mark Perez later told accident investigators, was "that he had aborted his approach or possibly he had changed to an alternate span."
Sector Controller Frank Sheppard radioed Cota. "Uh, AIS shows you on a two-three-five heading," he said. A heading refers to the direction in which a ship's bow is pointed, where north is expressed as zero degrees and south is 180. The service's automatic identification system updates the direction of a turning ship every six seconds or so. "What are your intentions?" Sheppard asked.
"Um," Cota replied, "I'm coming around and steering 280 right now."
"Roger," Sheppard replied. "Understand you still intend the Delta Echo span?"
Before replying, Cota double-checked with Sun to be sure that the pair of red triangles on the electronic map marked the center of the bridge. "Yeah, yeah," Sun replied.
Cota ordered two hard starboard turns and radioed, "Yeah, we're still Delta Echo," and kept his dangerous course.
"Uh, roger, captain," Sheppard concluded, then stared with his colleagues at monitors in horror for more than a minute as the container ship barreled toward the tower.
Zheng had been staring, alone, through the cold, gray mass for ten minutes, when a terrifying specter emerged. The ghostly silhouette of a gray bridge tower appeared fifty yards ahead.
"The bridge tower," the panicked Zheng cried in Chinese into his walkie-talkie. "The bridge tower!"
Cota and Sun looked and said they saw the tower, which was slightly on the ship's port side. Then the bar pilot's lifetime of maritime experience kicked in. He had the helmsman continue to hold the rudder at hard starboard, which wheeled the ship's bow around clockwise to the right of the Delta tower. But that swung its port side around to smash directly into it. Ten seconds later, Cota ordered the helmsman to straighten the rudder. Five seconds after that, he ordered him to turn it hard to port.
The seemingly counterintuitive port turn angled the bow back toward the tower as an eight-foot-deep gash was gouged along the ship's single-layered metal hull by the crumpling timber-and-plastic fender system. Two fuel tanks and a ballast tank ripped open as the ship grazed past the fender, leading to a 53,500-gallon oil spill. But the port turn pirouetted the hulking rear of the fully-laden 901-foot ship away from the tower just in time to avoid bulldozing into it.
Zheng's watchfulness had helped prevent a catastrophic collision between the soft steel ship and the solid concrete bridge tower that could have ruptured the ship and sent hundreds of thousands of gallons of its fuel into the bay. And what was his reward? As a witness to alleged crimes, he was ordered to surrender his passport and report to a US court. If he entered another state or country, he risked becoming the unemployed target of an international arrest warrant.
-----
After the crash, Zheng stayed with the other 23 crewmembers on the ship, which was docked at an anchorage before being shifted for repairs in a San Francisco shipyard. Acting on the advice of attorneys hired by their employer, the crew initially refused to cooperate with the investigators who clambered aboard. The investigators eventually identified six of the men, including Zheng, Li and the four most senior sailors, as targets of material witness warrants. An attorney appointed by Fleet Management's legal team to represent Zheng, Li, and two of the other men accepted service of their arrest warrants. That helped keep the seamen out of jail, but required them to disembark from the Cosco Busan and remain in the United States, even after their colleagues had taken the repaired boat back out of the bay in late December.
Attorneys for Fleet Management hired Douglas Schwartz, a chipper maritime lawyer with experience representing crew members served with material witness warrants, to represent Master Sun. Schwartz took the leadership role in arguing on behalf of all six crew members, including Zheng and Li. He says he believes the men were "functionally detained."
The Chinese nationals were squirreled away, out of the media spotlight, in hotels and an apartment around Nob Hill, downtown, and the Marina, as deals for their accommodations were secured. Fleet Management and its staffing contractors were required to pay the crewmembers' salaries, living expenses, and cover their health care costs. The seamen were free to roam about the Bay Area, provided with work visas, and paid witness fees of $35 to $40 per day. But they received no counseling services to help them through the confusing, lonely ordeal.
When a material witness is stuck in the United States, they are not generally incarcerated. But it's common for depression to set in, according to Stevenson of the Seamen's Church Institute. "They've got to sit in a strange place and eat fried food for six months," he said. "They don't get told exactly what's going on. Their diet changes and they get bored. They're trained to be seafarers - not to be sitting around waiting to testify in a case."
When the Oakland-based chapter of the Seamen's Church heard that witness warrants had been issued for the men from the Cosco Busan, it tried to invite them to their center to use the Internet, receive pastoral and emotional support, and hang out and play pool with other seamen. But their offer was ignored, church officials say. And church officials already had their hands full supporting seven Filipino seamen who were being held as material witnesses in a separate case. Those men were stuck in Northern California after some of them reported that their chief engineer, a Greek national, had ordered waste oil dumped from the engine room of their ship, the 626-foot Rio Gold, as it sailed to Oakland from Hawaii. As a reward for reporting the crime, the four whistleblowers jeopardized their careers and lost their freedom for months, but eventually they were rewarded by the US government with more than $60,000 apiece following the successful prosecution of their employer, Malta-based Casilda Shipping Ltd., which was fined $750,000.
Throughout the sojourns of the Cosco Busan crew, prosecutors and attorneys for Fleet Management and Cota repeatedly asked US Magistrate Joseph Spero to extend the witness warrants - or agreed to such requests from other lawyers - to keep the men in the country long enough to testify in the trial of their employer and pilot.
The men's ordeal was prolonged because of tardiness by prosecutors, who took four months to bring charges against Cota and more than eight months to file an indictment against Fleet Management. Delays also occurred because aggressive Fleet Management defense attorneys demanded their right to gather every scrap of evidence, Schwartz said, and because of intense public interest in the case. All of those factors helped repeatedly postpone the federal trial of Cota and Fleet Management.
Attorneys for the crew claimed in court that the US government would never accept such treatment of Americans by a foreign government. They argued that their clients' long stays violated their Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable detention and their Fifth Amendment due-process rights. The Supreme Court has never considered this issue, although it has ruled that material witnesses have a right to witness fees. US Magistrate Spero replied that the men were "stuck" in Northern California, but ruled that they were not "detained" because they were not incarcerated.
"The reason, as far as we can tell, that there's almost no case law on the subject of 'detention' versus 'functional detention' is that normally it doesn't last long enough," Schwartz said. "By the time you get it in front of the Ninth Circuit [Court of Appeals], it's moot. If we had realized back in the spring how long this would have dragged out, we would have tried to have teed it up to get it in front of the Ninth Circuit."
When US Judge Susan Illston pushed back the trial until after the one-year anniversary of the oil spill, however, Spero said the crew members could return home after the lawyers took their depositions. During the depositions, which were videotaped in a judge-free federal courtroom, the crewmembers answered questions about their backgrounds and recalled year-old memories through translators. They had already shared the same information multiple times during interviews with accident investigators.
Spero allowed Zheng and Li, the two lowest-ranking and apparently blameless crewmembers, to give their evidence and return home before the other men. The depositions lasted for between three and fourteen days and revealed Fleet Management's role in the accident, according to Cota's attorney. "From all of the crew members' depositions, it became clear that there were significant issues regarding the training they received from Fleet," Jeffrey Bornstein said.
Zheng, who first spotted the bridge, grew miserable and depressed in San Francisco, according to his attorney and others involved in the case. While his colleagues took classes to improve their English and found work at a cramped sushi restaurant in a Japanese mall, Zheng spent his time bored, moping, and sad, resigned to an unfair fate.
Meanwhile, the younger Li, who was held as a witness because he had been controlling the Cosco Busan's rudder when an aggressive, drug-dependent, fully-licensed California superior piloted it into the bridge, grew deeply resentful at times, the attorneys say. His frustration was palpable; his demeanor made fierce by the obviousness of the injustice.
In September, Spero allowed Li to return home briefly so that he could visit his dying 88-year-old grandmother. Spero said the ruling was made because all of the lawyers involved in the multi-party case supported his desperate plea. Li paid a $1,800 bond, agreed to keep close phone contact with the court, and provided his girlfriend's phone number in China.
Zheng and Li returned home to China for good on the same day in late November. At that time, more than one year after the accident, Li's grandmother's ailing heart was still ticking, and she was still alive to welcome her grandson back home to Henan Province.
Today, Fleet Management faces hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines after offering to plead guilty to environmental misdemeanors. If found guilty on felony charges that its officials forged documents to mislead spill investigators, it faces fines of millions of dollars more. And it also will be billed hundreds of millions of dollars for cleanup and environmental restoration costs.
The Vessel Traffic Service officials who silently watched the crash unfold were retrained by the Coast Guard in the rudimentary art of giving orders to pilots to avoid accidents.
John Cota will be fined and sentenced June 19 to up to ten months in prison, after he pleaded guilty to a pair of environmental misdemeanors under a deal with prosecutors. But his incarceration will be briefer than the Kafkaesque odysseys of Zheng and Li, who were trapped in Northern California for more than twelve months because of the drugstore junkie's wildly errant orders.
Oil-spill pilot’s DUI letter scrutinized original / top
By John Upton
San Francisco Examiner, March 13, 2009
The San Francisco Bar Pilots Association recently told federal authorities that Capt. John Cota - who caused an oil spill of more than 50,000 gallons in 2007 when he crashed the Cosco Busan ship into the Bay Bridge - may have forged a 1999 letter to the Coast Guard regarding a DUI.
The disputed Nov. 4, 1999, letter that contained the signature of bar pilots association President Capt. Russell Nyborg surfaced during accident investigations.
"I have been made aware of the vehicular incident involving Captain Cota and find this to be entirely uncharacteristic," the letter stated. "It is incomprehensible that he would willfully or recklessly endanger the safety or property of another person."
The Coast Guard asked Cota to surrender his license after he reported the DUI, but it was eventually returned. He was ordered to surrender the license again after the Cosco Busan incident.
