Fuel, diesel oil spills and bilge leaks continue to plague New Bedford Harbor

NEW BEDFORD — They are called “mystery” spills, and they can be caused by a fuel line dislodging, a bilge leak or a diesel spill like the one that occurred near the State Pier on New Year’s Eve.

Andrew Jones, an environmental analyst in the Department of Environmental Protection’s Lakeville office, has been an emergency responder with the emergency response section for the last 24 years.  He said it's called a “mystery” spill when there is no way of knowing its source or who caused it. He said it could have been an accident, a boat sinking, a land source or an elicit bilge discharge or another cause.

“I have been working with my supervisor, Dan Crafton, and my supervisor that preceded him, on efforts to figure out how to address a persistent and complex mystery sheen-oil spill problem that has been occurring in New Bedford Harbor for what amounts to decades essentially,” he said.

Jones lives in the Greater New Bedford area, and he’s often assigned to New Bedford Harbor for spill investigations and says that oil spills have been a recurring problem for decades.

It could occur in a rainstorm or overnight when no one is around and suddenly there would be a big rainbow oil sheet across the harbor. He said the time between the spill occurring and someone reporting it is critical to any municipal, state or federal responder.

“Generally, by looking at the oil, smelling the oil, through visual and olfactory clues, you can kind of tell what it might be, a diesel fuel spill, a bilge oil spill, but sometimes you can’t,” he said.

From there, they determine if the spill is recoverable using absorbent materials, containment materials and other tools they have to clean up surface spills. If recoverable, but no responsible party is identified, the state may hire an emergency response contractor.

“We have contractors scheduled on rotation that can respond on behalf of the Commonwealth to do a cleanup,” he said. “The federal government also has the same mechanism so we typically discuss the spill with the Coast Guard and determine which one of us might take those actions.”

Calling for a permanent pump-out facility

Renewed efforts are underway to site a shoreside bilge water recovery facility, or pump-out facility, for New Bedford Harbor.

Buzzards Bay Coalition’s Korrin Petersen, vice president for Clean Water Advocacy, said spills have been an issue in the harbor for a long time and a huge frustration, so for years the Coalition has been promoting a shoreside pump-out facility that’s needed to service vessels because oil in the water is bad.

“This is a conversation that we’ve been having for at least a decade now, and it’s frustrating because the answer is relatively simple,” she said. “You solve the problem with a shoreside facility where people come up and pump out their bilge.”

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She said they exist in other locations and there is agreement that one is needed to service the boats in New Bedford Harbor and that people would use it if it were available. The question is where it would go.

“The challenge is getting all of the players to agree to prioritize the siting of that facility,” she said.

While there are not a lot of potential locations, she said she believes that the city and the Port Authority and folks out in the harbor can find space for it, and she said it wouldn’t take up that much space.

Possible progress siting a facility

Rep. Tony Cabral, D-New Bedford, said he first became involved with this issue when a local fisherman approached him during his monthly office hours concerned about the need for regular bilge water pump-outs to reduce oil leakage in the harbor while also expressing his fears that the costs of the pump-outs would be shifted directly onto the fishing crews.

He said this launched a conversation with MassDEP, which led to the three-year, no charge, bilge water pump-out pilot program for the New Bedford fishing fleet. COVID interrupted the program, but they convinced DEP to extend the service for another year through 2023.

“While we have made progress in the short-term using pumping trucks & hazardous waste transporters, longer-term solutions will have to address the added pumping costs to the fishing fleet, the lack of a centralized management system for the pump-outs, and the regulatory and permitting complexities of siting a shore-side bilge water recovery facility,” he said in a statement.

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Having worked with his team to convene all the interested stakeholders, their meetings now including fishermen, fleet owners, fuel suppliers, waste transporters, the New Bedford Port Authority, Fairhaven Harbor Commission, U.S. Coast Guard, offshore wind companies, the Buzzards Bay Coalition and DEP.

“Together, we are pursuing the creation of a centralized management system that can oversee the fiscal needs of the program, thereby lessening the financial burden on the fishing fleet,” he said. “The future of Buzzards Bay – for clean water, the fishermen, and our working waterfront – depends on our collaboration and commitment to solving this problem and staying the course.”

He added that their goal “is to have a collaborative and innovative process in place to reduce oil leakage in New Bedford Harbor in 2024, which could potentially serve as a model for other ports in Massachusetts and across the country.”

Initial efforts at bilge collection

Jones said development of the early Clean Bilge pilot program started approximately 10 years ago after a major spill that happened in New Bedford Harbor around Pier 3 and the implementation of the pump-out program in 2015.

