Spain Oil Slick Reaches Prize Environmental Shore

by Tito Drago

The Spanish government has acknowledged that the fuel oil washing up on Galicia's shores is from the Prestige, which began to leak two weeks ago some 30 km off the coast. After efforts to tow it farther out to sea, it sank Nov. 19 and now sits at a depth of 3,600 metres.

More than 10,000 tons of the Prestige's 77,000-ton load spilled as the ship was being towed. The rest is still held in the ship's single-hull frame, according to the preliminary findings of dives by the French submarine Nautile.

However, there are fears that the sunken ship will leak more oil. The Nautile, the same used in the discovery of the remains of the Titanic, will be examining the wreckage over the next week.

Spanish government sources say that clean-up ships working in the area have collected 7,000 tons of fuel oil -- a heavy petroleum product seen as the dregs of the refining process -- while workers and volunteers collected another 2,500 from the Galician beaches.

The northwestern coast of Spain holds Europe's largest shellfish reserves, which also are the source of livelihoods for an estimated quarter million families.

Madrid has already banned fishing and shellfish gathering along more than 200 km of the Galician coast.

Tuesday, the European Union announced a "blacklist" of 66 tankers similar to the Prestige that have failed to comply with maritime safety rules.

The 26-year-old Prestige did not have the double hull used in the newer tankers and its final voyage followed a route that officials and environmentalists agree passed too close to the Spanish coast.

As a result of the wreck, France, Italy and Portugal have joined Spain in adopting a policy to conduct surprise checks of single-hull vessels more than 15 years old that are carrying fuel. They reserve the rights to expel what they deem to be dangerous ships from their territorial waters, which extend 200 miles from their respective coastlines.

Juan Lopez de Uralde, director of Greenpeace-Spain, urges all governments to establish laws to end inappropriate shipping practices and retire unsafe vessels, and to move towards stricter controls and more transparency for the world's shipping industry.

While some experts maintain that at 3,500 m deep the fuel oil would freeze and thus not pose a risk of further leaks, others assert just the opposite, and argue that the cold temperatures could cause ruptures in the hold, releasing the fuel.

The Spanish authorities say there are no new leaks from the sunken vessel, while the minister of environment from neighbouring France, Rosalyn Bachelot, affirms the opposite.

If the black tide that has reached the most populous Galician city, La Coru–a, is the result of the oil spilled from the Prestige before it sank, it would be a serious but manageable problem. But if the oil slicks are originating from the sunken tanker, it bodes for a much greater catastrophe, say activists.

The initial spill affected 164 beaches, 13 of them seriously, reported Spain's environment minister, Jaume Matas.

Echoes of the massive protest Sunday in the Galician city of Santiago de Compostela could still be heard Tuesday as the results of a new study were released, triggering health fears throughout the local population.

The governmental Institute of Chemical and Environmental Research, based in Barcelona, conducted a study that confirms the presence of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the spilled fuel oil. These substances are considered highly toxic and potential carcinogens.

Those results coincide with the findings of a similar France-based institute, but not with the conclusions of the Environment Laboratory of Galicia, which found no cancer-causing substances in the spilled fuel.

Sara del Rio, head of the anti-toxics campaign for Greenpeace-Spain, told IPS that "the dangers posed by the fuel are obvious. There are highly toxic substances involved that should not be hidden from the population or ignored."

Danger exists both for people working on clean-up in the water and the coastline, most of whom do not have the special clothing or air filters needed to protect them, and for the environment.

The site where the Prestige sank is near an enormous underwater mountain, which rises from 5,000 m deep, with the mesa-like top lying 600 m below the ocean's surface. The mountain is separated from the Galician coast by an underwater valley that is some 2,000 m deep.

The Madrid-based environmental organisation World Wildlife Fund-Adena last year had petitioned for the zone to be declared a "special area of conservation," under a European Union mechanism.

The group once again proposes expanding these specially designated zones, as well as conducting more rigorous inspections of older tankers, and limiting the movements of ships in ecologically fragile areas.

The area affected by the oil spill is noted for its biological diversity, the result of cold ocean currents attracting great quantities of sea birds to what is known as the "Galician bank."

Along the oil-contaminated coast a few dolphins, thousands of birds, fish and molluscs -- covered in black, sticky goo -- have washed up dead since the spill.

The local Ecologists in Action environmental group stresses that the fuel poses a threat of incalculable proportions for Spain's Atlantic seaboard. Activists are demanding that the Spanish government of Josˇ Mar’a Aznar take responsibility for failing to act sooner to prevent the disaster.