Oil spills in San Francisco Bay are frequent news, but for those old enough to remember there is only one Great Oil Spill, the disaster of January 18, 1971.
In a predawn darkness thickened by heavy fog, two small Chevron tankers were maneuvering through the strait. At San Francisco’s Pier 45, Coast Guard technicians were just then testing a novel radar system. They watched helplessly as two blips threatened to fuse into one. Frantic calls to the captains failed to get through.[1] The inbound Arizona Standard rammed its bow 40 feet into the outbound Oregon Standard, releasing more than a million gallons of heavy “Bunker C” fuel mixture — likely the worst spill in Bay history.[2]
The San Francisco Bay Model in Sausalito ran tests predicting, correctly, where the slick would go next: up the Marin County coast.[3] As official response sputtered, a ragtag army of volunteers appeared, determined to help but unsure how. Some capable locals worked through the night to install a boom across the mouth of Bolinas Lagoon, shielding the single most valuable habitat in the spill’s path. They did less well dealing with the oiled grebes, scoters, and loons.
“There were dying birds everywhere and no one knew what to do,” recalls volunteer Jay Holcomb. “It was as horrible as you can imagine.” The Point Reyes Bird Observatory (now Point Blue) estimated the loss of grebes, scoters, and loons at 20,000 birds. Of 7,000 collected, only 300 survived to be released.[4] Effects on other biota — herring, eelgrass — were not even studied.
Scoter oiled by 2007 spill. Photo: Ron Sullivan
Weeks later, much of the goo seemed unaccounted for. Chevron asked the advice of John Conomos of the U.S. Geological Survey, who had tracked currents using drifters set at different depths. “Look in San Pablo Bay,” Conomos said. The oil was there, in the middle of the water column, trapped between opposing currents on the surface and along the bottom.[5]
Coming less than a year after the first Earth Day celebration, the 1971 spill shocked public opinion, led to new laws and procedures, proved the value of Bay research, and seeded several important environmental organizations.
By early spring, some of the shell-shocked volunteers had incorporated International Bird Rescue, funded by the industry and later directed by Holcomb for a time. It is a leading group in the field to this day.
For its part, the Coast Guard greatly stepped up its supervision of Bay traffic, creating a new Vessel Traffic Service headquartered on Yerba Buena Island; it works like air traffic control though without an airport tower’s absolute authority. “Never again,” was the slogan of the day.
Of course, the spill of 1971 was neither the last nor the first in a series as old as the petroleum age and often involving fog.
In 1922, the tanker Lyman Stewart collided with a freighter in the Gate; its oil clogged the intakes of Sutro Baths near the Cliff House. In 1937, the Frank H Buck was rammed in the Gate by a passenger liner; the SPCA euthanized large numbers of hopelessly oiled gulls.[6]
In 1984, the Puerto Rican caught fire and broke up eight miles outside the harbor entrance, shedding about as much oil as the 1971 disaster, though with less dramatic (or visible) effect.[7] In 1986, the coastal barge Apex Houston dribbled oil out of an unclosed hatch cover, killing common murres from the Golden Gate to Big Sur.
In 1988, Shell’s Martinez facility discharged some 400,000 gallons of oil into Suisun Bay wetlands. In 1996, the SS Cape Mohican spilled 96,000 gallons at San Francisco Pier 70, though most was contained at the site. [8]
Spread of oil in San Francisco Bay from Cosco Busan spill 2007 after 22 hours. Source: OPT
Then came November 7, 2007, when the Cosco Busan — in touch with Vessel Traffic Service, with bar pilot on board — nevertheless struck a tower of the fogbound San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. The release was a comparatively small 54,000 gallons of heavy oil, but the site and season magnified its effect on birds. Despite advances in bird care and cleanup technology, nearly 7,000 seabirds and shorebirds were killed. Pacific herring suffered as well.[9] A post-mortem report produced another long list of needed improvements, some of them familiar from 1971, and a new round of reforms.[10]
Have things not improved since 1971 or 2007? Of course they have. “California now has one of the best oil spill response, preparation, and prevention systems in the world,” says Eric Loughlin of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife. And the relatively trouble-free span since 2007 is the longest yet.
