December 9-16, 2004

city beat

Ship Happens

patch work: In 2015, vessels like the fated Athos I won't be welcome on the Delaware River. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Single-hulled oil vessels like the Athos I are a shipping-industry scourge.

by Dan Keashen

After the Exxon Valdez dumped 10.8 million gallons of crude oil in Alaska's Prince William Sound, the U.S. Congress passed legislation that would prevent single-hull tankers from causing future environmental disasters, regardless of their captain's sobriety.

How, then, did the single-hull Athos I cruise up the Delaware River and leave an 81-mile stretch of oil from the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge to Pea Patch Island? Because the Oil Pollution Act only calls for a phasing-out of such vessels over a 25-year span ending in 2015.

As clean-up crews still work the Delaware – officials said Tuesday that a 15-foot pipe on the bottom of the river tore the Athos open in two spots – local legislators are pushing for legislation that would financially slap companies that keep those less-secure vessels on the nation's waterways.

After U.S. Senators Jon Corzine and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey toured the waterway last week, they said they'd back laws that lifted the liability caps that currently have companies using single-hull tankers paying up to $1,200 per ton, or $10 million for most spills. (Without those current limits, Athos-owner Tsakos Shipping and Trading would owe up to $45 million.)

Reworking those laws, the senators said, would make companies rethink the use of such vessels, which are cheaper to operate and have more cargo room than the sturdier double-hulled tankers, which have become industry standards thanks to bolstered international-shipping regulations. (Industrial single-hull oil tankers are made with a single sheet of steel that separates their cargo from the water. Double-hull ships have two sheets of steel.)

U.S. Rep. Bob Brady supports the idea, according to his spokeswoman, Karen Warrington.

"Congressman Brady," she says, "is committed to protecting the environment for his constituents and for Pennsylvania and Philadelphia's economy."

The single-hull debate is nothing new, according to Jeff Schmidt, director of the Pennsylvania chapter of the Sierra Club.

"We fought vigorously to get the legislation through after the Valdez. The government gave a caveat to the oil industry through an infinitely excessive timeline in order to accommodate them," Schmidt says. "We now have to face major environmental and economic problems. ... As we watch the unfolding saga on the river get continuously worse, we're still going to let these at-risk ships come down the Delaware?"

That's not a dilemma facing European coastal areas, however. According to European Parliament Act 417, the Athos I would have never sailed through European waterways legally. The European Union changed its shipping laws in response to the catastrophic spills of the tankers Erika and Prestige – in 1999 and 2002, respectively – off the Atlantic coast. They banned any ship more than 15 years old, and those that are single hulled, from the continent's harbors. Still, the 750-foot Athos I, which was built with doubled walls and a single steel-bottom hull in 1983, could have and still may continue to operate on the Delaware River until 2011.

"The latest information we have suggests that if the tanker was a double-hull tanker the accident could have been avoided," says Schmidt.

Other environmentalists cite the need to bar single-hull tankers from the waterway. Delaware Riverkeeper Maya van Rossum says the Athos spill is evidence enough.

"We need to take proactive measures to ensure this kind of catastrophe doesn't happen again," she says. She would like to see the legislation changed in the next year, but she doubts the Bush administration will hold oil companies to higher standards.

State Rep. Bill Keller, who sits on the Delaware River Maritime Enterprise Council, sees the merits of single-hull restrictions.

"About 70 percent of the eastern seaboard gets its oil from the Delaware ports, so we have a pretty big stake anytime a problem like this arises," says Keller, noting that double-hull requirements could ultimately relieve dire economic situations like that caused by the spill. "We can't have our supply lines interrupted because of the sensitive situation in the oil market."

What makes it all the more troubling, though, is a prediction offered by U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Kimberly Smith.

"It will be years," she says, "before the full effect of the Athos I oil spill in the Delaware River is known."