Oil Spill

Unpublished studies by state and federal researchers contend that the true cost of environmental damage from the Exxon Valdez oil spill could be as high as $15 billion, according to experts familiar with the secret reports.The figure stands in dramatic contrast to the $1.125 billion settlement that Exxon Corp. agreed to last week to settle criminal and civil complaints brought by the state of Alaska and the federal government.Alaska Gov. Walter J. Hickel arrived at the lower amount without consulting the scientists and economists whom taxpayers paid more than $70 million to estimate the 1989 spill's impact.

Northbound and southbound lanes of Interstate 95 in White Marsh were shut down yesterday afternoon after a fuel-tank truck carrying waste oil erupted in flames and spilled about 1,000 gallons of used waste oil onto the side of the highway, Maryland State Police and environmental officials said. No one was injured, but traffic was backed up for about eight miles in each direction from about 2:15 p.m. to about 4:45 p.m., when all but one lane southbound was reopened, said Lt. Bud Frank, a state police spokesman.

When President Bush pushed the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) through Congress in 2005, environmentalists lamented the demise of the one of the last robust incentives for energy companies to develop meaningful safeguards against environmental disasters. At the time the bill was passed, one headline presciently read, "Erin Brockovich, drop dead." BP executives should be relieved to find that her legacy is still buried six feet deep in oil sludge. In recent weeks, Congress and the president have been roundly criticized for their slow response to the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion in the Gulf that triggered one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history.

SEATTLE -- A federal appeals court will hear arguments today that the jury that awarded more than $5 billion in damages in the Exxon Valdez oil spill was tainted by a bailiff who pulled out his gun and joked about putting a holdout juror "out of her misery."The same juror, who attempted suicide three weeks after the verdict, alleged she was threatened by other jurors and by the bailiff, who was forced to resign from the U.S. Marshals Service after admitting he had offered his gun and a bullet to one of the jurors and had improperly socialized with the jury.

The Baltimore Zoo, home to one of the nation's most prolific African penguin breeding programs, is sending staff to South Africa to join the zoo's bird curator and others in rescuing African penguins threatened by a massive oil spill. Steve Sarro, curator of birds for the Baltimore Zoo, arrived in Cape Town, South Africa, Saturday. Since then, he says he has been working 16-hour days, feeding and scrubbing some of the 17,000 rescued penguins one by one. His hands and arms, he says, are a road map of cuts and bruises inflicted by the wild birds, which aren't used to being fed and handled by humans.

Lime Kiln Middle School seventh-grader Michelle Wong cannot talk with the animals, but she can imagine what they might say, and she figures few would have kind words about last year's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. She recently wrote a short play about a few sea creatures affected by the spill that was submitted in the Arena Stage 12th Annual Student 10-Minute Play Competition. With more than 800 entries submitted from area middle and high schools, Michelle didn't figure she had much of a chance at winning.

WASHINGTON -- Triggering perhaps the largest oil spill in history, Iraq has deliberately released a possible 200 million gallons or more of crude into the Persian Gulf in an apparent effort to foil an allied amphibious invasion, officials said yesterday.The floating mass of thick, unrefined oil is pouring from a Kuwaiti offshore oil terminal and five Iraqi tankers in a nearby port. The slick was spreading south and had fouled the Saudi coastline at least 50 miles away, according to the Pentagon.

To complete the healing begun by nature and industry after a disastrous oil spill on the Patuxent River two years ago, Washington's Potomac Electric Power Co. would have to build new havens for wildlife in the marshes of Southern Maryland - and in the farm fields of South Dakota. That is the proposal from four government agencies, who want the company to spend at least $2.7 million on environmental work intended to make up for the deaths of hundreds of ducks migrating to the Midwest and thousands of wading birds, fish, oysters and other creatures.

GOLDEN BEACH - Teams from state and federal agencies and Potomac Electric Power Co. combed the shorelines of Patuxent River tributaries last week, evaluating the cleanup of about 126,000 gallons of oil that gushed from a ruptured pipeline at the utility's Chalk Point plant one year ago. Then they delivered mixed reviews. Most of the black slime that had coated 17 miles of shoreline on both sides of the river is gone. But in some places, including parts of the beach in this St. Mary's County community, the telltale rainbow sheen spreads from tiny tar balls when the sand and water are stirred up, and black splotches mar the ground.

One of the state's biggest oil spills in several years threatened wildlife near the Patuxent River in southern Prince George's County yesterday as cleanup crews worked to contain a leak from a power plant pipe. Officials of Potomac Electric Power Co. said that the 130,000-gallon spill at the company's Chalk Point Generating Station was contained shortly after it was detected Friday night, but added that restoration of the affected wetlands could take months. While the pipeline rupture did not send oil into the neighboring Patuxent River, it did foul 45 acres of marshland.