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Thursday, April 20,1989 The Battalion Page 9
Secretary slams disaster plan
Senator blasts ‘Keystone Kops’ approach
WASHINGTON (AP) — Trans
portation Secretary Samuel Skinner
told the Senate Wednesday that in
dustry plans for dealing with an
Alaskan oil spill had been a “zero.”
One senator said the initial response
to the March 24 disaster reminded
him of “the Keystone Kops.”
Most witnesses before the Senate’s
environmental protection subcom
mittee — from federal officials to
Alaska’s governor and industry ex
ecutives — said plans for dealing
with a spill of oil from the Alaskan
pipeline had not imagined an acci
dent on the magnitude of the 10-
million-gallon spill that soiled pris
tine Prince William Sound.
Skinner, asked to evaluate the
plan developed by a consortium of
oil companies that ship oil from
Alaska’s North slope through the
pipeline and Valdez harbor, said the
document should not have been ap
proved by the state and should have
brought warnings from the federal
government that the plan was inade-
quate.
“On the scale of one to 10, it was a
zero,” Skinner said of the standby
Mauro: Texas not ready
for oil tragedy in Gulf
AUSTIN (AP) — Texas is no
more prepared than was Alaska
for a major oil spill like that
caused by the Exxon Valdez, and
quick action is needed f rom both
Congress and the Legislature to
fix the problems, officials said
Wednesday.
"Texas is not in any better
shape to handle a major oil spill
than was Exxon in the Port of
Valdez,” Land Commissioner
Garry Mauro said.
“The spill at Valdez has made
two things crystal clear: We are
now living in an age where major
oil spills can happen anytime and,
quite frankly, we don’t know how
to handle them,” he said.
Mauro, Galveston Mayor Jan
Coggeshall, state Rep. Robert
Saunders, and state Water Com
missioner Buck Wynne all said
the federal government needs to
put more oil-spill equipment
closer to Texas. The heavy-duty
equipment intended for Gulf
Coast use currently is kept in Vir
ginia and medium-duty gear is in
Alabama, Mauro said.
The officials also urged Con
gress to provide more funds,
asked the Legislature to approve
a bill to strengthen the current re
sponse plan and recommended
that “spill drills” be started so the
slate will be prepared in c ase of a
catastrophe.
“Anywhere major tanker traf
fic goes, there is a chance of a ma
jor disaster,” Ms. Coggeshall said.
“Thirty of the last 33 major disas
ters in the world have occurred
not from platform accidents but
from tankers. I think that we are
all vulnerable.”
The tanker Exxon Valdez ran
aground March 24, spilling some
10 million gallons of oil. Tankers
ply Texas waters daily due to the
state’s huge oil industry. Wynne
noted that of 2,000 incidents in
Texas last year, about half in
volved oil, although most were in
land.
Should a Valdez-style accident
happen off the Texas coast, the
of ficials said, the state could be in
trouble.
Although the barrier islands
would offer some protection
should a spill occur outside them,
an accident inside the islands
would be disastrous.
“If it happened inside our bar
rier islands, in the estuaries, we
would not be able to respond
soon enough without catastrophic
results. . . . We could not boom a
heavy, major spill inside the es
tuaries with the equipment that
far away (without) major ecologi
cal damage,” Mauro said.
“It would be a matter of wait
ing 24 to 48 hours, depending on
the severity of the spill,” Wynne
added. “And that is a very critical
time, as we’ve learned in Alaska.”
Among the officials’ recom
mendations was state legislative
approval of a bill authored by
Saunders, chairman of the House
Environmental Affairs Commit
tee, to strengthen the current re
sponse plan by contracting for
cleanup crews annually — rather
than requiring the state to take
bids after a spill occurs.
The measure would allow the
state to go directly to the respon
sible party to recover costs of a
cleanup. Texas now must go
through the federal government.
procedures.
The secretary told the panel that,
before the tanker Exxon Valdez
grounded, everyone had “assumed
that this would never happen.”
“I don’t think anybody was ready
to deal with a spill of this magni
tude,” said Skinner, whose depart
ment oversees the Coast Guard.
The subcommittee’s chairman,
Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., com
plained that “there has never been a
time when this situation was under
control.”