An attorney representing the Bar Pilots Association told the National Transportation Safety Board in a Dec. 3 letter, which was made public Thursday, that Nyborg "denies having ever seen" the 1999 "mystery letter." The letter might be an "outright forgery," wrote attorney Kevin Davis.
Cota's attorney, Jeffrey Bornstein, said his client did not forge any letter.
The pilot is due to be sentenced in June. He faces up to 10 months in prison after pleading guilty to negligently causing the oil spill.
Coast Guard clears itself of wrongdoing in oil spill original / top
By John Upton
San Francisco Examiner, March 13, 2009
A Coast Guard investigation into the 2007 Cosco Busan accident has cleared its Vessel Traffic Service of wrongdoing, contradicting findings by an independent agency that also investigated the crash.
On Nov. 7, 2007, the container ship hit the wood-and-plastic fender system that surrounded a Bay Bridge tower, rupturing two fuel tanks on the vessel and causing an oil spill that polluted shorelines and killed wildlife.
Local pilot Capt. John Cota pleaded guilty last week to negligently causing the spill, which occurred in heavy fog after he directed the ship to a location in the Bay that was marked on an electronic chart by a pair of red triangles. The triangles marked both sides of the Delta Tower on the San Francisco side of Treasure Island.
Cota and the ship's master, Capt. Mao Cai Sun, mistakenly believed the triangles marked a safe transit span between the Delta and Echo towers.
Before setting sail, Cota told the Coast Guard's Yerba Buena Island-based Vessel Traffic Service, which monitors shipping traffic, that he planned to sail through the Delta-Echo span.
As the Cosco Busan approached the Delta Tower, the traffic service noticed it was off course but didn't explicitly tell Cota or Sun that fact, various investigation reports show.
Instead, a dispatcher radioed Cota and told him the direction in which his ship was headed. However, the dispatcher muddled his words, thereby giving Cota incorrect information, reports show.
Then, transcripts show, Cota asked Sun whether the triangles marked the center of the bridge, to which Sun replied, "Yeah, yeah," and Cota confirmed to the dispatcher that he still planned to take the ship through the Delta-Echo span.
"Roger, captain," the dispatcher said.
The crash occurred less than two minutes later.
A National Transportation Safety Board investigation into the crash found that the dispatcher's flawed information may have confused Cota, and that the Coast Guard failed to train the dispatcher on his authority to control or direct vessels to prevent accidents.
The Coast Guard's report, released Tuesday, concludes that Cota should have been able to understand the dispatcher's navigational information and that the dispatcher performed as trained.
The report recommends that the Cost Guard review its vessel traffic practices to determine whether national standards are needed.
Factors blamed in the report for causing the accident include navigational errors made by Cota at an unsafe speed in near-zero visibility, and Sun's failure to adequately monitor Cota's navigation.
Dispatchers at the Yerba Buena Island-based service were retrained after the accident and told they have authority to control or direct ships to prevent accidents, according to its director, Sean Kelly.
Recommendations from the Coast Guard
Some recommendations in the Coast Guard's final accident report on the November 2007 Cosco Busan oil spill in San Francisco Bay:
Cosco Busan pilot to spend up to 10 months in prison original / top
By John Upton
San Francisco Examiner, March 6, 2009
Capt. John Cota accepted a plea deal Friday for environmental crimes related to the November 2007 Cosco Busan crash.
The bar pilot, who under the deal would be able to reapply for his bar pilot's license, will spend between two and 10 months in prison and pay a fine of $3,000 to $30,000, after pleading guilty.
The Nov. 7, 2007 accident in heavy fog sliced open two of the South Korea-bound ship's fuel tanks and caused approximately 53,000 gallons of fuel to spew into San Francisco Bay, where it polluted shorelines and killed seals, fish eggs and thousands of birds.
The Petaluma pilot pleaded guilty in federal court to negligently causing the oil spill and violating the Clean Water Act and Migratory Bird Treaty Act, both misdemeanor charges which carried a total maximum prison sentence of 18 months.
Cota, 61, will have the right to withdraw his plea if U.S. District Judge Susan Illston sentences him to more than 10 months in prison, she said. Sentencing is scheduled for June 19.
Under the agreement, more serious felony charges will be dismissed. Those charges related to allegedly providing false medical information to U.S. Coast Guard officials when Cota renewed his pilot's license.
Cota will be required to disclose all of his medical background if he reapplies for his bar pilot's license, under the agreement.
As reported exclusively Friday in The Examiner, Cota, who suffers a long list of ailments, obtained more than 1,000 tablets of 10 types of prescription medications in the two months leading up to the accident, including more than 500 tablets of powerful pain-killers, such as Vicodin.
Cota's urine sample, which tested negative for alcohol, marijuana and other banned substances, was destroyed without being tested for prescription medicines. Cota only admits to taking three types of drugs before the crash, none of them painkillers, according to his attorney.
Before the hearing, Cota, dressed in a light-gray suit and sporting a bushy mustache, entered the courtroom and sat in the front row, shoulder-to-shoulder with his wife.
For much of the time that Cota stood in front of Judge Illston, he held his hands loosely clasped in front of his stomach, clutching a folded copy of the agreement. He spoke slowly and carefully with a deep but quiet voice.
Before Cota agreed in court to the plea deal, Illston laughed momentarily as she asked him, as a routine question, whether he had taken any drugs in the lead-up to Friday's hearing.
Cota told Illston he had only taken medicine to treat sleep apnea.
"Do you feel clearheaded?" Illston asked him.
"Yes," Cota said. "I always feel clearheaded."
"Well, I just want to know if you feel clearheaded right now," Illston said.
Cota's attorney, Jeffrey Bornstein, in a statement released after the hearing, described the shipping incident as "an accident that unfortunately is also a crime," that was not caused by any intentional misconduct or the use of any medication.
"Captain Cota has been vilified by the media, lost his job, will now go to jail for at least 60 days, and still suffers under the weight of crushing civil lawsuits," Bornstein said. "Even today, there continues to be sensational accusations about his prescription medications."
In a written statement, John Cruden, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division, said the guilty plea was a reminder that the Cosco Busan crash was not just an accident, but a criminal act.
"This is not a case involving a mere mistake," Cruden said. "The lesson here is that environmental stewards, who abandon ship, act negligently and cause major environmental damage will be vigorously prosecuted."
The trial of Cota's codefendant, ship operator Fleet Management Inc., was rescheduled Friday from early April until Sept. 14.
Inquiry uncaps a multitude of pills original / top
By John Upton
San Francisco Examiner, March 6, 2009
John Cota had filled prescriptions for more than 1,000 tablets of powerful drugs, such as Vicodin and Valium, in the two months before he piloted the Cosco Busan into a Bay Bridge tower, an investigation report shows.
The pills were obtained from a number of different sources - a local pharmacist, a grocery story pharmacist and through the mail - in the 60 days leading up to the crash, according to a National Transportation Safety Board review of the accident, due to be published in the coming weeks.
After the Nov. 7, 2007 accident, which spilled 53,500 gallons of fuel into San Francisco Bay in the largest spill in decades, the U.S. Coast Guard reviewed medical forms that had previously been submitted by Cota and canceled his license because of health concerns, NTSB medical officer Mitchell Garber told an investigation hearing.
Cota had suffered, at the time of the accident or prior to the crash, from depression, alcoholism, sleep apnea, abdominal pain, back pain, headaches, glaucoma, chronic esophagitis and acute pancreatitis, he had passed 10 kidney stones, and he was being prepared for dental implants, NTSB documents show.
Investigators said after the accident they had learned Cota used numerous painkillers and other drugs, but the upcoming report, summarized in documents recently made public, provides a comprehensive account of the drugs the pilot obtained in the lead-up to the crash.
In the 60 days before the crash, Cota obtained 10 types of prescription drugs, including 510 tablets of addictive and pain-killing compounds typically sold as Vicodin, Darvon and Valium, NTSB documents show. About one-quarter of those pills were obtained from two pharmacies following oral surgery on Nov. 2, five days before the accident.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration warns that those drugs can be habit-forming, and that they may impair the mental and physical abilities required to drive a car or operate machinery.
Cota is facing federal misdemeanor charges related to environmental crimes and felony charges for allegedly withholding some medical details when he renewed his bar pilot's license. A judge is scheduled today to consider a request by prosecutors to delay the trial from April until the fall.
It's impossible to know whether Cota was under the influence of the drugs at the time of the accident, because a urine sample was destroyed after it tested negative for banned substances, such as marijuana and alcohol, according to Garber. Morphine and codeine would have been detected, but other pharmaceuticals wouldn't have shown up, he said.
Cota's attorney, Jeffrey Bornstein, said his client admits only to taking Provigil, Alphagan and Synthroid before the accident. Those drugs treat sleepiness, glaucoma and thyroid problems.
"There is nothing in the evidentiary record to support him being under the influence of any drug," Bornstein said.
He said that Cota's navigation decisions as the ship struck the bridge have been commended by investigators.
"There's no evidence of him taking any drug, period, except the three he admits to taking."
Drugstore cowboy
Drugs obtained by Petaluma pilot John Cota in the 60 days before the Nov. 7, 2007 Cosco Busan crash:
Sources: National Transportation Safety Board, drugs.com
Blame for Bay spill spreads original / top
By John Upton
San Francisco Examiner, Feb. 18, 2009
The Chinese captain of the Cosco Busan failed to properly operate the ship as it was being piloted by a local man - who was "most likely" affected by prescription drugs - before the ship crashed, federal officials said Wednesday.
The National Transportation Safety Board on Wednesday released results of its investigation into the ship's Nov. 7, 2007, crash into a Bay Bridge tower, which led to the spill of more than 53,000 gallons of fuel.
