Oil slick menaces pristine estuaries in north Spain
Date: 22-Nov-02
Country: SPAIN
Author: Adrian Croft
Strong winds blowing several large patches of fuel toward the craggy coastline of Galicia promised to worsen one of the world's biggest oil slicks, just as international calls grew to tighten maritime regulations to prevent such accidents.
The 26-year-old Prestige first spewed around 5,000 tonnes of fuel a week ago, after a storm cracked its hull.
As it finally broke up and sank this week, it spilled around 10,000 tonnes of oil in a 120 km slick, which high winds have separated and carried toward the coast.
The prestige took the rest of its cargo, an estimated 60,000 tonnes of viscous fuel oil, to the sea floor some 130 nautical miles off the coast.
Ecologists worry the fuel - almost twice what the Exxon Valdez spilled in 1989 on the coast of Alaska - will gradually leak and contaminate rich fisheries nearby.
Authorities said the second wave of fuel oil was only two miles (three km) from the town of Muros, at the most northerly of Galicia's spectacular Rias Bajas, or Low Estuaries.
The river valleys are the heartland of the region's mussel farming, part of a fishing industry worth over 300 million euros (dollars) for the local economy, the main form of income here.
"If a new slick enters the estuary, with large quantities of thick fuel oil, it would be a catastrophe," said Jose Ramon Lado, the vice-president of Muros' mussel farming association.
"We are waiting with fingers crossed... Normally at Christmas we have our busiest time of year and it helps us to survive."
CLEAN-UP COST OF 42 MILLION EUROS
Spain has already put an initial price tag of at least 42 million euros on the cost of rehabilitating 90 oil-tainted beaches that will take about six months to clean.
The ship's insurers, the London Steamship Owners' Mutual Association, said this week that around $25 million would be made available to meet immediate compensation claims.
Up to $180 million would later be available through the International Oil Pollution Compensation Fund (IOPC).
Authorities said a French vessel, the Ailette, had been sent to the Muros estuary to begin scooping up fuel. Galician residents complained authorities had not made enough floating barriers available and took matters into their own hands.
A thousand fishermen had formed a barrier across one river valley with their boats in an attempt to keep out the sludge.
Aside from the slick menacing Muros, officials said two more patches were 60 km away and four had formed where the Prestige went down.
Authorities have banned fishing along 100 km of coastline for at least a month. But fishermen said they expected longer-term effects for the goose barnacle, a delicacy known in Spanish as percebes, which he said had been all but wiped out.
The area is also famous for its high-quality lobster, mussels, octopus, crab and shrimp.
In Brussels, the European Commission said this week it would provide 117.7 million euros of aid to Spanish fishermen to help cover losses. Local authorities already promised 30 euros per day for fishermen while they are out of work.
"The EU won't let them down," Farm and Fisheries Commissioner Franz Fischler said in a statement.
DEBATE ON MARITIME LAWS
In the wake of the disaster, a political storm has broken out over why such tankers, lacking modern double hulls, are still allowed to ply Europe's waters.
French President Jacques Chirac, one of the most vocal critics, told ministers the situation in Spain was so serious that it was imperative the European Union, and France itself, speed up implementation of the extra safety measures agreed after the Maltese tanker Erika split in two off France in 1999.
Single-hulled tankers like the Bahamas-flagged Prestige have been outlawed after a history of pollution incidents - but the ban is due to take effect only in 2015.
Canada's Environment Minister David Anderson suggested this week that shipowners with a poor safety track record could have their vessels restricted