Absence of oil-spill answers straining evacuees’ patience

Workers rescue an oil-covered beaver that was found Wednesday in a marsh area of a cove that feeds into the 6,700-acre Lake Conway.
Workers rescue an oil-covered beaver that was found Wednesday in a marsh area of a cove that feeds into the 6,700-acre Lake Conway.

MAYFLOWER - Almost a week after an oil pipeline ruptured in a Mayflower subdivision, spilling thousands of gallons of oil, workers pushed ahead on the cleanup, dozens of residents remained evacuated, a noxious odor lingered in parts of the community, lawyers for the state and Exxon Mobil got busy, and tempers flared.

New questions arose Wednesday regarding the leak, past pipeline inspections and what impact, if any, the spill should have on decisions regarding construction of the contentious Keystone XL pipeline project.

Also, Exxon Mobil Corp. disclosed the type of oil that runs through the ruptured Pegasus pipeline, which carries oil from Illinois to refineries along the Texas coast. The oil is Wabasca heavy crude from Alberta, Canada, Exxon Mobil spokesman Kim Jordan said.

Meanwhile, Gov. Mike Beebe said residents of the 22 homes still under an evacuation order need a straight answer about when they can return home.

“Those people are pretty frustrated,” he said. “They were told they’d get back in their homes in a couple of days, then they were told they’d get back in their home in a week, and now some of them are apparently being told it could be much, much longer than that.”

He said some residents have said, “‘We just want a straight answer - give us a straight answer.’

“I understand sometimes answers change based upon changing circumstances, but the very least those folks can do is try to anticipate a worst case scenario and give them that, and then give them what they hope for the best so that they’re not constantly being jerked up and down with regard to what the options are or what the timetable appears to be,” Beebe said. “Whoever’s got control over the cleanup” should be giving that timetable, he said.

Neither an Arkansas Health Department spokesman nor the county judge for Faulkner County returned telephone calls late Wednesday seeking comment.

On Wednesday, Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel visited the spill site, including the yard between two houses in the Northwoods subdivision where the pipeline ruptured about 2:45 p.m. Friday.

“All of our heads ache from our limited exposure to the fumes,” he said, noting that eight elementary school children nearby had left classes Monday because of nausea from the oil smell.

McDaniel said his office has subpoenaed documents and other information from Exxon Mobil and that the company’s lawyers would be coming to Arkansas. McDaniel said he thinks it’s “a certainty that this will be in litigation at some point.”

Exxon Mobil has pledged its cooperation, he said. However, he said, company representatives “reminded me that this is a relatively small spill and that cleanup is going just great.”

“I hope that they realize to the homeowners … it is not small. It is catastrophic,” McDaniel said. “It is clear to me that this will be a long and difficult road back to normalcy.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has categorized the spill as major. To fall in that category, a spill consists of more than 250 barrels. Exxon Mobil said Tuesday that it had recovered about 12,000 barrels of oil and water, “representing most of the free-standing oil.”

After seeing the site of the rupture, McDaniel said, “I came away with more questions than answers. How long was it leaking? How deep beneath the surface is the plume? What caused the rupture? And many other questions.”

McDaniel said the spill highlights the importance of careful inspections and safety standards.

“Either the inspections [in this case] were not adequate” or the problem that led to the rupture was beyond what the inspection could find, which he said he thought was unlikely.

McDaniel, a Democrat, said he understands that underground infrastructure is “vital.” “But it has to be maintained. It has to be inspected” properly, he said. “And there has to be accountability.”

Authorities have said they don’t know what caused the rupture, which spilled oil into yards, a street and two drainage ditches. So far, emergency workers have prevented the oil from flowing into the 6,700-acre Lake Conway, a popular fishing site.

McDaniel and U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin, R-Ark., said they understand residents’ worries about declining property values in the spill area.

“That is a legitimate concern,” said Griffin, who also toured the site. Homeowners should file whatever claims they believe are justified, he said.