NTSB placed much of the blame on three parties: John Cota, hired to pilot the ship through the Golden Gate; shipping company Fleet Management Inc. and the captain of the ship, Mao Cai Sun; and the Coast Guard.
Cota was unfamiliar with the electronic chart being used to navigate the Bay in heavy fog, and Sun incorrectly told him that red symbols, which marked bridge towers, were gaps between the towers, according to the findings. The Coast Guard also failed to properly direct the ship as it sailed toward the tower before the collision, according to NTSB findings.
Sun continues to be held in Northern California as a witness, but he has not been charged with any crimes, attorney Douglas Schwartz said Wednesday.
According to NTSB findings, errors made by Cota, combined with his dependence on multiple medications, suggest his cognitive and piloting performance was affected by prescription drugs.
Cota's attorney, Jeffrey Bornstein, called the findings "innuendo" and said the U.S. Attorney's Office failed to secure a drug-test sample taken after the accident.
Although Cota withheld medical information from the Coast Guard when he renewed his pilot's license, the agency had enough information to justify investigating whether he was healthy enough to keep his job, and its medical oversight of pilots remains "deficient," NTSB found.
Cota and Fleet Management are facing federal criminal charges, and a joint trial is slated to begin April 6.
State files second oil-spill suit original / top
By John Upton
San Francisco Examiner, Jan. 7, 2009
California Attorney General Jerry Brown filed a lawsuit Tuesday that seeks to recover costs connected to the environmental damage and response efforts resulting from a toxic oil spill in San Francisco Bay from the Cosco Busan container ship.
More than 53,000 gallons of fuel gushed from the vessel's hull after it struck a Bay Bridge pillar in heavy fog the morning of Nov. 7, 2007.
The Coast Guard has said all other ships obeyed harbor rules that morning and waited for the fog to lift before setting sail.
Cleanup costs from the spill were expected to exceed $60 million, a Coast Guard official told Congress in December 2007. That figure did not include repairing damage caused to the environment and fisheries.
The spill affected 118 miles of coastline, several hundred acres of eelgrass beds and wildlife that included thousands of birds, according to the state's lawsuit.
"This was a preventable accident that had tragic consequences," Brown said in a statement.
The suit seeks the payment of fines, reimbursement of cleanup costs and unspecified damages from a number of parties linked to the ship, including Bay Area pilot Capt. John Cota and foreign-based ship operators and owners Fleet Management Inc., Regal Stone Ltd. and Synergy Management Services.
Cota and Fleet Management are also facing federal lawsuits and criminal charges related to the spill.
Their combined criminal trial is due to begin in April, and Cota faces more than a decade in prison if found guilty of committing environmental crimes and making false statements about his medical history to secure his pilot's license.
Cota's attorney told The Examiner that various government agencies have unfairly focused blame on his client.
"Yes, there was an accident; yes, there was an oil spill; yes, there needs to be recompense, but our client is continually being made a scapegoat," attorney Jeffrey Bornstein said.
Attorney Joe Walsh, who is representing Fleet Management, said he was not surprised by the legal action.
A separate state lawsuit was filed in federal court previously on behalf of Caltrans, the state agency that owned the Bay Bridge-protecting fender system destroyed during the accident, according to Christine Gasparac, state attorney general spokeswoman.
The lawsuit filed Tuesday in state Superior Court was on behalf of three other state agencies, including the Department of Fish and Game, she said.
An ongoing multiagency effort to quantify the environmental damage caused by the spill is expected to help California determine how much compensation to demand from Fleet Management and other defendants once the results have been compiled.
It might take more than a year before that assessment is finished, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman Al Donner. "The trustees are working as quickly as they can," he said.
One Cosco Busan crewmember still remains in U.S.
After being held as witnesses for more than a year, five Chinese crewmembers who were aboard the Cosco Busan when it collided with the Bay Bridge were allowed to leave the country last month.
One of the six men - the most senior - arrested on material-witness warrants following the November 2007 incident continues to be held, however, according to his attorney.
None of the crewmembers released were charged with any crimes, but had been ordered by a federal judge to remain in Northern California to be witnesses at the trial of Fleet Management Inc., their employer, and Cosco Busan pilot Capt. John Cota.
But when the trial was delayed from November till April, the judge agreed to allow them to give their evidence in depositions before returning home.
Some of the crewmembers doctored documents and gave false statements to investigators after the accident, at the instruction of senior Fleet Management officials, the crewmembers' attorneys said in federal court filings.
The men were housed in local hotel rooms and apartments by Fleet Management during their stay, according to attorney Jonathan Howden, who represents four of the crewmembers.
Cosco Busan Master Capt. Mao Cai Sun is expected to complete his deposition and return to China before February, according to attorney Doug Schwarz.
Keeping attorneys busy
The Cosco Busan oil spill has produced several criminal charges against:
Cosco Busan pilot Capt. John Cota
- Two federal felony counts for allegedly lying to federal agents about medication use
- Two federal misdemeanor counts of violating environmental laws
Cosco Busan operator Fleet Management Inc.
- Six federal felony counts for allegedly making false statements and obstructing justice
- Two federal misdemeanor counts of violating environmental laws
Lawsuits have also been filed against Fleet Management, Cota and other parties linked to the accident by:
- U.S. Department of Justice (U.S. District Court)
- Caltrans (U.S. District Court)
- California Department of Fish and Game, California Regional Water Quality Control Board and State Lands Commissio (California Superior Court)
- Cities of San Francisco, Oakland and Richmond (San Francisco Superior Court)
- Local crabbers and fishermen (San Francisco Superior Court)
Bay remains vulnerable one year after Cosco Busan spill original / top
By John Upton
San Francisco Examiner, Nov. 7, 2008
One year after a container ship clipped a Bay Bridge support tower, flooding the Bay with oil, environmental and clean-water advocates say some of the problems that hampered emergency cleanup efforts remain unfixed.
In the wake of the Cosco Busan spill on Nov. 7, 2007, state and federal lawmakers clamored to draft legislation to address the delayed and inadequate response by government and private industry that exacerbated the damage caused by the more than 50,000 gallons of oil that gushed from the ship's hull.
The Cosco Busan struck the Bay Bridge support tower while trying to navigate through heavy morning fog; by sundown, the tides had spread the oil slick throughout the Bay. Some cleanup workers and equipment, however, were not put to work until days after the incident.
Additionally, thousands of would-be volunteers were ordered not to help scour oil from their local beaches, and federal and state agencies failed to efficiently share information about the spill with each other or with San Francisco and other local agencies, subsequent investigation reports revealed.
Adding to the Bay's woes, floating barriers deployed to corral the oil quickly tipped over in the Bay's strong tides, an official with the Marine Spill Response Corp. told a Harbor Safety Committee, a multiagency committee of local, state and federal agencies.
While one-third of the spilled oil was recovered, most of the fuel sank to the bottom of the Bay, became buried beneath shoreline sand, washed out to sea or evaporated, according to U.S. Coast Guard figures.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has since signed seven bills into law to help protect waterways from future spills. The bills improve government coordination and oversight and improve volunteer training.
However, the governor vetoed three of the bills that environmental advocates described as among the most critical to helping protect the Bay.
One vetoed bill would have allowed the state to raise oil taxes from 5 cents to 8 cents per barrel to increase funding for the California Office of Spill Prevention and Response, which has millions in cash reserves but is running a $3 million annual deficit.
The additional taxes could have helped improve decades-old oil-spill cleanup and control technology and equipment by funding grants under a bill authored by San Francisco Assemblymember Mark Leno, D-San Francisco. That bill was also vetoed.
In his veto statement, Schwarzenegger said the spill prevention and response office already monitors and evaluates new response technologies.
Leno told The Examiner that the veto means California will "continue to rely upon antiquated technologies" to manage spills.
"The booms that are currently being used were deemed to be successful in recovering only a fraction of the oil that was spilled," Leno said. "I think we can all agree that was unacceptable."
The third vetoed bill, written by San Francisco state Sen. Carole Migden, would have required cleanup firms contracted by shipping companies to be able to respond to spills within two hours. To meet this requirement, the firms would have been required to increase their staff and equipment inventories throughout the state.
It took first responders about 2½ hours to reach the Cosco Busan spill Nov. 7, but cleanup efforts were thwarted by heavy fog that prevented helicopter flyovers that were needed to locate the spreading slick.
The governor said he vetoed the bill because its mandates could jeopardize the safety of spill responders in some "potentially unsafe circumstances."
Sejal Choksi with the nonprofit San Francisco Baykeeper said the two-hour rule would have helped protect the environment if it had become law.
"Containment within two hours is critical, because you don't want the oil to spread throughout the Bay," Choksi said. "It's a lot harder to recover and a lot harder to clean up once it spreads on the tides."
Oil spill legislation
Signed by governor:
AB1960: Tightens regulations designed to prevent spills at oil refineries and pipelines.
AB2031: Requires prompt notification of local agencies following an oil spill.
AB2911: Improves training programs that teach volunteers to rescue oiled wildlife.
AB2935: Prioritizes oil spill response efforts in ecologically sensitive habitats.
SB1217: Increases state oversight and medical reporting requirements for Californian bar pilots.
SB1627: Increases state oversight of the Board of Pilot Commissioners.
SB1739: Increases training drill requirements for oil spill response companies.
Vetoed:
AB2032: Increase funding for Oil Spill Prevention and Administration Fund through oil taxes.
AB2547: Establish grants program to improve oil-spill cleanup equipment and procedures.
SB1056: Require cleanup crews to be able to respond to oil spills within two hours.
Source: Legislative Counsel of California
Herring eggs malformed by Cosco Busan spill
Preliminary results from a multiyear effort to assess the environmental harm caused by the Cosco Busan oil spill have confirmed some fears held by fishermen and ecologists for the local herring population.
