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Shipping News and information / Delaware regulators eye convicted polluter
« on: April 22, 2007, 04:35:04 AM »
A company with a checkered environmental record has taken over the business of off-loading tanker ships in the Delaware Bay, an operation that is already one of the worst causes of air pollution in the state.
WATCH INTERESTING FOOTAGE HERE! taken from a special camera. Pollution invisible to the naked eye.
http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070420/VIDEO01/304200009
Overseas Shipping Group, which was hit with a massive federal pollution penalty late last year, has paid $471 million for Maritrans Inc., a company that long dominated the business of "lightering" -- the partial transfer of crude oil tanker loads to barges. The transfers raise tankers in the water, allowing them to safely travel the Delaware River's 40-foot shipping channel.
Each year, about 100 million barrels of crude oil, more than 20 percent of the oil making its way up the river to refineries, is transferred between vessels at a deepwater anchorage northeast of Lewes. The Delaware Bay is second only to the Houston, Texas, area as a destination for imported crude and is the site of the largest East Coast lightering operation.
Although Maritrans was praised as an industry leader in developing practices and designs to prevent lightering spills, the Department of Natural Resources and Environ- mental Control has found recently that the process is a big source of pollution. Using infrared cameras, the agency discovered that the ships spew 2,000 tons of volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, into the air annually. VOCs include hazardous pollutants, and as a group contribute to formation of smog and ozone.
State scientists found that lightering operations account for more than twice the annual VOC pollution from the Delaware City refinery. Nationally, lightering pollution in the Delaware Bay would have ranked about 60th out of more than 1.6 million reported VOC sources in 1999. Vehicle traffic in New Castle County still produces more than twice the total of lightering, however.
In response to the pollution findings, DNREC Secretary John A. Hughes signed an order this month approving new pollution control rules for Delaware Bay lightering.
The measures included a five-year schedule that will reduce VOC emissions to 43 percent of current volumes by 2012. Restrictions are toughest during hot summer days, when ozone hazards are highest.
Agency officials had been working on the rules since before 2001, and last year withdrew an earlier version that industry groups had questioned.
"The department acknowledges that prohibiting uncontrolled lightering during ozone action days may interfere with business operations," DNREC hearing examiner Robert P. Haynes wrote in a report to Hughes, "but that the interference is reasonable when weighed against the health impacts caused by exposure to elevated ozone levels."
Now, the agency is using the permit transfer process to examine OSG's background, said James D. Werner, DNREC's air and waste management director. The company is incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in New York.
On Dec. 19, OSG agreed to a $37 million fine and pleaded guilty to 33 counts of deliberate pollution and false record-keeping involving 12 ships in five different states, the largest criminal sanction of its kind.
Since then, the company has asked DNREC to reassign Maritrans' pollution and Coastal Zone permits to OSG.
"If you get a company like this one that comes in with a bad track record, they ought to be scrutinized much more closely, too, and if warranted, they should be required to post a bond to cover any potential spill," said John Flaherty, lobbyist for Common Cause of Delaware.
Delaware officials said they will take their time in reviewing the permit application.
"We're supposed to consider an applicant's background in permitting decisions. We need to evaluate that in light of all the facts and respond appropriately," said Ali Mirzakhalili, DNREC air quality management administrator.
"If they're going to do that, it would be commendable," said Alan Muller, who directs the environmental group Green Delaware. "Traditionally, permits have been handed over, pro forma, when one company's been bought out by another. We've argued for a long time that that shouldn't be the case."
An OSG spokesman said the company expects to receive DNREC approval.
The Justice Department reported in December that OSG used illegal bypass hoses, night-time dumping schemes, false records and threats to balking crew members in order to save money on proper disposal of waste oil from tankers.
In one case off the New England coast, crew members on OSG-owned ships dumped 150,000 gallons of oily water while "tricking" meters that should have caught the problem.
The company, now on a three-year probation, was credited with reporting some violations, cooperating with investigators and following up with reforms.
WATCH INTERESTING FOOTAGE HERE! taken from a special camera. Pollution invisible to the naked eye.
http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070420/VIDEO01/304200009
Overseas Shipping Group, which was hit with a massive federal pollution penalty late last year, has paid $471 million for Maritrans Inc., a company that long dominated the business of "lightering" -- the partial transfer of crude oil tanker loads to barges. The transfers raise tankers in the water, allowing them to safely travel the Delaware River's 40-foot shipping channel.
Each year, about 100 million barrels of crude oil, more than 20 percent of the oil making its way up the river to refineries, is transferred between vessels at a deepwater anchorage northeast of Lewes. The Delaware Bay is second only to the Houston, Texas, area as a destination for imported crude and is the site of the largest East Coast lightering operation.
Although Maritrans was praised as an industry leader in developing practices and designs to prevent lightering spills, the Department of Natural Resources and Environ- mental Control has found recently that the process is a big source of pollution. Using infrared cameras, the agency discovered that the ships spew 2,000 tons of volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, into the air annually. VOCs include hazardous pollutants, and as a group contribute to formation of smog and ozone.
State scientists found that lightering operations account for more than twice the annual VOC pollution from the Delaware City refinery. Nationally, lightering pollution in the Delaware Bay would have ranked about 60th out of more than 1.6 million reported VOC sources in 1999. Vehicle traffic in New Castle County still produces more than twice the total of lightering, however.
In response to the pollution findings, DNREC Secretary John A. Hughes signed an order this month approving new pollution control rules for Delaware Bay lightering.
The measures included a five-year schedule that will reduce VOC emissions to 43 percent of current volumes by 2012. Restrictions are toughest during hot summer days, when ozone hazards are highest.
Agency officials had been working on the rules since before 2001, and last year withdrew an earlier version that industry groups had questioned.
"The department acknowledges that prohibiting uncontrolled lightering during ozone action days may interfere with business operations," DNREC hearing examiner Robert P. Haynes wrote in a report to Hughes, "but that the interference is reasonable when weighed against the health impacts caused by exposure to elevated ozone levels."
Now, the agency is using the permit transfer process to examine OSG's background, said James D. Werner, DNREC's air and waste management director. The company is incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in New York.
On Dec. 19, OSG agreed to a $37 million fine and pleaded guilty to 33 counts of deliberate pollution and false record-keeping involving 12 ships in five different states, the largest criminal sanction of its kind.
Since then, the company has asked DNREC to reassign Maritrans' pollution and Coastal Zone permits to OSG.
"If you get a company like this one that comes in with a bad track record, they ought to be scrutinized much more closely, too, and if warranted, they should be required to post a bond to cover any potential spill," said John Flaherty, lobbyist for Common Cause of Delaware.
Delaware officials said they will take their time in reviewing the permit application.
"We're supposed to consider an applicant's background in permitting decisions. We need to evaluate that in light of all the facts and respond appropriately," said Ali Mirzakhalili, DNREC air quality management administrator.
"If they're going to do that, it would be commendable," said Alan Muller, who directs the environmental group Green Delaware. "Traditionally, permits have been handed over, pro forma, when one company's been bought out by another. We've argued for a long time that that shouldn't be the case."
An OSG spokesman said the company expects to receive DNREC approval.
The Justice Department reported in December that OSG used illegal bypass hoses, night-time dumping schemes, false records and threats to balking crew members in order to save money on proper disposal of waste oil from tankers.
In one case off the New England coast, crew members on OSG-owned ships dumped 150,000 gallons of oily water while "tricking" meters that should have caught the problem.
The company, now on a three-year probation, was credited with reporting some violations, cooperating with investigators and following up with reforms.