“Selling a house in that neighborhood will be difficult,” McDaniel said.

Resident Pamela Bell, who was evacuated Friday but was allowed to return Sunday night, said her house is for sale. She attempted to go to a neighborhood meeting Tuesday night with Exxon Mobil and government officials but was not allowed to enter because she’s not one of the still-evacuated homeowners, she said.

“I’d like to know what … the situation is,” Bell said. “I just think it’s weird. What’s so secret?”

Homeowner and farmer Joe Bradley walked out of the meeting in frustration, saying residents were told that it could be a week to two weeks before they could return home. But Bradley said he has no intention of taking his 8-year-old daughter back there because of the contamination, and he doesn’t believe he can sell his house now.

“That’s the biggest investment of my life,” he said.

“Before this happened, I didn’t even know about the Keystone pipeline,” Bradley said. Now he staunchly opposes it.

The Keystone XL pipeline would carry crude oil south from Canada to Nebraska at a rate of 830,000 barrels per day, according to energy company TransCanada’s website on the project.

The National Wildlife Federation has joined the Sierra Club in stressing opposition to the Keystone XL proposal in light of the Mayflower spill.

Federation spokesman Miles Grant said the rupture “highlights the risks of transporting this stuff.”

Of the Keystone XL proposal, Grant said, “We feel it’s oil that we don’t need. We shouldn’t be exposing our wildlife and communities to disasters like this.”

The oil, he contended, would be shipped to U.S. refineries for export to overseas markets.

“We’re not the ones getting the oil,” he said. “We’re accepting all the risks. Canada gets all the profit, and the international market gets all the oil.”

But Griffin, who “absolutely” supports the pipeline proposal, said oil pipelines have a history of being safer than moving the oil by truck or train.

“The [political] left is trying to use this against Keystone,” Griffin said.

But, he said, “We have to be realistic.” While the spill is “a horrible accident,” he said, “We need energy in this country.”

Wabasca heavy oil is produced from the Wabiskaw Sandstone and is similar to that produced from the Athabasca Oil Sands but from subsurface, said James Williams, an energy analyst and owner of the WTRG Economics consulting firm near Russellville.

Oil produced from the Athabasca Oil Sands is often referred to as “tar sands oil,”Williams said. The kind in the Mayflower spill is from “a very similar sandstone formation” and is “effectively the same” type of oil, he said.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental action group, contends that tar sands oil is difficult to clean.

But Williams said such statements are “absolutely the opposite of true. It is typically easier to clean up.”

Comparing such oil to a bucket of tar, he said, “If you pour it on your lawn and you pour the same amount of motor oil” on the lawn, “which is going to sink further? This stuff doesn’t penetrate as fast or as deep, and so it’s really easier to clean up.”

Williams said such oil, though, has more sulphur in it than the higher quality, more easily refined “light, sweet crude” oil that comes from North Dakota. The thicker crude spilled in Arkansas might be harder to clean off wildlife such as ducks, he acknowledged.

Anthony Swift, an attorney with the National Resources Defense Council’s international program, said the Arkansas rupture “offers us a small sample of the risk that tar sands pipelines pose to American communities.”

A similar spill in 2010 into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River watershed “demonstrated that diluted bitumen spills were significantly more challenging to clean up and damaging to the environment, particularly water bodies, than conventional crude,” Swift said in a news release.

Nearly three years later, he said, 38 miles of the river “are still contaminated.”

Wildlife rescue and treatment operations continued in Arkansas on Wednesday, with officials saying workers had recovered 16 oil-covered ducks, seven turtles, nine reptiles, one beaver and one muskrat. Seven ducks have been found dead.

Also, the Federal Aviation Administration has ordered temporary flight restrictions until further notice over the oil-spill site. The restriction applies only to aircraft flying 1,000 feet or lower and is aimed at preventing interference with any aerial support for the cleanup, an FAA spokesman said.

Information for this article was contributed by Jessica Seaman, Sarah Wire and Cynthia Howell of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 04/04/2013

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