The baitfish swarms into the Bay every winter to spawn, laying eggs on rocks, eelgrass and other surfaces. Herring are a key source of food for shorebirds and marine mammals, and commercial fishermen catch them in nets before they can lay their eggs, which are a delicacy to Japan.
Herring eggs in areas directly impacted by the Cosco Busan spill last year were so badly malformed that they would not be able to survive, according to an October report by the state and federal agencies preparing the damage assessment.
However, herring eggs collected outside of the affected area were "largely normal," and scientists did not detect any effect of the spill on the number of herring hatched last winter in the Bay, according to the report.
Herring fisherman Ernie Koepf, who serves as a fishing advisor to the California Department of Fish & Game, said it's "well known" that petroleum distillates have a devastating impact on herring embryos.
The herring fishery at Prince William Sound was destroyed following the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, but Koepf and others said it will take years before the effects on the Bay's herring from the much-smaller Cosco Busan spill become clear.
"We're watching with great interest," Koepf said.
A full report into the environmental impacts of the Cosco Busan spill might be finished within a year, according to U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service spokesman Al Donner.
The report will be used to determine the compensation the government demands from companies linked to the Cosco Busan, with proceeds directed toward restoration projects.
Environmental toll of the Cosco Busan spill
2,525: Birds killed by the spill and recovered by authorities
418: Oiled birds rescued and rehabilitated
52: Miles of sandy beach coastline oiled by the spill
10: Miles of saltmarsh coastline oiled by the spill
1 to 5: Years before the coastlines recover from the spill
54,000: Gallons of fuel spilled
20,000: Gallons of oil recovered from water*
*Doesn't include oil recovered from shorelines
Sources: Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration Planning for the Cosco Busan Oil Spill, October update; U.S. Coast Guard.
After a year in California, Chinese crew hope to return home
Some of the crew aboard the Cosco Busan when it crashed one year ago are scheduled to appear before a judge today to ask, once again, to finally be allowed to return home to China.
None of the six crewmembers who have been held in northern California since the shipping accident has been charged with any crimes. They are being held on witness warrants and have posted bonds to avoid incarceration, surrendered their passports and they risk arrest if they leave the state.
Attorneys for international ship operator Fleet Management and local pilot John Cota of Petaluma, both of which are facing federal charges stemming from the spill, had asked for the crew members to be held as witnesses until a trial which was originally scheduled to begin Nov. 17.
But when the trial was postponed earlier this year until April, a judge agreed to allow the crew members to instead give their evidence by videotape.
Two of the lowest ranking crew members - Zong Bin Li and Liang Xian Zheng - have given videotaped evidence and are due in court today, where their attorneys will ask for their clients to be allowed to return home.
The six crewmembers are at the heart of federal charges faced by their employer, Fleet Management, which is accused by the Department of Justice of failing to adequately train the men, who had been working together on the ship for just two weeks at the time of the accident.
Fleet Management is also facing felony charges related to documents that were allegedly falsified by some of the crew members after the accident. Attorneys for the crew members say their clients were ordered to doctor the documents by senior Fleet officials.
Legal repercussions
A year after the spill, a number of legal issues yet to be resolved for the ship's pilot, owner and crew members.
Pilot John Cota
Background: Cota, who was suspended after the accident and later retired, is facing $115,000 in fines and up to 18 months in jail if found guilty of misdemeanor environmental charges that allege he negligently caused the spill. Cota is also facing up to $500,000 in fines and a decade in prison if found guilty of felony charges that he lied to federal officials about medication use to obtain his pilot's license.
Status: Cota's next hearing is scheduled for March and his trial is due to begin in April.
Ship operator Fleet Management
Background: The Hong Kong- and European-based company, which manages nearly 200 ships worldwide, is facing millions of dollars in fines if found guilty of misdemeanor charges related to the spill and felony charges related to allegedly false statements made to investigators after the spill. The company is also being sued by the U.S. Department of Justice for damage caused by the spill.
Status: The international company is scheduled to be tried alongside Cota. A hearing on the civil case is scheduled for today, but the case isn't expected to be heard until the criminal trial is finished.
Crew members Mao Cai Sun, Kong Xian Hu, Shun Biao Zhao, Hong Zhi Wang, Liang Xian Zhen and Zon Bin Li
Background: The six men are not facing charges but they have been held in Northern California on material witness warrants since the spill, despite protests from attorneys who say their rights are being violated.
Status: The men have begun giving videotaped evidence for upcoming Cosco Busan-related trials and a judge today will rule whether two of them can return home immediately.
Panel discusses spill today
On the one-year anniversary of the Cosco Busan spill, a group of four officials and activists will discuss "What Is Being Done to Prevent Another Disaster From Polluting the Bay" at the Commonwealth Club at 11:30 a.m. today. Admission is $15. Panelists include Assemblymember Jared Huffman, Sejal Choksi of San Francisco Baykeeper, David Lewis of Save The Bay and Chris Godley of the Marin County Sheriff's Office of Emergency Services.
Chinese Cosco Busan crew to remain in U.S. original / top
By John Upton
San Francisco Examiner, Sept. 25, 2008
Chinese crew members aboard the Cosco Busan container ship when it hit the Bay Bridge in November will continue to be held in the United States as witnesses, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.
The six men, none of whom have been charged with any crimes, are at the center of a legal battle about the crash, which caused an oil spill that killed wildlife and fouled beaches.
Wednesday's court proceedings were to hear a "motion for release" brought by some of the crew members' attorneys, who also asked "in the alternative, to compel scheduling" of depositions in the case.
The U.S. Department of Justice has charged the crew members' employer, ship operator Fleet Management Ltd., with misdemeanor and felony charges in the accident.
The crew was inadequately trained and they made errors that caused the Nov. 7 crash, the department has alleged.
The department is also suing the Hong Kong-based shipping company in the spill.
The crew members are being held in Northern California on material-witness warrants. They have surrendered their passports, paid bonds and live in a hotel. International arrest warrants could be issued if they leave the country.
Magistrate Judge Joseph Spero ruled Wednesday that the depositions of two low-ranking crew members must begin in October. He said depositions of four other senior seamen must begin by Nov. 17 - 376 days after the crash.
The depositions will be used as evidence during a trial of Fleet Management and Petaluma pilot Capt. John Cota, which is scheduled to begin after Nov. 17.
Attorneys for the United States and Fleet Management unsuccessfully asked for later deposition dates to give them more time to prepare and conduct research.
Attorneys for the crew members said their clients' constitutional rights are being violated because they are being detained without charge.
Spero said the men are "certainly stuck" in the United States, but he said they aren't "detained" since they aren't incarcerated.
Cosco Busan pilot wants crew members kept in U.S. original / top
By John Upton
San Francisco Examiner, Sept. 12, 2008
The local pilot who was at the helm of the Cosco Busan container ship when it struck the Bay Bridge in November asked the government Friday to keep six of the ship's Chinese crew members in the country for his trial.
Capt. John Cota, of Petaluma, is facing jail time if convicted on criminal charges that he negligently caused the crash that led to the spill of more than 50,000 gallons of oil into the Bay on Nov. 7. His trial is scheduled to begin Nov. 17.
Onboard the Cosco Busan that day there were also six Chinese crew members. They made a series of blunders that contributed to the container ship's crash, the U.S. Department of Justice has alleged in charges brought against the workers' employer, Fleet Management. Attorneys for the crew members have acknowledged that they forged documents to mislead investigators.
"The government has decided to bring criminal charges against only one individual, Captain Cota, and has given or intends to give all six crew members immunity," Cota's attorney, Jeffrey Bornstein, wrote in a court filing. "While we believe that the court needs to balance the rights of these witnesses to return home, the fact remains that there is no substitute for having them appear in person for trial before the jury."
An attorney for the ship's master, Capt. Mao Cai Sun, has argued that his client should be allowed to return home from Northern California, where he has been detained since the accident with the rest of the crew. The crew members are living in a hotel.
"The incredibly long detention of a foreign national who has not been accused of any crime is unheard of and violates his constitutional rights," attorney Douglas Schwartz wrote in a court filing earlier this month. "If it were American citizens being held in China under similar circumstances, it is difficult to believe our country would sit idle and mute."
The crew is scheduled to provide evidence in the form of depositions next month, but Cota's attorney on Friday asked a judge to continue detaining the crew so they can provide evidence in front of a jury. Prosecutors in court filings asked for four of the crew members to be detained until the trial.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Joseph Spero will decide whether to allow the crew to return home before the trial.
One crew member, Zong Bin Li, was given permission in late August to return to China to visit his ailing grandmother, court documents show. His attorney, Jonathan Howden, said in a court filing that Li obtained a work permit and Social Security card and plans to return to his job in the United States "indefinitely" when he returns to San Francisco.
The latest legal wrangling is not the only legal action associated with the Cosco Busan incident.
In addition to criminal charges brought against Fleet Management, the international shipping company is being sued, along with ship owner Regal Stone, by the Justice Department for cleanup costs and other damages caused by the accident.
The two companies recently argued in court documents that the state of California is liable for damages because one of its doctors wrongly gave Cota the clean bill of health needed to renew his license.
The companies have also argued that the United States is liable for damages for because the U.S. Coast Guard issued the license to Cota, who allegedly relies on a cocktail of pharmaceuticals to treat a long list of ailments, including sleep apnea.
Shipping company wants to plead no contest for oil spill original / top
By John Upton
San Francisco Examiner, Sept. 5, 2008
The shipping company that operated the Cosco Busan when the container ship slammed into the Bay Bridge told a judge it doesn't want to contest federal criminal charges that it negligently caused an oil spill and then misled investigators.