Yet the recurrence of spills — and reported errors in response — reminds us just how difficult this job remains: what an achievement it actually is to move and process billions of gallons of hydrocarbons through and around this busy harbor, in any given year, without significant mishap.
This February, an oil spill was again in the headlines: 600 gallons of mixed water and diesel oil flowed from a punctured pipeline on Chevron’s Long Wharf in Richmond. The city issued a public health advisory. Nearby beaches and shorelines were closed. Estimates of spillage grew with each report. San Francisco Baykeeper criticized cleanup efforts as slow off the mark. A report is forthcoming.[11]
[1] U.S. Coast Guard, Fact Sheet: Vessel Traffic Service, San Francisco, Nov. 20, 2007; Carl Nolte, “Watching the Ships Roll In—and Keeping the Bay Safe,” San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 13, 2011.
[2] Coast Guard, Incident Specific Preparedness Review, M/V Cosco Busan Oil Spill in San Francisco Bay: Report on Initial Response Phase, Jan. 11, 2008: I-2; John Hart, Don Stanley, Alice Yarish, “The Great Oil Spill,” Pacific Sun Jan. 27, 1971.
[3] Stephanie M. Carlson, remarks at State of the Estuary Conference, 2001.
[4] Burr Henneman, telephone conversation with author, March 6, 2021; International Bird Rescue site, consulted Mar. 1, 2021.
[5] Bill Davoren, telephone conversation with author, April 8, 2002.
[6] Harold Gilliam, San Francisco Bay (New York: Doubleday, 1957): 192-93.
[7] Incident Specific Preparedness Review, M/V Cosco Busan, I-2.
[8] Calif. Dept. of Fish and Wildlife, Oil Spill Prevention and Response, https://wildlife.ca.gov/OSPR/NRDA.
[9] CDFW, Oil Spill Prevention and Response, Cosco Busan Oil Spill: Final Damage Assessment and Restoration Plan/Environmental Assessment: Appendix D.
[10] Coast Guard, Incident Specific Preparedness Review, Cosco Busan, Part II and Final Report, May 7, 2008. 8
[11] George Kelly, “Bay Refinery Oil Spill Prompts Alert,” Bay Area News Group, Feb. 10, 202; telephone conversation Sejal Choksi-Chugh, San Francisco Baykeeper, Feb. 19, 2021.
John Hart is an environmental journalist and author of sixteen books and several hundred other published works. He is also the winner of the James D. Phelan Award, the Commonwealth Club Medal in Californiana, and the David R. Brower Award for Service in the Field of Conservation. For ESTUARY, he writes on groundwater, infrastructure, and California water politics and history.
Our magazine’s media motto for many years has been “Where there’s an estuary, there’s a crowd.” The San Francisco Estuary is a place where people, wildlife, and commerce congregate, and where watersheds, rivers and the ocean meet and mix, creating a place of unusual diversity. In choosing to tell the...
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Though the Clean Water Act did an amazing job of reducing wastewater and stormwater pollution of the San Francisco Estuary, some contaminants remain thorny problems. Legacy pollutants like mercury washed into the watershed from upstream gold mining, PCBs from old industrial sites, and selenium from agricultural drainage in the San...
Hothouse Earth
By Ariel Rubissow Okamoto
Photo by Megan Nguyen
Nothing could be stranger than sitting in the dark with thousands of suits and heels, watching a parade of promises to decarbonize from companies and countries large and small, reeling from the beauties of big screen rainforests and indigenous necklaces, and getting all choked up.
It was day two of the September 2018 Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco when I felt it.
