HOW MUCH OIL SPILLED, CONT. operations on the ground. Brescia, who spent two months in Mayflower after the spill, still makes occasional trips to Arkansas and participates in weekly conference calls. Philadelphia attorney Andy Levine, a former senior assistant regional counsel for the EPA, said the agency’s approach to oil spills can depend on the dynamics of the individuals involved. “Some people might ask how you can trust any polluter,” said Levine, who is not involved in the Mayflower case. “But the reports I hear is that Exxon is being highly cooperative. I think ExxonMobil may have stumbled a bit at first. But the company got in line fast and gained the respect of the government.” Levine said the EPA on-scene coordinators he knows are savvy about how they handle oil companies. “They’re very cynical and they are also highly trained and highly educated,” he said. “They’re not on the site looking for rainbows and lollipops. In working with these companies, they will develop a sense of trust or mistrust. And that is what’s reflected here.”
Spills never easy to quantify Pipeline expert Richard Kuprewicz said spills are difficult to measure, whether it’s at the time they happen or after a ruptured pipeline is functional again. The method that the EPA and Exxon say they are relying on in Arkansas — refilling the line and operating it at the same flow — would indeed help to produce an estimate of the volume that spilled from the Pegasus, he said. But that calculation alone doesn’t factor in such variables as how long it took operators to discover the leak, shut down the pump and then close the valves to isolate the ruptured portion of the pipeline. Oil is still leaving the line as those procedures are going on. Kuprewicz is the president of Accufacts Inc., a consulting firm that provides pipeline expertise for government agencies and industry. Central Arkansas Water, the Little Rock utility that wants the Pegasus pipeline removed from its watershed, is among his clients. “You never get an exact number,” Kuprewicz said. “If [ExxonMobil] can measure within a few hundred barrels then that’s a good start.” The EPA and the Department of Justice don’t need to prove how much spilled at this point in the litigation, said David Uhlmann, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School and former chief of the U.S. Department of Justice’s environmental crimes section. “That day will come in court,” Uhlmann said. “It is enough to allege that the spill occurred and violates the Clean Water Act.” Just as the government isn’t required to accept an oil company’s estimate of the
number of barrels spilled, neither is an oil company required to agree to the government’s estimate. If the federal government and Exxon go to court, the number of barrels spilled would be determined at trial. If an out-of-court settlement is reached, the number of barrels spilled and the fine levied per barrel are negotiable. Levine, the former EPA lawyer, said having an accurate estimate is vital not only to levy fines but also to gauge what the remediation effort will entail. “They are never going to get every billionth of a particle of oil out of the environment in a spill,” Levine said, “but they need to know the quantity so they can answer how clean is clean.”
Spill amount varied at first The spill estimate fluctuated in the first week after the pipeline ruptured. At first, Exxon said only “a few thousand barrels” spilled from the break that forced 22 families from their homes in Mayflower’s Northwoods subdivision. The EPA said as many as 7,000 barrels had spilled. However, an early April corrective action order issued by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) said between 3,500 and 5,000 barrels spilled. Eventually, Exxon and the EPA agreed on the 5,000-barrel figure. In an Aug. 12 email, Exxon spokesman Aaron Stryk disputed his company’s earlier lower estimate by stating that “we never changed our preliminary estimate of 5,000 [barrels].” He also said the oil company wouldn’t be “changing the official estimate because we wouldn’t be able to know for sure until the investigation is finalized and after the line is refilled. Again, we are keeping the official estimate at 5,000.” So far, roughly 2,000 barrels of oil have been recovered in Mayflower, Stryk said. That figure includes only oil measured in liquid tanks, where it is mixed with water also pulled from the spill site. Oil recovered from soil, vegetation, booms, pads, wipes and other debris is not included in that measurement. Pegasus, which is 20 inches in diameter, moved more than 90,000 barrels of crude oil daily when it was operating. That translates to four million gallons of diluted bitumen. The section of the line that ruptured on March 29 was operating at a pressure of 708 pounds per square inch. That’s well below its maximum operating pressure of 820 psi, according to PHMSA, which regulates most of the country’s liquid fuel pipelines. U.S. Attorney Chris Thyer, on behalf of the EPA, and Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil in mid-June, less than three
months after the spill. It accuses the oil com- to the cove of Lake Conway. More than 1.1 million gallons of oil and pany of violating not only the federal Clean Water Act but also the Arkansas Hazardous water also had been removed from the site Waste Management Act and the Arkansas through mid-August, according to ADEQ Water and Air Pollution Control Act. records. That breaks down to 814,800 galAaron Sadler, a spokesman for McDaniel, lons of nonhazardous oil and water shipped said the amount of oil spilled isn’t directly to a refinery in Baton Rouge where some of related to the state’s case against Exxon- the oil is being reclaimed. Also, 158,802 galMobil. lons of unusable oil and water and 164,388 “The state statutory penalties are tied to gallons of water used to decontaminate the number of days of each violation, not the cleanup equipment have been shipped to total volume of oil,” Sadler said. For air and a hazardous waste facility in Saline County. water violations, the penalty clock began Five homes in the Northwoods subdiviticking on the day of the spill and the days sion — ground zero for the spill — still have are counted until the harm is remediated. oil in and around the foundations in the U.S. Department of Justice spokes- “response,” stage. man Wyn Hornbuckle said the federal “Exxon is not finished as long as there government can’t comment on how spill is recoverable oil,” said Brescia, the EPA’s calculations might affect the federal law- on-scene coordinator. “That’s the standard. suit because of the pending litigation. He That’s how EPA does it. That’s how ADEQ expects Exxon’s response to the govern- is doing it. We made it clear to Exxon that as ment’s complaint to come as early as Friday. long as people were out of their homes, they were going to be in the response stage.”
12,855 tons of debris removed so far
Numbers compiled by the ADEQ reveal that through Aug. 15, crews collected 12,855 tons of contaminated soil, vegetation, wood chips and debris such as used absorbent pads, wipes and booms from the cleanup site. That area stretches about nine-tenths of a mile from the Northwoods subdivision
This story is part of a joint investigative project by the Arkansas Times and InsideClimate News. Funding for the project comes from people like you who donated to an ioby.org crowd-funding campaign that raised nearly $27,000 and from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
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AUGUST 22, 2013
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