Fleet Management is facing more than $3 million in fines if convicted on the federal misdemeanor and felony charges and it is also being sued by the U.S. Department of Justice about the Nov. 7 oil spill in the Bay.
"The purpose of the plea is to fairly resolve the criminal case," Fleet Management attorney Marc Greenberg wrote in court documents filed this week. "Disallowing it will unquestionably impact Fleet's ability to receive a fair judgment in the civil matters now pending."
Attorneys representing members of the Chinese crew have acknowledged in court statements that their clients falsified documents, including a passage plan to guide the 900-foot ship from Oakland to South Korea, after the collision.
The attorneys in court documents said the crew members were following orders from more senior Fleet Management officials.
Greenberg in his filings laid much of the blame for the crash on other parties, including Petaluma pilot Capt. John Cota, a co-defendant in the criminal case scheduled to begin Nov. 17.
Cota's attorney, Jeffrey Bornstein, said the filing showed that Fleet Management's attorneys "don't have a defense in the criminal case and so they want to try and dispose of it, but to do it in a way that does not involve pleading guilty."
Bornstein has previously asked U.S. District Judge Susan Illston to order separate trials for Cota and Fleet Management because the company intends to base its defense on "character assassination" of his client.
Illston is charged with deciding whether to allow the plea.
Cosco Busan crew lied to investigators original / top
By John Upton
San Francisco Examiner, Sept. 4, 2008
New details of misleading statements made by Cosco Busan crewmembers to investigators in the wake of the container ship's November crash into the Bay Bridge and subsequent oil spill were made public Wednesday.
One senior crewmember forged documents given to officials investigating the spill; another senior officer was chomping down breakfast when the ship crashed into the bridge but initially hid that fact from investigators, the filings show.
The U.S. Department of Justice in July charged shipping company Fleet Management with making misleading statements to investigators. The company faces over $3 million in fines if convicted.
One officer, Shun Biao Zhao, failed to draft a passage plan for the ship's journey from the Port of Oakland to South Korea before the accident and then wrote the plan one day after the crash at the instruction of other company officials, according to the filing by attorney Jonathan Howden, who is representing Zhao and three other crewmembers.
"Other documents also may have been dated or created after the fact," Howden wrote.
The crewmember based the forged passage plan on another Fleet Management-managed vessel's passage plan but failed to erase references to Brisbane, Australia. After a U.S. Coast Guard official asked why the plan mentioned Australia, Zhao erased the references and forged other crewmembers signatures, according to the filing.
The Hong Kong-based shipping company and Petaluma pilot Capt. John Cota are also facing federal misdemeanor environmental charges related to the Nov. 7 accident, which caused an oil spill that killed wildlife, closed beaches, delayed the fishing season and poisoned the Bay.
The company failed to properly train the six-person crew, it is alleged.
Recordings reveal that, on the morning of the accident, Cota and the crew struggled to use the ship's navigation equipment. Fleet Management attorney Marc Greenberg in court has claimed that was caused by Cota's history of prescription "drug use and abuse."
The crewmembers are scheduled to be interviewed in October for a trial scheduled to begin in November. They have already been interviewed multiple times by investigators.
Howden's documents were filed as part of an effort to convince the court to allow the men to return home to China.
"They feel just like anybody would feel if they were detained in a foreign country for ten months," Howden told the Examiner.
Ship operators: Pilot's drug use caused spill original / top
By John Upton
San Francisco Examiner, Aug. 15, 2008
The company that operated the container ship that spilled more than 50,000 gallons of oil into the Bay in November will argue in court that the local pilot's use of prescription drugs is to blame, an attorney for the shipping company said today.
The environmental disaster began on the morning of Nov. 7 when the Cosco Busan struck a Bay Bridge support tower while moving through heavy fog. Recordings made by on-board equipment reveal that Petaluma pilot Capt. John Cota and the Chinese crew of the 900-foot container ship struggled to use navigation devices.
Marine mammals and thousands of birds were killed by the spilled oil, which still sullies area shorelines.
Cota is facing misdemeanor charges related to alleged environmental crimes for his alleged role in the accident. If convicted, Cota could be imprisoned for up to 18 months and fined up to $115,000.
The U.S. Department of Justice has also charged Cota with two felony charges for allegedly lying to U.S. Coast Guard officials about his medical history when he secured his pilot's license. If convicted, he could be imprisoned for up to 10 years and fined up to $500,000.
In addition to misdemeanor charges related to environmental crimes, Hong Kong-based shipping company Fleet Management faces six felony charges related to alleged false statements made by company officials to investigators after the accident. If convicted, the company could be fined more than $3 million.
Fleet Management attorney Marc Greenberg told U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in court today that he will raise Cota's history of drug use during the upcoming combined trial, tentatively scheduled for Nov. 17.
Federal investigations revealed that Cota relies on a cocktail of prescription drugs to treat an array of medical problems, including sleep apnea, and that he was convicted for driving under the influence of alcohol in 1999.
"It is a part of our defense that he lost situational awareness because of his drug use and abuse," Greenberg said. "That's why he looked at the radar and didn't see what he should have seen."
Cota's attorney, Jeffrey Bornstein, told Illston his client's trial should be severed from Fleet Management's trial because attorneys for the company would rely on "character assassination" of Cota in their defense.
Illston previously denied a similar request, but Bornstein said his renewed call was based on new court filings.
Bornstein also said Cota's trial should be held outside of the Bay Area because of intense local media coverage of the incident and subsequent investigations. "He's already been tried and convicted in the court of public opinion," Bornstein said.
Cota was in the courtroom today, but he did not speak or appear before Illston. The next hearing is scheduled for Sept. 22.
Shipowners charged with lying original / top
By John Upton
San Francisco Examiner, July 24, 2008
The operators of the Cosco Busan, the container ship that struck a Bay Bridge support beam last year, have been indicted for allegedly failing to properly train the ship's crew and falsifying documents to deceive the spill's investigators.
The 900-foot container ship's fuel tanks tore open when it struck the Bay Bridge on Nov. 7. Area shorelines remain contaminated from the spill of more than 50,000 gallons of toxic bunker fuel, which killed thousands of birds.
Following a grand jury investigation, U.S. Attorney Joseph Russoniello charged Hong Kong-based Fleet Management Inc. with six felony counts Tuesday related to allegations that company officials made "false, fictitious and fraudulent statements" to investigators.
Fleet Management could be fined more than the value of the damage it caused, according to a U.S. Justice Department statement. Court dates have not been set.
In the indictment, Fleet Management was accused of creating a "passage plan" to guide the ship all of the way from the Port of Oakland to the Port of Pusan in South Korea after the Nov. 7 incident, and for creating similar plans for previous journeys. The officials, who were not named, are alleged to have told investigators the plans were drafted prior to the ship's journeys.
The passage plan was signed by some of the Chinese crew being held in the United States as material witnesses.
Fleet Management, which operates nearly 200 ships worldwide, has suspended "individuals involved in the misunderstanding of the facts" and plans to investigate the allegations, spokesman Jim Lawrence said.
Fleet Management also was charged with two environmental misdemeanors carrying fines of up to $115,000 for failing to adequately train the crew, and because the crew didn't use navigation equipment properly or review the ship's course before setting sail. The agency is already suing the company over the disaster.
The 13-year-old company hired the crew when it took over operations of the ship - now called the Hanjin Venezia - Oct. 24, two weeks before the crash, Fleet Management general manager Nagarajan Subramania testified at a National Transportation Safety Board hearing.
Subramania testified that the crew members had "long years of experience at sea" and came to the company "pretty much trained." Some of them had previously worked together and the crew was "working together well" before the crash, he said.
Petaluma pilot John Cota has been charged with misdemeanors related to the spill and with felonies related to medical documents.
Cosco Busan's impact still not entirely clear original / top
By John Upton
San Francisco Examiner, July 17, 2008
Nine months after an oil slick spread across the Bay from the Cosco Busan, the ship's tarnished name has been scrubbed off its hull, but exhaustive cleanup efforts have failed to remove all of the spilled toxic fuel from area shorelines.
Evidence of the oily mess surfaced as recently as last month, with tar balls showing up on beaches north of Marin and in Alameda.
The November spill, the worst the Bay has seen in decades, occurred when the 900-foot container ship, which has since been renamed the Venezia, struck the Bay Bridge in heavy morning fog, ripping open two of its tanks and releasing more than 53,000 gallons of fuel.
The cleanup effort is ongoing and isn't expected to be completed until September, said Rob Roberts, the California Office of Spill Prevention and Response officer who has led state cleanup efforts. However, that doesn't mean the fuel or its effects will be gone, he said.
In mid-June, roughly 80 gallons of sunken fuel washed up and closed Robert Crowne Memorial State Beach in Alameda County, said Carol Singleton, a spokeswoman for the state Office of Emergency Services. Days earlier, residue oil surfaced on Marin's Rodeo Beach, the National Park Service said.
After the Cosco Busan spill, about 2,500 oiled birds from more than 50 species were collected; of the 1,084 birds found alive, just 421 survived, according to California Department of Fish and Game figures.
The effects of the spill on most vulnerable bird species, including brown pelicans, won't be known until the fall, Golden Gate Audubon Society conservation director Eli Saddler said.
"A lot of the birds impacted were migratory waterfowl, and those birds are in Alaska and Canada or in northern parts of the U.S. right now," he said.
Fishermen are facing the threat that the oil has had a deadly effect on fish eggs, reducing the Bay Area's supply of herring and other baitfish.
Game-fish have been readily biting in the Bay this summer, but the bait most commonly used to catch them, anchovies, has virtually disappeared, career fisherman and Berkeley Marina bait-shop operator Dennis Deaver said.