The program was suspended due to COVID, but within the last year DEP was approached by area legislators who wanted to restart the program. They agreed to get people involved again in the program in a limited fashion by getting the word out about the problematic mystery spills and explaining the program’s rules and regulations.

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It used to be a three-pronged approach with bilge oil collection with a vacuum truck and enhanced enforcement which meant we would work with municipal law enforcement agencies as well as the U.S. Coast Guard to go after people who were caught dumping bilge oil or any liquids from machinery space on any boat, which is not allowed.

“It must be reclaimed shoreside via vacuum truck or other means, but in no way can they dump that water or the oil in the harbor or out at sea,” he said. “The idea was to catch people that have been doing that and utilize enforcement tools to get those people in the system and explain further what the rules and requirements are.”

He said efforts at outreach and education were not initially welcomed within the commercial fishing fleet probably because DEP was considered to be law enforcement, so they offered to pump out their boats for free and dispose of the oil and water.

In turn they offered the captains and crews of the vessels the opportunity to have a conversation about what was going on in the harbor and about taking the necessary steps to reduce the chances of oil spills as well as appropriately managing oily bilge water.

Jones said they only pursued a handful of enforcement cases as there were instances where the Coast Guard could catch someone causing a mystery spill by taking a sample of the oil in the water and analyzing it in a laboratory against the oil in the boat to see if it matched like a fingerprint.

He said the federal government through the Department of Justice also acted in three major cases against New Bedford area commercial fishing enterprises that sent a strong message throughout the fleet that the federal government wasn’t going to tolerate it either.

“Enforcement resulted in $1.4 million in fines while ours are generally in the thousands to tens of thousands,” he said.

In 2003, a barge ran aground and spilled 98,000 gallons of heavy fuel oil into Buzzards Bay. In the wake of the Bouchard B-120 spill, the Buzzards Bay Coalition led a successful campaign to secure the Massachusetts Oil Spill Prevention Act, one of the strictest oil spill prevention laws in the country.

Jones said no one wants there to be a negative effect on the marine environment after all the effort that has been put into cleaning up the harbor using state and federal funding, including federal Environmental Protection Agency Superfund money.

“We’re hoping that we continue on the upward trajectory in cleaning this harbor up for the people who use it,” he said. "Nobody wants to have oil spills, environmentally, and sometimes they can be worse. You could potentially deal with fires or damaging vessels or infrastructure like piers.”

New Bedford Port Authority Executive Director Gordon Carr said in a busy industrial harbor like New Bedford Harbor, it’s not uncommon for there to be accidental fuel spills due to all the activity. He said intentional cases benefit no one for what it would cost, financially or environmentally.

“Nobody wants to drop fuel,” he said. “It’s expensive.”

The number of spill calls per year

Jones said someone might spot an oil spill a couple of times a week and then not hear about one for a while. He said so far this year 15 spills in New Bedford and 13 spills in Fairhaven have been reported to the federal National Response Center through an automatic notification.

However, not every spill gets called in to New Bedford or Fairhaven, and not every spill is investigated.

U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Rob Norcott, supervisor of the Marine Safety Detachment (MSD) in New Bedford, said so far in 2023, their office has responded to 18 oil spills in New Bedford Harbor. In 2022, the total was 18, and in 2021, there were 17 responses out of the New Bedford office.

When MSD New Bedford receives a report of an accidental discharge, Coast Guard pollution responders from his unit dispatch to the scene, assess the incident and determine if the product is recoverable from the water. Further, they inquire and/or investigate to identify the source and responsible party.

“When responsible parties are identified, the Coast Guard regularly imposes enforcement against owners, operators and employees for certain offenses in the form of monetary civil penalties, which are not intended to punish, but rather to remediate by discouraging similar instances and preventing recurrence,” he said.

Penalties and amounts vary, and any aggravating factors, mitigating circumstances, and/or costs of expended resources are considered when assessing civil penalties.

“They are common just by the nature of what's going on in the waterway because it is a busy port, but if there is a responsible party that reports it, we’ll take that into consideration,” he said.

The Coast Guard isn’t responsible for removing the oil from the water, but it does make sure that the cleanup is completed in a timely manner, Norcott said. While quite a few companies do cleanups, he said the Coast Guard also manages a fund so they can arrange to hire a company to ensure a response.

Standard-Times staff writer Kathryn Gallerani can be reached at kgallerani@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter: @kgallreporter. Support local journalism by purchasing a digital or print subscription to The Standard-Times today.

This article originally appeared on Standard-Times: State and local officials working to minimize spills in harbor