Volume 17/Number10/October1986 ing any waste discharges that are located within approximately 550 m. This permit would pertain to about 2,000 sites leased by oil companies in the Gulf. The permit does not allow discharge of diesel oil, oil-based drilling fluids, or drilling cuttings. It would also impose a 30,000 ppm effluent toxicity limit on all drilling fluid and drilling mud discharges. The permit requires best available technolgy (BAT) to control oil and grease and also limits waste water and sanitary discharges. EPA believes use of the BAT will increase the costs of drilling a well by only about 1.5 to 2.5%. The Agency has approved several drilling muds, most of which can be used with mineral oil. Although EPA wishes to reduce mineral oil use, it will allow its use in preference to the more toxic diesel oil. The Agency has cited data that show that only 12% of the industry's drilling fluids would fail the new toxicity requirements. In contrast, the American Petroleum Institute is concerned over the new permit rules since it believes some 30-40% of drilling fluids would fail the toxicity tests. In response to the new requirements, the Conoco oil company has filed for judicial review of the permit because it believes the requirements are too onerous on the industry. Two environmental groups have also filed for judicial review because they believe the permit to be too lenient.
dered by the Department of Interior as the final 5 yr leasing plan is developed. The House of Representatives Appropriations Committee was able to reach a compromise that curtailed a move by some members of the Committee to impose a moratorium on all federal oil and gas leasing off the California coast. The compromise resulted in delay of the Northern California Sale 91, but acknowledged and approved planning and presale steps for other California sales. The Department of Interior will proceed with the presale leasing process for Sale 107 in the Navarin Basin off the coast of Alaska. The first sale in the Navarin Basin was held in 1984 with 163 leases sold. However, a lawsuit by the village of Gambell has resulted in a stoppage of all drilling activities and an industry request to suspend the Navarin leases. The US Supreme Court is expected to review this court order in 1987 when further clarification can be expected regarding future Navarin drilling activities. The State of Alaska has passed legislation to expand its existing oil spill response fund to include clean-up of spills of hazardous substances. The new response bill is funded at S1 million and allows for clean-up of previously-contaminated sites.
The Department of Interior has proposed a 1987-91 plan for OCS leasing and has produced a draft environmental impact statement to discuss effects of various development scenarios. The Department recommended Shipment of Oil from the Canadian Arctic deferred leasing of 27 subareas that were determined to Accelerates be environmentally sensitive. In a review of the documents, EPA has recommended extended areas for A token barrel of oil was shipped from the Canadian deferred leasing. In particular, EPA recommended Arctic to Montreal in August 1984 to herald the deferral of the North Atlantic and North Aleutian Basin beginning of Arctic oil shipments to southern points. planning areas. The North Atlantic deferment could be On 5 February 1985, Panarctic Otis Co. Ltd., which is a justified in light of the extensive fisheries of the Georges consortium of 30 Canadian oil exploration companies Bank and the low probability of commercial quantities and is 53% federally owned, was granted permission to of hydrocarbons in the area. The North Aleutian area ship 100,000 barrels of Arctic crude oil in the summer could be deferred because of its extensive use by birds of 1985 with the ice-strengthened tanker M. V Arctic. and several endangered marine mammals and its large This was carried out in August-September 1985 to test the feasibility of summer tanker traffic from Panarctic's commercial fishery. EPA agreed with the Department of Interior's deci- Arctic islands field. The first ever commercial shipload of Canadian sions to defer leasing in small subareas of environmental sensitivity and in the Florida straits. However, Arctic crude arrived aboard the Imperial Bedfordat the EPA criticized the report for its lack of consistency in Petro-Canada refinery in Montreal on 11 September treatments of the various regions and for some of the 1985, after a sea voyage of 5400 km from Panarctic's methods found in the draft EIS to evaluate effects from Bent Horn oil field on Cameron Island. The oil was oil and gas activities on marine resources. The draft transferred from the M. V Arctic to the oil tanker report used a method for the Pacific and Atlantic coasts Imperial Bedford at Rea Point on Melville Island for the that averaged impacts on species and determined the journey to Montreal. The Imperial Bedford was not magnitude of an impact based upon its probability of authorized to operate in the heavier ice of the Cameron occurrence. EPA concluded that such treatment tended Island area, which is north of the Northwest Passage. to underestimate the severity of effects in the Pacific Panarctic used the shipment as a demonstration project and Atlantic relative to the effects which were hypo- to prove the feasibility of oil shipments from the far thesised for the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska regions and north. It plans to do the same thing during the summer which were derived by other methods. EPA also found of 1986. The Bent Horn field was discovered in 1974. Panthat the draft EIS presented less physical and chemical information for the Alaskan planning areas as com- arctic subsequently drilled a number of holes, one of pared to the other regions. The EPA comments, as well which produced the oil it shipped during the summer of as other public and agency comments, will be consi- 1985. The chosen well can produce about 3500 barrels 441