Grunion, another type of baitfish, also have proved elusive this summer in the Bay, Scripps Institution of Oceanography researcher Karen Martin said.
"It's possible they had a disruption of their food chain and it's possible they weren't able to get big enough to spawn," Martin said. "There were areas that were oiled that we know grunion use for spawning."
Much of the information on the spill's effects on the Bay ecology hasn't been shared publicly while the analysis is ongoing, according to environment advocates.
"We have a basic understanding of the potential biological endpoints that people are worried about, but we don't really know what the results of the analysis are saying," said scientist Jen Kovecses, who works with the San Francisco-based water-watchdog Baykeeper.
Data collection could be finished as soon as November, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife spokesman Al Donner.
"It will still take time to quantify," he said.
The assessment will help the state and federal governments charge the ship's owners and operators for the damages wrought by the spill, so the money can be spent on restoration projects, Donner said.
Cleanup and restoration costs are expected to top $60 million, according to court filings by the Hong Kong-based owner and operator of the Cosco Busan, which has blamed the U.S. government for the disaster.
Coast Guard tackling problems at spill's core
U.S. Coast Guard officials say changes made immediately after the spill will prevent some of the problems that unfolded after the Cosco Busan crashed into the Bay Bridge.
Initial statements from state and federal officials estimated that about 140 gallons of fuel had spilled into the Bay following the ship's 8:30 a.m. collision with the Bay Bridge. Only after dusk were local governments and media informed that more than 50,000 gallons of low-grade shipping fuel had gushed out into the water.
Coast Guard Capt. Paul Gugg - who took over leadership of the multi-agency cleanup team seven days after the accident and was later appointed commander of the agency's San Francisco sector - defended the spill response, but conceded that initial underestimates of its size may have caused other agencies "to not get spun up" about the mess.
To prevent similar underestimates in the future, the Coast Guard will report the potential volume of a spill based on the size of the ruptured tank, Gugg said.
The Coast Guard also came under fire because its Vessel Traffic Service, a Yerba Buena Island-based operation that watches boat traffic from the Pacific Ocean to Sacramento, did little to prevent the accident. The five-person team now will have a "more proactive role" when it comes to guiding ships, particularly in heavy fog, Gugg said.
When the Cosco Busan set sail Nov. 7, it violated a guideline that barred ships from the Bay when visibility was less than one mile. That rule was "unworkable" because the Bay is frequently spottily foggy and it was therefore "largely ignored," Gugg said.
The vessel service now will enforce a new guideline that bars ships from venturing into fog when visibility is less than a half-mile, Gugg said.
Additionally, a new Coast Guard response boat has been purchased and moored at the Richmond Marina. Investigations found that inexperienced Coast Guard officials were deployed to assess the situation while a California Office of Spill Response official was stuck on land waiting hours for a boat to take him to the fog-shrouded scene.
Charges against pilot to be discussed this week
Federal charges against John Cota, the man who piloted the Cosco Busan into the thick November fog and into the Bay Bridge, are slated to be discussed at a hearing Friday before a U.S. district judge in San Francisco.
The U.S. Justice Department charged Cota with two felony counts of lying about his health in pilot license applications and with two misdemeanor counts of breaking environmental laws.
Last month, his attorneys asked a federal judge to dismiss the charges.
Cota also has announced that he will retire as a state-licensed pilot Oct. 1.
In a civil lawsuit, the U.S. Justice Department has sought damages and cleanup costs from Cota, from the Cosco Busan's Hong Kong-based owners and operators Regal Stone and Fleet Management, and from Cosco Busan insurer Shipowners' Insurance and Guaranty. The federal government secured an $80 million bond from the vessel's owners before releasing it from U.S. waters.
In a counterclaim, the ship's owner and operator say the U.S. and California governments caused the spill by, among other things, licensing a pilot who was "medically unfit and incompetent" to perform his duties and by placing him on their boat. The claim says damages from the incident could exceed $60 million.
The U.S. Justice Department continues to hold six senior members of the container ship's Chinese crew in the United States as witnesses.
San Francisco secured an initial compensation payout of $2 million for damages caused by the oil spill as the result of an agreement struck between city officials and the Cosco Busan owners and operators.
Protecting the Bay from future spills
State lawmakers introduced numerous bills following widespread criticism of the tardy, ineffective and uncoordinated emergency response by various government agencies and cleanup companies. However, none of these bills has become law, and some face powerful opposition.
SB 1056
Author: State Sen. Carole Migden
What it would do: Would require the state to immediately report oil spills to counties and to respond to spills within two hours, instead of the current six-hour limit.
Status: Passed Senate, awaiting Assembly vote.
AB 2547
Author: Assemblymember Mark Leno
What it would do: Cleanup companies would be required to respond to a spill in the Bay with modern equipment within 30 minutes. The bill also creates a $5 million grant program to help develop new oil containment and cleanup equipment.
Status: Passed Assembly, awaiting Senate vote.
AB 2935
Author: Assemblymember Jared Huffman
What it would do: Would create a program to quickly train volunteers after an oil spill to help cleanup operations. Fishermen would be hired as cleanup workers.
Status: Passed Assembly, awaiting Senate vote.
AB 2031
Author: Assemblymember Loni Hancock
What it would do: Ship owners would be required to provide spill volume estimate updates to the California Office of Emergency.
Status: Passed Assembly, awaiting Senate vote.
SB 965
Author: State Sen. Alan Lowenthal
What it would do: State would analyze tides, currents, winds and other natural phenomenon to better predict the movement of oil spills.
Status: In Senate
AB 2032
Author: Assemblymember Loni Hancock
What it would do: State could raise an additional $18 million per year by increasing a maximum tax on crude oil and gasoline for an Oil Spill Prevention and Administration Fund from 5 cents a barrel to 8 cents if becomes law.
Status: Passed Assembly, awaiting Senate vote.
By the numbers: The Cosco Busan oil spill's heavy toll
53,569: Gallons of fuel spilled
2,519*: Birds killed by the oil
168: Cleanup workers on the first day of the disaster
1,399: Cleanup workers on day seven
50: Miles of coastline oiled
3*: Mammals killed by the oil
*estimate
Sources: California Department of Fish and Game, U.S. Coast Guard
Hearings on oil spill launch this morning original / top
By John Upton
San Francisco Examiner, April 8, 2008
The navigation equipment on the Cosco Busan was found to be in good working order during an inspection by its manufacturer after the container ship swiped the Bay Bridge in November, an engineer for the manufacturer is expected to testify today.
Petaluma pilot John Cota told National Transportation Safety Board investigators after the crash that there were problems with the ship's radar and electronic charts before the ship left port and during its short, ill-fated voyage in heavy fog, investigators said at the time.
An engineer at Sperry Marine - a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman Corp. that manufactured the ship's navigation equipment in 2001 - is scheduled to testify this morning at the start of a two-day NTSB hearing into the accident.
The navigation equipment onboard the Cosco Busan was inspected by a Sperry Marine service engineer on Nov. 12 and determined to be in "good working order with no faults found," Northrop Grumman spokesman Tom Delaney told The Examiner on Monday. He said both of the ship's radars successfully detected the Bay Bridge's radar beacons when tested.
Cota is facing federal environmental charges carrying up to 18 months in jail and $115,000 in fines over the spill of more than 50,000 gallons of toxic shipping fuel caused by the accident. The slick closed area beaches for months, killed seals and thousands of birds, and delayed the annual crabbing and herring seasons.
Cota's attorneys in a March letter suggested the NTSB investigate whether the Chinese crew adjusted the equipment before the accident, and whether the Sperry engineer adjusted the equipment after the accident.
The NTSB this morning will release thousands of pages of evidence unearthed during its investigation, including transcripts of brief exchanges in English between Cota and Capt. Mao Cai Sun that were recorded as the ship steamed toward the Bay Bridge tower and after the impact, according to NTSB spokesman Peter Knudson.
Sun and five other Chinese members of the crew are being kept on witness warrants in a hotel, according to Chinese Consulate spokesman Defa Tong.
Also on Monday, bills in the state Legislature that would help cleanup crews speed up their response to oil spills advanced in committees. The bills call for local officials to get faster notice of spills. Volunteers would get training and equipment to help clean up oil-contaminated beaches and wildlife.
Bay still shows signs of oil contamination original / top
By John Upton
San Francisco Examiner, Dec. 21, 2007
As the Cosco Busan powered out of the Bay on Thursday, tests revealed that it had left behind traces of spilled fuel in shoreline fish-breeding habitats.
The Hong Kong-based container ship spilled 58,000 gallons of heavy shipping fuel into the Bay on Nov. 7 after slamming into a tower of the Bay Bridge. The toxic slick spread from Drakes Bay south to San Mateo County, U.S. Coast Guard charts show.
On Thursday, California Department of Fish and Game biologist Ryan Watanabe and herring fisherman Dennis Deaver conducted a test to check for fuel on the Bay floor within 500 feet of the shoreline.
They cast an anchored, 390-foot herring gill net over popular fishing and fish-spawning habitat near Treasure Island, Angel Island and Tiburon.
Deaver, who has been fishing for 41 years, described the test results as "scary." He said the department should cancel this winter's commercial herring season.
"We may need all the fish to spawn to secure the future of the fishery," Deaver said. He said buyers in Japan - San Francisco's main herring market - will avoid the fish if any is oiled.
Department biologist John Mello, who oversees the Bay fishery, said the test results would be provided to federal and state agencies that managed post-spill cleanup efforts. They could decide to close the herring season, he said, which would normally have started this month.
Although no globs of oil clung to the net, as the pair had feared, nets picked up oil-covered pieces of eelgrass and flotsam, and the anchor and rope were covered with what appeared to be oily silt.
