By WILLIAM H. SOKOLIC
Courier-Post Staff
WEST DEPTFORD -- The call went out shortly before 5 in the afternoon of July 22.
Under the thrust of strong winds, a tanker broke loose from its moorings at the Coastal Corp.'s Eagle Point Refinery, spewing more than 40,000 gallons of crude oil into the Delaware River.
The call, to National Response Corp. (NRC), set in motion a two-week game plan which tapped NRC's own resources, plus a network of local firms to clean up the spill at a cost of more than $1 million a day.
"We had our guy at scene not too far into the spill," said Mark Miller, president of NRC, a Calverton, N.Y., subsidiary of SEACOR Holdings Inc.
SEACOR owns a fleet of vessels involved in environmental cleanups and offshore oil- and gas-exploration. NRC is one of a handful of national companies born in the aftermath of the massive Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska in 1989.
Within an hour of the Coastal spill, Patriot, an NRC boat berthed near Cape May, was dispatched to the site. It was equipped with 2,500 feet of inflatable boom, a floating barrier to trap oil and skimmers, or smaller boats designed to retrieve oil from atop the water and return it to the refinery.
Patriot was aided by companies such as Clean Harbors, based in Braintree, Mass. Clean Harbors operates 33 centers and seven plants in 23 states.
"We provided labor and material for the clean-up effort," said Fred Olivari, general manager of Clean Harbors' Deptford center. In addition to setting out boom and skimming off oil, Clean Harbors' crew washed off oil-coated barges and bulkheads at Penn's Landing, the Philadelphia Navy Yard and on a number of islands.
The Delaware Bay and River Cooperative Inc., a non-profit consortium of 16 local refineries, utilities, and barge companies, also assisted in the damage control. The co-op provided boom of its own at the mouths of various creeks on both sides of river. Using a skimmer docked at the Mobil Refinery in Paulsboro, it recovered 13,000 gallons of oil, said Eugene Johnson, who oversees the cooperative.
Such efforts grew out of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, passed in the wake of the Exxon spill. The act placed responsibility for clean-ups on oil, tanker and other companies involved in using and transporting oil. Under the legislation, these companies are required to contract with firms such as NRC to insure adequate resources in the event of an oil spill disaster.
NRC, along with its independent contractor network, is named in response plans for more than 1,700 tankers and other vessels, and also covers 460 shore-based refineries,
utilities, and barge companies, Miller said. The company maintains offices around the country. Because of the increasing number of clients in the region, NRC is expected to open a location in Philadelphia later this year, he said.
The company, which has worked over 50 spills since operations commenced in 1993, receives a retainer fee, along with fees for actual clean-up operations. With its resources, NRC can respond to both marine and shallow fresh water spills, such as the Coastal accident.
"Shallow water spills are often more damaging to the environment and wildlife than those in the ocean," Miller said.
