By JEFF LIPTON
The spill occurred sometime between Saturday, Jan. 27 and 10 a.m. the following day, when it was discovered by the crew of the Ocean Bird, a commercial clamming vessel, according to authorities. Although it was originally believed that the Ocean Bird, which is a diesel-powered boat, was responsible for the spill because the oil ³had puddled around the boat,² an on-site investigation determined that it was not at fault, officials said.
The operator of the vessel immediately reported the spill to the Town of Hempstead Bay Constable and the Nassau County Police Department¹s Marine Bureau, according to a spokesman for the U.S. Coast Guard, which also responded to the spill.
Four other vessels in the vicinity were also inspected, but they, too, were determined not to have caused the spill, according to Bill Fonda, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Conservation, which was called in to investigate the source of the spill.
The diesel fuel mainly collected between the Ocean Bird and an area bulkhead, said Fonda. ³We checked that boat [the Ocean Bird] and all commercial vessels in the area, and we couldn¹t identify the source of the leak,² said Fonda.
He said the DEC used pads and other equipment designed to soak up the leak, and ³to clean it up as best we could. There appeared to be no other environmental impact as far as wildlife that we could determine,² Fonda said.
Fonda said there was no way to determine how much oil spilled into the water.
In addition to the DEC, Bay Constable, Coast Guard and Marine Bureau, also responding to the spill was the Nassau County Fire Marshal¹s Office because of the potential for the fuel, which is flammable, to ignite.
Officials said there was no evidence that the diesel fuel spill was the result of a vessel running aground in the water, even though many of the waterways on the South Shore have recently experienced similar trouble.
Engineers recently began dredging East Rockaway Channel, two months
after a 281-foot tanker, Kristin Poling, ran aground on the East Rockaway inlet, just off Atlantic Beach, en route to an Oceanside fuel terminal on Nov. 10.
Kristin Poling, the lone vessel that regularly uses the inlet to deliver
oil to the Sprague Energy terminal in Oceanside, ran aground there for the
second time since December 2004.
Fuel shipments through the inlet to Sprague account for between 10 and 20 percent of the heating oil sold daily in south and central Nassau County, with 60 local companies annually distributing roughly 40 million gallons of oil to some 50,000 homes and facilities.
The Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Co., which specializes in port-deepening
projects, has been contracted to dredge some 300,000 cubic yards of sand from the inlet to Reynolds Channel and spread it on Rockaway beach over the course of 45 days.
Comments about this story? Jlipton@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 210.