He said the response to the spill
has demonstrated “a complete
breakdown” of the procedures that
were supposed to have been in effect
since the federal government ap
proved the Alaskan pipeline 16
years ago.
Alaska Gov. Steve Lowper blamed
complacency at all levels for the poor
preparedness, but also said that
there had not been adequate equip
ment on hand, that channels of au
thority were unclear, and that a lack
of leadership and direction in the
critical hours after the spill further
delayed cleanup efforts.
He suggested that Alaskans had
trusted the oil industry, which ac
counts for 85 percent of the state
government’s revenue, to take pre
cautions. “We feel like we’ve been as
saulted,” he told the senators.
“From all accounts, the cleanup
crews initially responding to this spill
acted more like the Keystone Kops
than the well-trained oil spill re
sponse team described in the indus
try’s contingency plan,” declared
Sen. John Chafee, R-R.I.
Skinner said the Bush administra
tion’s decision to leave the primary
responsibility for the cleanup in Ex
xon’s hands stemmed from a belief
that the company had committed it
self to the cleanup and “had the
technical expertise to deal with the
problem.” He said he has been “dis
appointed” that the giant oil com
pany has not been able to assemble
resources more effectively to better
protect the Alaska coastline.
Soviet oil-skimmer
steams into Alaska
to join cleanup effort
SEWARD, Alaska (AP) — A So
viet ship that can skim oil on the
high seas joined the war against the
nation’s worst oil spill Wednesday,
docking in a town named for the
man who bought Alaska from Russia
for $7.2 million.
The 1 1,400-ton Vaidogubsky, 425
feet long, steamed 30 miles up fjord
like Resurrection Bay under a
cloudy sky, flying the Soviet hammer
and sickle from its stern and an
American flag from its towering
white superstructure.
It tied up at a railroad dock, its
decks strewn with heavy equipment,
smoke spewing from its stacks.
About 100 yards away, crews un
loaded oil-soaked booms and absor
bent material from the cleanup at
Nuka Bay, one of the most polluted
sites on the southern coast of the Ke-
nai Peninsula.
“It’s pretty impressive for a skim
mer,” said Coast Guard Petty Officer
Ken Safford, who snapped photos as
the ship arrived a little before 8 a.m.
“It’s huge.”
By midmorning, a stream of tour
ists were driving up to the dock to
take pictures and wave to the crew.
The ship came to Seward for re
fueling and probably would be in
port all day, Coast Guard Capt. Rene
Roussel said.
\
The oil spilled March 24 by an Ex
xon tanker is becoming very thick
and difficult to deal with as it weath
ers, Roussel said.
“We don’t know how it (the Vai
dogubsky) is going to work in the
kind of oil we’re skimming,” he said.
“Our goal is to get in the oil. We’ll
probably use it in Resurrection Bay
for awhile.”
The Vaidogubsky works with two
motorboats that drag a boom to cor
ral the oil. Then two pipes working
like 100-foot straws dip into the oil
and suck it onto the larger ship, said
a Soviet crewman who spoke in halt
ing English.
Bush, Hussein agree to work for peace
WASHING EON (AP) — President Bush and
Jordan’s King Hussein agreed Wednesday to
strive for “a serious negotiating process” for Mid
dle East peace, and the United States said the
monarch did not reject an Israeli proposal for
Palestinian elections in the West Bank and Gaza.
After the two leaders talked for more than an
hour at the White House, the administration ex
pressed satisfaction over Hussein’s statment to
Bush that “I fully support you and all your ef
forts.”
Hussein’s visit marked the end of the first
round of Middle East diplomacy for Bush, fol
lowing talks earlier this month with Egypt’s Presi
dent Hosni Mubarak and Israeli Prime Minister
Yitzhak Shamir.
As he had done with the two others. Bush
played tour guide for the king.
He took Hussein by helicopter to Mount Ver
non, Va., to visit the home of George Washing
ton overlooking the Potomac River. They re
turned to the capital on a yacht confiscated from
drug merchants and now owned by the Navy.
Standing alongside Hussein in a Rose Garden
ceremony, Bush said, “The time has come to en
courage fresh thinking, to avoid sterile debate,
and to focus on the difficult hut critical work of
structuring a serious negotiating process.
