Oil Contamination Measures Must Be Established Based on the Lessons Learned from the Nakhodka Accident.

Some shorelines are still struggling to escape from the oil pollution caused by the Russian tanker "Nakhodka" even though more than five years have passed. In this article, Japan's insufficient countermeasures are examined and a better system for dealing with an accident is proposed. Preventing the accident is essential. But accidents will happen. We have to accept this fact and be prepared with the countermeasures.

Introduction

If you dig the cobble beach, oil residues are exposed. This condition persists today.

Before dawn on Jan. 2, 1997, the Russian tanker "Nakhodka," loaded with heavy fuel oil, sank in the Sea of Japan. The body of the tanker broke in two, the stern sank in deep water at a point 2,500 m off the coast of Oki Island, Shimane Prefecture, and the bow drifted to the sea off Anto Point, Mikuni Town, in Fukui Prefecture. Although oil recovery and removal operations were performed, masses of oil clots drifted ashore on the coasts of nine prefectures, most heavily on the beaches in Fukui and Ishikawa Prefectures. It was Japan's most serious oil spill accident, in which an estimated amount of 8,660 kl of heavy oil spilled to the sea. Many volunteers cooperated to remove the oil, rescue seabirds and do other types of cleanup work. From February toward the end of May, coastal municipalities successively issued statements that the situation was under control and the beach cleanup was almost complete. This situation made the volunteers desiring to continue the cleanup work hesitate to do so. The early cessation of the cleanup activity was associated with the fatigue of the local communities and the concern that rumors of continued oil contamination might do harm to the image and economy of the local communities. Given this situation, the beaches were cleaned only incompletely. Most of the recovered oil was disposed of by incineration as industrial waste, and it took two and a half years to dispose of all the recovered oil. Claims for compensation greatly exceeded the funds available which amounted to 23.3 billion yen. To this day, the compensation process has yet to be completed.
About five years have passed since the accident. What has become of the beaches that were tainted by chocolatecolor heavy oil? I remember people were working in piercing cold, and a squall of sleet and roaring waves were breaking like sets of huge folding screens.

The seashore now

I surveyed the conditions of oil residues on ten beaches in Ishikawa Prefecture: Shioya and Katano beaches in Kaga City, Shakuzaki Point on the Noto Peninsula, and the beaches at Nagahashi, Senmaida, Moura, and others. The aftermath of the accident and the conditions of these beaches were never reported by the media, and the accident is fading with time in people's memory. Of the people who worked to recover and remove oil, very few have visited the site to check the conditions of oil residues. I stood on the rocky stretch, the cobble beach and the sands, and found that the beaches are dotted with oil residues and that the color and smell remain as strong as when I stood there after the accident occurred. Although the surfaces of the beaches looked clean, I found oil residues remaining under sand and gravel when I dug the sand.
The Shioya and Katano beaches were once beautiful sandy beaches covered with seaside plants. In performing the beach cleanup operations, drifted oil was mixed with the beach sand using heavy machinery. A huge amount of oil-immersed sand was produced this way. Because it was impracticable to remove such a huge amount of contaminated sand, holes were dug in the beach, and most of this sand was buried in the holes. This method of disposing of oil had a significant negative impact on seaside plants: the roots of kobomugi, hamagou and other seaside plants withered. On the Shioya beach, a beach scarp about 100 m long and 3 m high (at the highest point) formed, and the beach was heavily eroded. The seaside plants once functioned to hold the sandy beach or to counteract the force of erosion. Since they withered and disappeared, the beach is now at the full mercy of the ocean's erosive force. On the beach surface, very soft oil-immersed sand that was buried becomes exposed among scattered debris. When the sea becomes rough, it drifts to the sea.
According to Mr. Nobuhiro Sawano, assistant professor of the Seiryo Women's Junior College, who continues to make surveys of oil residue, the erosion of the Shioya beach is progressing and as of March 2002, the hamagou zone was completely destroyed, and the 3-meter high beach scarp receded about 30 meters. He points out that the shoreline has receded markedly even if we account for beach drifting that occurs during winter months. He also notes that oil which sank into the sand and gravel in the beach on the Noto Peninsula remains entrained beneath the surface layer.
Why did all this happen? In Mikuni Town, where the bow of the Nakhodka drifted ashore, the conditions of the beach were widely reported by the media and many volunteers gathered to assist with cleanup efforts at this site. The beach is now almost clean. In the case of the Noto Peninsula, although the beach was badly contaminated, government officials did not issue a loud call for support in removing oil, primarily due to concerns with creating a negative public image of the community and associated impacts resulting from the spill. Work was conducted primarily with older people who were members of the local community. The work was physically demanding, due to the challenging local topography, and therefore many oil clots were left unrecovered. The confusion at the work site would not have happened and significant progress in removing oil clots would have been possible if local officials had instituted an oil cleanup method better suited to the shoreline profile, an oil cleanup plan that could be adapted to different types of beaches(e.g. a beach to be cleaned mainly with manpower where severe topography requires that remaining oil be cleaned over a long period of time with enduring effort), and a chain of command for effectively implementing the cleanup.

