Opinion - Whatcom View

POSTED: Saturday, Jun. 06, 2009

Pipeline: Ecological gains have been made, but scars still remain

When the Olympic pipeline exploded in Whatcom Falls Park 10 years ago, I remember standing with some members of my staff in the second-story window of our former office on Railroad Avenue, trying to figure out where that enormous cloud of smoke could be coming from.

We thought of gas stations, buildings, industrial facilities. Nothing made sense. The pipeline never crossed our minds.

A short time later, Department of Ecology spill responders were called to the scene, joining emergency crews to try and contain and assess the damage. We also had staff in the emergency operations center, helping to direct the response and get word out to the community about what had happened.

Our work would continue for months in the park, and years in meetings as we tried, with many others, to somehow make it right.

As a manager for the Department of Ecology, I had to think about how to address the environmental damage. As a father, I still think of the toll this tragedy took on the families of the three young people who were killed, and on the community. No one should forget that.

In the days immediately following the explosion, Ecology spill responders worked with local agencies to clean up the gasoline and contain the damage. Staff from the Bellingham office worked in the field with staff from the city, county, tribes and other state agencies for six months assessing damage, collecting data and monitoring conditions.

One team was in charge of collecting ephemeral data. That means capturing facts about sources and indicators of damage that go away - gasoline that evaporates and dead fish, frogs and other animals that float downstream.

As emergency operations wound down, we began what seemed to be the impossible task of assigning a dollar amount to the environmental damage and penalties for Olympic Pipe Line and Shell.

We made some good decisions that proved to be correct for this type of event. For cleanup and restoration work, rather than assigning a dollar value to every fish and lamprey, we looked at the need for Shell and Olympic to compensate the community for environmental damage that went beyond immediate physical damage to the site, and addressed some of the social and other intangible losses we sustained.

The natural resource damage assessment process allowed the community to work with Olympic Pipe Line to identify long-term projects, paying for environmental improvements, parks and open spaces in the local area.

Of the millions of dollars in penalties the federal government assessed against Shell and Olympic, $10 million was returned to the local community. The Ecology penalty of $7.5 million against Olympic, reduced to $2.5 million in bankruptcy proceedings, was spent locally. Penalties went toward property purchases, environmental projects and emergency response improvements. They included creation of the Pipeline Safety Trust, major land acquisitions at Lily Point on Point Roberts, and Point Whitehorn near Cherry Point, purchasing Squalicum Park in Bellingham, planting and restoration work at Salmon Creek, Cemetery Creek and locations throughout the city, and local disaster preparedness.

We have made significant strides toward preventing this kind of damage from occurring again. The Washington Legislature helped get federal authority for the state Utilities and Transportation Commission to inspect and investigate problems with interstate pipelines operating in our state. Since 2001, the Commission has conducted 415 investigations and documented over 1,100 violations. State lawmakers also created the Citizens Committee on Pipeline Safety to identify, review and highlight pipeline safety issues.

Ecology has identified key economic and environmental resources that are at risk from oil spills along pipeline corridors and crafted response plans to reduce potential spill damages. To improve response times, we also have new rules requiring pipeline companies to stage equipment at closer intervals along the length of their lines. By staying on top of small problems, we're preventing bigger ones from happening.

Thanks to a combination of restoration efforts by volunteers, environmental organizations, government staff, and natural recovery, plants now cover the ground, and fish have returned to the creek. But if you look downstream from the park, you can still see scorched trees, and if you were to dig down into the soil, you'd still find traces of gasoline in some areas.

The scars are fading, but they are still there.

Richard Grout is manager of the Department of Ecology's Bellingham Field Office.