"We'll have to send that to the lab to see if that mud had some oil in it," Watanabe said. "It kind of looked like it did, but sometimes you get detrital mud - and it's just black."
Analysis of the vegetation, flotsam and silt samples is due to begin today, according to Watanabe.
When Deaver hosed down the net after six tests, a thin oil slick covered the water that pooled at the bottom of the boat.
Herring eggs laid on oiled rocks or vegetation won't hatch, according to Deaver and Watanabe.
The Department of Fish and Game also sent scuba divers into deeper parts of the Bay on Wednesday and Thursday to conduct vegetation surveys.
The divers found less eelgrass in the Bay than last year, according to department biologist Ryan Bartling, but he said the reduction might not have been caused by the oil spill.
"We had a visibility of one-inch," Bartling said Thursday. "What small amount [of eelgrass] we saw looked fairly healthy, with no noticeable oil." The death toll
The most recent information about the Cosco Busan cleanup efforts:
123 Total personnel employed
1,818 Birds dead on arrival
1,083 Total birds captured
648 Birds that died in facility
400 Birds released
45 Birds washed remaining in facility
1,300 Remaining feet of boom laid out
Source: Cosco Busan Unified Command
Group turns oil into food for 'shrooms original / top
By John Upton
San Francisco Examiner, Dec. 18, 2007
A San Francisco resident and others who used human hair to scour Cosco Busan shipping fuel from Bay Area shorelines think they've come up with a way to use mushrooms to organically turn spilled oil into compost, but attempts to use the container ship's spilled fuel to test the technology have been thwarted.
Lisa Gautier and other beach lovers used mats of human hair, which is naturally oil-absorbent, to collect some of the 58,000 gallons of shipping fuel that spilled into the Bay on Nov. 7.
Gautier said they handed the fuel that they collected over to National Response Corp., which was hired to help clean up after the spill. The fuel includes oil and oil additives.
But Gautier says she now regrets handing over the fuel, and she's trying to get 20 gallons back for a trial project at Presidio National Park that would use the fuel as food for oyster mushrooms.
Presidio spokeswoman Dana Polk said the mushroom compost would be used as compost at the 1,490-acre park.
Gautier said she wants to try growing the mushrooms in Cosco Busan fuel. She has written permission from the California Department of Toxic Substances Control to perform the tests using the hazardous fuel.
"Mushrooms love to break down hair and they also love to break down the hydrocarbons in oil," Gautier said. "The people at NRC have to pay to incinerate their waste oil and it just turns it into air pollution that we all breathe."
But Gautier said an official with the National Response Corp., David Dell'Osso, has refused to hand over any of the fuel.
Dell'Osso declined to discuss the issue with The Examiner on Monday.
"I'm not allowed to talk to the press about that," he said. "That's company policy."
Instead, Dell'Osso referred The Examiner to sister company Seacor International.
"One reason that NRC is not offering up any oil is that it's not our oil to offer up to anybody," Seacor International General Manager Larry Pintler said. "[Gautier] should contact the owner of that oil."
Gautier said nobody she's spoken with will claim ownership of the oil, which was recovered for the foreign-based owners and insurers of the Cosco Busan in an effort that was coordinated by the O'Brien's Group and federal agencies.
Gautier said she plans to push ahead with tests using other oils and fuels. "We've used motor oil," she said. "That's doing really well after 15 days."
Agency to discuss oil-spill response
Mayor Gavin Newsom and U.S. Coast Guard officials are expected to discuss the slow response to the Cosco Busan spill during a meeting today of The City's Disaster Council.
Local emergency services weren't immediately informed by Coast Guard officials that a container ship had crashed into the Bay Bridge on Nov. 7. Additionally, when they sent a fire boat to check out reports of an accident, they were turned away by Coast Guard officials, according to transcripts of communication that day.
Coast Guard officials will atttend today's meeting. Newsom is slated to make comments and offer recommendations in the wake of the spill, according to Office of Emergency Services Executive Director Laura Phillips.
"Since we're in litigation right now, we're getting some guidance about what we can present at this point," Phillips said. "But we want to get some information out there, and we want to be transparent."
Members of the Disaster Council include Newsom, police Chief Heather Fong, fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White, Department of Public Health Director Mitchell Katz and other high-ranking officials, according to the meeting agenda.
Overhaul of oil-spill cleanups proposed original / top
By John Upton
San Francisco Examiner, Dec. 7, 2007
Companies and government agencies charged with containing and cleaning up oil spills in California may be required to use new cleanup technology and deploy cleanup equipment more rapidly after spills, under a suite of bills proposed this week by state lawmakers in the wake of the Cosco Busan accident.
The California Office of Spill Prevention and Response, and cleanup companies, control oil spills with long, floating booms. They recover boomed oil using skimmers, which are mechanical limbs attached to boats.
Booms weren't used to control the 58,000 gallons of fuel that gushed from the container ship's hull until more than 2½ hours after it gashed against a Bay Bridge tower on Nov. 7, senators were told at a hearing last week.
State Sen. Carole Migden, D-San Francisco, announced Wednesday that she would draft legislation to reduce the maximum response times to San Francisco Bay spills from six hours to two hours.
At a news conference attended by several Bay Area Assembly members, Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, said he will propose legislation to provide $5 million in funding for new oil spill cleanup technology.
Booms used by the shipping industry-funded Marine Spill Response Corp., which was hired by the Cosco Busan's insurer to control and clean up the spill, were useless immediately after the spill, Vice President Steve Ricks told a recent hearing of the Harbor Safety Committee, because the tide was sweeping through the Bay at up to 2.9 knots.
About one-third of the Cosco Busan oil has been recovered, according to U.S. Coast Guard figures.
"If that current is more than 1 knot," Ricks said, "then that boom is going to tip over, and oil in the water will either go over or under."
The lawmakers also said they will call on the governor to appoint an independent commission to investigate the state's response to the Cosco Busan crash.
"We can't have our own agencies self-assessing what went wrong," Leno said.
Other bills proposed would ensure that local emergency agencies would immediately be informed of oil spills; provide additional response funds through a 25 cent per gallon tax on imported oil; and require private companies to buy the best available cleanup technology.
Prediction of spill's path called inaccurate original / top
By John Upton
San Francisco Examiner, Nov. 30, 2007
Ship fuel cleanup efforts after the Cosco Busan struck the Bay Bridge early this month were guided for two hours by incorrect information on the direction of the slick as it spread in heavy fog around the Bay.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration provided emergency workers with predictions of the trajectory of the Nov. 7 oil spill at noon that day - more than three hours after the crash, according to congressional testimony by the agency.
Emergency workers charged with containing and collecting the 58,000 gallons of fuel that gushed from the hull of the container ship relied on NOAA's predictions of the direction of the oil spill, which two NOAA officials on Thursday admitted were inaccurate.
Federal officials are already under fire for how they handled the spill, one of the worst environmental disasters to hit the Bay in decades. After the accident, the U.S. Coast Guard told city officials and the public that hundreds of gallons of fuel had spilled, but after nightfall it updated that figure to 58,000 gallons.
The U.S. Coast Guard on Thursday defended NOAA's faulty predictions.
"The oil didn't cooperate with what NOAA predicted it was supposed to do," said local Coast Guard Capt. David Swatland, who helped coordinate the federal response to the spill. "Which is Mother Nature - it's not completely predictable."
Heavy fog prevented emergency workers from visually surveying the slick from the air until 2 p.m., according to Steve Ricks, a vice president at the Marine Spill Response Corporation, which was hired by the container ship's insurer to mop up the fuel.
"We couldn't see it," Ricks told a packed special meeting of the Harbor Safety Committee on Thursday. "We didn't know where it was."
NOAA Commander Gerry Wheaton testified at the meeting that new technology could help improve future predictions and improve the agency's understanding of surface currents.
"The equipment is coming - the issue is how to integrate the information into one package," Wheaton said. "Too much information can hamper. Not enough information can hamper."
Bay Bridge bumper bits lost original / top
By John Upton
San Francisco Examiner, Nov. 29, 2007
Massive hunks of black plastic have eluded authorities in San Francisco Bay since they were torn off a Bay Bridge tower earlier this month by the Cosco Busan, according to a federal official with the Army Corps of Engineers.
The bases of the Bay Bridge's towers are surrounded by patchworks of wood, hard plastic and steel that reduce damage from ship collisions. When the 900-foot container ship scraped against one of the towers, it tore open its hull, allowing 58,000 gallons of shipping fuel to escape, and it blasted some of the bridge's protective fender system into the Bay.
Most of the debris from the fender was never found, despite an intensive search, according to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers local operations chief Mike Dillabough.
There's a "remote chance" some is still floating in the Bay, he said, adding that it could resurface in the Bay, where it could cause an accident if it collides with a ship or a boat.
"We were able to gather the wood," Dillabough said. "The only things that were missing were these massive constructions of rubber that do not break apart."
"It floats about 3 or 4 inches below the water and it's black," he said. "It's black stuff in black water. We only picked up one section, and it was very difficult to find."
Dillabough estimated that the roughly 15 tons of plastic collected was about one-third of what fell in the water. He said the plastic would have been easier to find if contractors had used a brighter color.
Some of the rest could have floated out to sea on high tides that followed the crash, Dillabough said, and some could have sunk and become lodged in mud, especially since some of it was bound to steel.
How much plastic fell into the water is unknown, because it's hard to estimate how much remained on the bridge, according to a spokesman for the company that upgraded the fender last year and was called on this month by the California Department of Transportation to replace the broken section.
About 33 tons of steel and 43 tons of black "plastic lumber," made from recycled plastic, will be used to build the new section of fender, according to Robert Ikenberry of Pleasanton-based California Engineering Contractors. He said wood would be left out of the new design.