Oil contamination measures must be established based on the lessons learned from the Nakhodka accident.

If a serious accident occurs, it is impossible to stop an oil spill from drifting ashore unless the weather is perfect and the seas are calm. The success or failure of oil cleanup operations is determined by whether the local community or municipality has an oil cleanup plan and makes preparations based on the plan. The following points should be noted as measures Japan has established to deal with oil spill accidents:

1. Emphasis is on removing oil in the ocean, and an effective, efficient system for dealing with the oil clots drifting ashore has not yet been established.
2. Emphasis is on the development and improvement of equipment and machinery, not on the development of human resources.
3. Although effort is made to recover oil, oil cleanup procedures and systems are not well examined in relation to their effects on the environment.
4. The jurisdiction over the ocean and beaches are separate; there is no integrated oil cleanup plan or a chain of command for on-site operations, and the number of individuals who can take command on-site is very small.
5. Because a polluter is responsible for the cleanup of oil and bears the cost of recovery and removal operations, Japan does not have command authority. Surveyors of the International Oil Pollution Contamination Fund and those of insurance companies take the leadership in performing on-site operations, and therefore emphasis is on economic efficiency, rather than on protection of the environment.

Oil contains polycyclic series and many other substances that do not dissolve. If an accident occurs, ocean life is the first to suffer negative impacts, and then damage spreads via aquatic and terrestrial organisms through the food chain. As the objective of oil recovery and removal is to keep the effects of oil to a minimum, an oil recovery and removal plan must be formulated based on the precautionary principle, with consideration given to the toxicity of oil and oil dispersants. Formulation of such a plan requires that background data (natural environment, logistics, pits, final disposal, results of follow-up of contamination conditions, etc.) be collected and organized to provide the basis of the plan, which must be developed in cooperation with local residents who know the natural conditions of the coastal area. More specifically, the ESI (Environmental Sensitivity Index) map showing the beach characteristics and wildlife habitat conditions in each coastal area must be compiled based on a uniform standard, oil recovery and removal methods appropriate for each coastal area must be determined based on the ESI, and the ESI along with oil recovery and removal methods must be integrated into the "oil spill recovery and removal plan" of the national government and the "regional disaster plan" of each local government.
For the "oil spill recovery and removal plan" and the "regional disaster plan" to function effectively and efficiently, the following requirements must be met:

1. An on-site commander who can take command of recovery and removal operations while considering local input must be designated.
2. The national government must take responsibility for recovery and removal operations if a serious oil spill accident occurs. The national government temporarily bears the cost for the operations and later charges the polluter for the cost.
3. An oil recovery and removal plan inwhich all processes from oil recovery to final oil disposal are described must be established.
4. To provide the administrative basis required to meet the three requirements listed above, revisions must be made in the Law for the Prevention of Marine Pollution and Sea Disasters and other laws as appropriate. In addition, although the Maritime Disaster Prevention Center is designated as the key organization for oil recovery and removal operations in the Law for the Prevention of Marine Pollution and Sea Disasters, organizational reforms have not yet been carried out based on the results of the Nakhodka accident. The national government must bear the responsibility for this.

On the Shioya beach in Kaga City, the roots of seaside plants withered from the effects of oil and the shoreline are being eroded. (The photograph was taken in June 2000.)

In the Sea of Japan, the most significant concern is the future prospect of an oil spill accident that could happen at the petroleum and natural gas development site off the coast of Sakhalin. The Sakhalin II Project that began production in July 1999 has several problems related to an oil recovery and removal plan and environment protection measures. In the Sea of Okhotsk, there are areas with sea ice, habitats utilized by a diverse assemblage of wildlife, fertile fishing grounds with salmon and trout, wetlands that would never recover from a spill event, and brackish-water lakes such as Lake Saroma. If an accident occurs in the Sea of Okhotsk, extensive damage results throughout this environmentally important marine environment.
Although countermeasures including the ESI were reviewed after the Nakhodka accident, a comprehensive viewpoint has not been presented, and the results of followup surveys conducted to verify the effects on the environment are unsatisfactory. This is because the surveys were not conducted on the actual sites. We request that appropriate oil recovery and removal measures be established based on the lessons that we learned from the Nakhodka accident.