“His majesty committed Jordan to this task,
and I commit the United States to this task,”
Bush said.
“T
I he time has come to
encourage fresh thinking, to avoid
sterile debate, and to focus on the
difficult but critical work of
structuring a serious negotiating
process.”
— President Bush
The administration said the next step was to
develop Shamir’s proposal for the 1.7 million
Palestinians in the occupied territories to elect
representatives to negotiate with Israel on lim
ited self-government.
The United States has endorsed the proposal
on the condition that the elections lead to nego
tiations on the final status of the territories.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Ned
Walker told Congress that the United States
wants a timetable from Israel by July for the elec
tions.
But he said that “serious difficulties” remain
over what kind of elections would be held and
which Palestinians would agree to take part.
Walker said it should not matter to Israel
whether candidates are card-carrying members
of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Shamir
has ruled out negotiating with the PLO, which he
holds responsibile for the violence that has
wracked the occupied territories.
In his public remarks, Bush said that “prop
erly designed and mutually acceptable elections
could, as an initial step, contribute to a political
process leading to negotiations on the final status
of the West Bank and Gaza.”
Hussein did not publicly mention the Israeli
election proposal, but a senior administration of
ficial said, “He certainly did not reject the idea.”
The official, who declined to be named, said
Hussein expressed “some concerns” about the
elections.
Weds. April 26th
THE EDGE
ALL NEW 1989 REVUE
TICKETRON including Dillards 1(800) 426-3094
21 & over w/i.d.
Contact Lenses^
Only Quality Name Brands
(Bausch & Lomb, Ciba, Barnes-Hinds-Hydrocurve)
$ -*Q00 P r - *-STD. DAILY WEAR SOFT LENSES
SPARE PR. $5.00
pr. *-STD. EXTENDED WEAR SOFT LENSES
$ OQ00 pr. *-STD. TINTED SOFT LENSES
DAILY WEAR OR EXTENDED WEAR
SALE ENDS MAY 19,1989 and Applies to clear std.
Daily Wear Soft Lenses Only
Call 696-3754 for Appointment
with purchase of
1st pr. at reg. price
CHARLES C. SCHROPPEL,O.D., P.C.
DOCTOR OF OPTOMETRY
707 South Texas Ave., Suite 101D
College Station, Texas 77840
1 block South of Texas & University
Eye exam & care kit not included
Petal Patch $2 00 OFF
F,or,st ALL RING DANCE
CORSAGES
707 Texas Ave
Suite 125 696-6713
Across from campus
Brakes 4 Less
OUR NAME
SAYS IT...
OUR PRICES
PROVE IT
779-2458
1401 S.
Texas Av.
(SAME LOCATION AS
HOUSE OF TIRES)
• We Deliver • 846-5273 • We Deliver • 846-5273 •
6&M Steakhouse
108 College Main
•crocs from Kinko's
Wednesday Special
(5pm - 9pm Good Thru 4-19-89) ’
Chicken Fried Steak
Dinner includes Baked Potato or Fries,
Salad, Texas Toast and Iced Tea
$2.99
^ Best Cheeseburger In Town!
5 Call about delivery!
bring this coupon
• We Deliver • 846-5273 • We Deliver • 846-5273 •
LADIES & LORDS
Have the Time
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Special Purchase Sale
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DEMETRIOS of New York
□ from $39.95 to $149.95
□ over 500 new designs
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Extended hours - 'til 8 p.m. weekdays
Saturdays 10-6 and Sundays 1-5
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"Where looking good is stylishly affordable"
707 TEXAS AVENUE - COLLEGE STATION
764-8289
Messina
Hof
cordially
invites
yOU to
April 22,1989
10am to 5pm
SPRINGFEST ’89
►Corporate Grape Stomp
»Wine Tasting
•Texas Artist Competition
•Museum Exhibits
tours •Music
•Picnics, great grape Olympics & family entertainment
COME CELEBRATE SPRING WITH US!
Directions to Winery
1) Exit Hwy 6 at Hwy 21
2) Travel east 2 mi. to Wallis Rd.
3) Follow signs to Winery
Call for Information
(409) 778-WINE (9463)
Retail Hours:
Mon.-Fri. 8:00-4:30
Sat. 10-5 Sun. 12-4