Marine Pollution Bulletin
per day. After the well was drilled, a storage tank and lines were built to move the oil from the tank to the tanker. Oil was pumped into the tank in June 1985 to await the time when ice conditions would enable M.V. Arctic to reach Cameron Island. The shipping season there can be as short as two weeks. The M.V. Arctic loaded its crude on 27 August 1985. There has always been concern about tanker transport through the Northwest Passage, because of the danger of accidents and the lack of technology to combat oil spills in ice-infested waters. The oil industry, on the other hand, hopes to gradually build up the confidence of the public and the government in the industry's ability to transport oil safely through Arctic waters. The federal government, nevertheless, commissioned a S1.2 million study of ice conditions to prepare for Panarctic's 1985 shipment. Gulf Canada Resources Inc. plans to pump 500,000 barrels of crude oil from its giant Amauligak oil field in the Beaufort Sea into its 299 m long supertanker the Gulf Beaufort and take it out past Point Barrow, Alaska, and through the Bering Sea during the summer of 1986. The project is still subject to federal government approval. It will be cancelled if there is any danger of an oil spill due to threatening pack ice, according to Murray Horn, Gulf's Inuvik-based coordinator of northern employment. Amauligak was discovered in 1984 and now is estimated to contain 800 million barrels of recoverable oil, making it the single largest frontier find. Gulf Canada Resources Inc. used its Molikpaq mobile Arctic drilling caisson, a floating, water-tight drill rig, to enter the Amauligak 1-65B well in July 1986. This test well will pump oil for 40 to 60 days, half-filling the 1 million barrel Gulf supertanker. Technical information acquired in the test will be used in a development plan for the Amauligak reservoir.
MICHAEL WALDICHUK
DMSDS on Ocean Disposal of Sewage Extreme opposition from the New Jersey congressional delegation has prevented additional municipalities from using the newly-designated Deepwater Municipal Sludge Dump Site (DMSDS--a part of the formerly designated 106-mile site located east of New Jersey) for disposal of their sewage sludges. When the nearshore 12-mile sewage sludge disposal site in the New York Bight Apex was denied redesignation by the US EPA (Mar. Pollut. Bull. 16, 426), those municipalities in the New York-New Jersey area that were using the 12-mile site were to begin phasing out their disposal at the 12mile site and to initiate procedures for disposal at the DMSDS. Opponents of the DMSDS and of ocean disposal in general have been determined to restrict use of that site to only the municipalities already using the 12mile site. The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, which is under a court order to cease its sludge disposal into Boston Harbor as quickly as possible, had proposed to use the DMSDS to dispose its daily production of 70 tons of sludge (Mar. Pollut. Bull. 16, 462). The Massachusetts Authority withdrew its pro442
posal when congressional opposition made it clear the State could lose S100 million for Boston Harbor cleanup that is currently proposed in the House version of the Clean Water Act reauthorization bill. The Senate version of the bill makes no provision or authorization for clean-up of the Harbor. The two bills are currently in a congressional conference committee to derive a compromise bill. The Massachusetts Authority is still trying to determine a sludge disposal method and is studying various proposals to manage its wastes until a state land disposal site becomes available in several years.
Tijuana Waste to be Returned California congressmen from San Diego have been successful in obtaining release of $5 million in Federal funds to plan a project to contain sewage from Tijuana, Mexico, and to prevent its transport along the coastline to San Diego. During periods of high rainfall occurring a few times a year, Tijuana's sewage treatment plant is unable to treat the volumes of sewage and drainage water that flows through the plant. At those times, the untreated sewage flows into the Tijuana River and into the ocean near San Diego. The sewage is primarily domestic sewage low in toxics, but has resulted in the closure of San Diego beaches. The funds will be used to plan a $27 million project to build retention basins on the Tijuana River and a pipeline that would return the contained wastes to the Tijuana plant. The additional funds are expected to be provided as a result of an agreement between the US and Mexico to control pollution. It is acknowledged that even this project is only an interim solution for the Tijuana problem.
Low-level Radioactive Waste Shifted to Temporary Burial Surrey, a city adjacent to Vancouver, British Columbia, has been the site of numerous legal battles over 274 tons of slag with low-level radioactivity from thorium ore processing. The ore was purchased from South America by Fundy Chemical International Ltd. for production of niobium, a metal used in making surgical instruments and electronics. An official of the radioactive protective services for the British Columbia health ministry has stated that the level of radioactivity in the slag is low, barely above the levels of radioactivity found naturally in the ground of some parts of British Columbia. Because the slag is radioactive, however, its disposal comes under the federal Atomic Energy Control Act. Fundy Chemical International Ltd. closed its metalalloy manufacturing plant in Surrey in 1975 and sold its property along with the slag to C.R.E Holdings Ltd., which located Comor Supplies Ltd. on the property, a supplier of wire ropes and bridles for the logging, mining and shipping industries. The new owner had not been told that the slag was radioactive and used it as fill under a warehouse and black-topped road. In 1976 it was discovered that the material was radioactive and the property was fenced off, although the Atomic