Removal of the damaged fender is scheduled to begin today, according to Department of Transportation spokeswoman Lauren Wonder, and the new fender is expected to be in place by mid-January.
Until then, a barge is stationed next to the tower to act as a barrier, according to Wonder, although it will sometimes leave the tower to pick up fender supplies.
Hearing on crash
The state Senate's Natural Resources Committee will hold an investigative hearing - called by state Sen. Carole Migden - into the Cosco Busan crash at 9 a.m. Friday at the state Capitol, Room 4203, in Sacramento.
Birds death toll continues climb following oil spill original / top
By John Upton
San Francisco Examiner, Nov. 26, 2007
Fuel spilled from the Cosco Busan more than two weeks ago continued its carnage of San Francisco Bay wildlife over the Thanksgiving weekend, with 173 local and migratory birds killed or found killed, taking the grim death toll Sunday to 2,125 birds and a harbor seal.
Hundreds of trained volunteers and workers have collected and rescued birds affected by oil after the Cosco Busan scraped against a Bay Bridge tower Nov. 7, which led to a 58,000-gallon spill of low-grade shipping fuel.
Of the 2,647 birds collected as of Sunday, 2,125 were dead and 188 had been released, according to official figures. Another 334 were being cleaned and rehabilitated by hopeful rescue workers, although many of those will also die.
Birds can freeze to death when they're covered with oil because their feathers lose insulating properties, and they can die after they eat or ingest the toxic sludge.
Birds of threatened and endangered species have been killed, said Sylvia Wright of the Oiled Wildlife Care Network at UC Davis, including three marbled murrelets, two brown pelicans and a snowy plover.
Just 2,300 tiny snowy plovers live and breed on West Coast beaches, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.
Figures provided by Wright paint a gloomy picture around the Bay, which is a popular stop for birds as they migrate along the Pacific Flyway between Alaska and Chile.
According to Wright's figures, birds from 57 species have been found dead by the end of last week, including more than 300 surf scoters. Eighty thousand of the 18-inch black and brown ducks call the Bay home during winter, according to researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey.
More than 200 Western grebes have also been killed, according to Wright. The ducks, which have pointy beaks and swanlike necks, are found from Mexico to Canada, and they nest in plants on the Bay during spring and summer.
Scoters and grebes are "especially susceptible" to the fuel, Golden Gate Audubon Society Executive Director Elizabeth Murdock said, because "they spend a lot of time in the Bay - they dive to the bottom of the Bay to feed on crustaceans."
Birds and other wildlife will continue to be harmed by the fuel long after cleanup crews have gone home, Murdock warned, as toxins from the fuel build up in their prey.
"Having a crisis like the oil spill just puts additional stress on these birds," she said. "They both have suffered population declines over the last few decades."
Species most frequently killed by the spill:
Source: Oiled Wildlife Care Network
Most of spill's whereabouts unknown original / top
By John Upton
San Francisco Examiner, Nov. 19, 2007
Some of the cancer-causing gunk that spilled from the Cosco Busan's fuel tank 12 days ago has dissolved into the Bay; some has attached to flotsam and sunk; and some has lined the Bay's floor, where it's expected to kill and contaminate fish, crabs and the microscopic life that feed the marine ecosystem, according to scientists, fishermen and environmental groups.
Nearly two-thirds of the 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel that spilled into the Bay after the 900-foot container ship hit the Bay Bridge is unaccounted for, but officials say they haven't surveyed the Bay or ocean floor to find out how much settled there. Bunker fuel is a cheap and heavy fuel used in ships.
"Some of the material in the bunker fuel will dissolve into the water column and some of it will sink," said Jen Kovecses, an aquatic ecologist at the nonprofit San Francisco Bay Keeper. "It's not easy to remove."
Dissolved fuel and fuel additives are absorbed through fish gills, according to Kovecses, and accumulate in mussels, polychaete worms and other water-filtering critters that are eaten by bigger creatures.
Benzene and naphthalene, found in bunker fuel, cause cancer, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Gooey bunker fuel, which is left behind after higher-grade fuels are distilled from crude oil, is blended with other fuels and oils to make it runny enough for ship engines. Preliminary tests suggest the Cosco Busan's fuel had been blended with diesel, San Francisco Bay Keeper Program Director Sejal Choksi said. Diesel contains benzene and similar cancer-causing toxins, according to the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
Toxins could linger under the surface of the Bay for decades, Save The Bay Executive Director David Lewis warned.
A U.S. Coast Guard statement issued Sunday said that tiny balls of fuel and sand can resurface hours or days after they sink, but the properties of bunker fuel mean all of it stayed afloat or washed ashore.
But fishermen tell a different story.
"I went in very shallow at Angel Island," commercial fisherman Ernie Koepf said, "and the boat bounced on the rocks on the bottom and kicked up an oil slick."
Koepf, who advises the California Department of Fish and Game on Pacific herring, asked the department to survey the Bay floor after it canceled an annual underwater vegetation survey.
"If they don't want to dive because they'll get oily," Koepf said, "then we want to be involved in some other method of sampling the hard substrate and the vegetation."
The water beneath the site of the Cosco Busan crash is used by herring and other baitfish.
"We have now really done something quite awful," Bay Institute scientist Tina Swanson said, "to what was one of the only healthy parts of the Bay."
Firm: 'Not enough' responders to oil spill original / top
By John Upton
San Francisco Examiner, Nov. 14, 2007
Power tools, oil skimmers and boats that could have been used to contain and clean fuel from the surface of San Francisco Bay sat idle last week, as the company contracted to clean up the Cosco Busan fuel spill waited for hundreds of qualified emergency workers to fly to San Francisco from as far away as Alaska and Massachusetts.
The O'Brien's Group disaster management company was hired by insurers of Hong Kong-based Regal Stone Ltd., which owns the 900-foot container ship, immediately after the vessel clipped the Bay Bridge. The company was given the task of coordinating subcontractor efforts to contain and clean the 58,000 gallons of ship fuel that gushed into the Bay.
A handful of employees of the Marine Spill Response Corporation, hired by The O'Brien's Group to help mop up the mess, sent an unsigned letter to state lawmakers this week criticizing the speed and effectiveness of the cleanup.
"There were not enough dedicated, qualified responders in the Bay Area available to help with the cleanup and recovery efforts immediately following the incident," the employees wrote in the letter to state Sen. Carole Migden, D-San Francisco, and state Assemblywoman Fiona Ma, D-San Francisco.
A shortage of qualified responders in the Bay Area at the time of the spill meant most of the fuel had dispersed over a large area before qualified staff were in place, according to the letter.
"Industry officials have been understaffing their dedicated spill response operations in the Bay Area and elsewhere," the employees wrote, "because there are no rules to prevent them from doing so."
The letter adds another layer of criticism in the aftermath of the environmental disaster: The ship's pilot says cleanup crews took 90 minutes to reach the boat; city officials have complained that their offers of help were ignored by the U.S. Coast Guard; and Coast Guard Capt. William Uberti on Wednesday was demoted from the response team back to regular duties as commander of the San Francisco office for failing to report the size of the spill to other agencies.
The practice of "cascading," in which emergency crews are flown from other states to use local equipment for the management of oil spills and other disasters, was blamed for slowing cleanup efforts in the anonymous letter, and by Inland Boatmen's Union spokesman Craig Merrilees, who said he represents the authors of the letter.
Barry McFarland, a spokesman for the O'Brien's Group, which coordinated cleanup companies and cleanup efforts, defended the speed of the effort and said hundreds of people "cascaded in" to The City "in an extremely short time" to help manage the spill from such places as Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.
top
← Cosco Busan oil spill ship operator faces $10M fine, Feb. 19, 2010
← Snowy plovers able to survive 2007 oil spill nearly unscathed, Jan. 25, 2010
← Bar pilots might be unfit for duty, Nov. 27, 2009
← Old bridge bumper technology means future oil spills likely, Nov. 5, 2009
← Oil spill devastated Bay herring, Oct. 31, 2009
← Cosco Busan pilot's appeal rejected, July 29, 2009
← New fines sought in Cosco Busan spill, June 9, 2009
← Prisoners of the Cosco Busan, May 27, 2009
← Oil-spill pilot’s DUI letter scrutinized, March 13, 2009
← Coast Guard clears itself of wrongdoing in oil spill, March 11, 2009
← Cosco Busan pilot to spend up to 10 months in prison, March 6, 2009
← Inquiry uncaps a multitude of pills, March 6, 2009
← Blame for Bay spill spreads, Feb. 18, 2009
← State files second oil-spill suit, Jan. 7, 2009
← Bay remains vulnerable one year after Cosco Busan spill, Nov. 7, 2008
← Chinese Cosco Busan crew to remain in U.S., Sept. 25, 2008
← Cosco Busan pilot wants crew members kept in U.S., Sept. 12, 2008
← Shipping company wants to plead no contest for oil spill, Sept. 5, 2008
← Cosco Busan crew lied to investigators, Sept. 4, 2008
← Ship operators: Pilot's drug use caused spill, Aug. 15, 2008
← Shipowners charged with lying, July 24, 2008
← Cosco Busan's impact still not entirely clear, July 17, 2008
← Hearings on oil spill launch this morning, April, 2008
← Bay still shows signs of oil contamination, Dec. 21, 2007
← Group turns oil into food for 'shrooms, Dec. 18, 2007
← Overhaul of oil-spill cleanups proposed, Dec. 7, 2007
← Prediction of spill's path called inaccurate, Nov. 30, 2007
← Bay Bridge bumper bits lost, Nov. 29, 2007
← Birds death toll continues climb following oil spill, Nov. 26, 2007
← Most of spill's whereabouts unknown, Nov. 19, 2007
← Firm: 'Not enough' responders to oil spill, Nov. 14, 2007