At first I wondered if I was simply starstruck. Most of us labor away trying to fix one small corner of the planet or another without seeing the likes of Harrison Ford, Al Gore, Michael Bloomberg, Van Jones, Jerry Brown – or the ministers or mayors of dozens of cities and countries – in person, on stage and at times angry enough to spit. And between these luminaries a steady stream of CEOs, corporate sustainability officers, and pension fund managers promising percentages of renewables and profits in their portfolios dedicated to the climate cause by 2020-2050.
I tried to give every speaker my full attention: the young man of Vuntut Gwichin heritage from the edge of the Yukon’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge who pleaded with us not to enter his sacred lands with our drills and dependencies; all the women – swathed in bright patterns and head-scarfs – who kept punching their hearts. “My uncle in Uganda would take 129 years to emit the same amount of carbon as an American would in one year,” said Oxfam’s Winnie Byanyima.
“Our janitors are shutting off the lights you leave on,” said Aida Cardenas, speaking about the frontline workers she trains, mostly immigrants, who are excited to be part of climate change solutions in their new country.
The men on the stage, strutting about in feathers and pinstripes, spoke of hopes and dreams, money and power. “The notion that you can either do good or do well is a myth we have to collectively bust,” said New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy whose state is investing heavily in offshore wind farms.
“Climate change isn’t just about risks, it’s about opportunities,” said Blackrock sustainable investment manager Brian Deese.
But it wasn’t all these fine speeches that started the butterflies. Halfway through the second day of testimonials, it was a slight white-haired woman wrapped in an azure pashmina that pricked my tears. One minute she was on the silver screen with Alec Baldwin and the next she taking a seat on stage. She talked about trees. How trees can solve 30% of our carbon reduction problem. How we have to stop whacking them back in the Amazon and start planting them everywhere else. I couldn’t help thinking of Dr. Seuss and his truffala trees. Jane Goodall, over 80, is as fierce as my Lorax. Or my daughter’s Avatar.
Analyzing my take home feeling from the event I realized it wasn’t the usual fear – killer storms, tidal waves, no food for my kids to eat on a half-baked planet – nor a newfound sense of hope – I’ve always thought nature will get along just fine without us. What I felt was relief. People were actually doing something. Doing a lot. And there was so much more we could do.
As we all pumped fists in the dark, as the presentations went on and on and on because so many people and businesses and countries wanted to STEP UP, I realized how swayed I had let myself be by the doomsday news mill.
“We must be like the river, “ said a boy from Bangladesh named Risalat Khan, who had noticed our Sierra watersheds from the plane. “We must cut through the mountain of obstacles. Let’s be the river!”
Or as Harrison Ford less poetically put it: “Let’s turn off our phones and roll up our sleeves and kick this monster’s ass.”
4th California Climate Change Assessment Blues
by Isaac Pearlman
Since California’s last state-led climate change assessment in 2012, the Golden State has experienced a litany of natural disasters. This includes four years of severe drought from 2012 to 2016, an almost non-existent Sierra Nevada snowpack in 2014-2015 costing $2.1 billion in economic losses, widespread Bay Area flooding from winter 2017 storms, and extremely large and damaging wildfires culminating with this year’s Mendocino Complex fire achieving the dubious distinction of the largest in state history. California’s most recent climate assessment, released August 27th, predicts that for the state and the Bay Area, we can expect even more in the future.
The California state government first began assessing climate impacts formally in 2006, due to an executive order by Governor Schwarzenegger. California’s latest iteration and its fourth overall, includes a dizzying array of 44 technical reports; three topical studies on climate justice, tribal and indigenous communities, and the coast and ocean; as well as nine region-specific analyses.
The results are alarming for our state’s future: an estimated four to five feet of sea level rise and loss of one to two-thirds of Southern California beaches by 2100, a 50 percent increase in wildfires over 25,000 acres, stronger and longer heat waves, and infrastructure like airports, wastewater treatment plants, rail and roadways increasingly likely to suffer flooding.
For the first time, California’s latest assessment dives into climate consequences on a regional level. Academics representing nine California regions spearheaded research and summarized the best available science on the variable heat, rain, flooding and extreme event consequences for their areas. For example, the highest local rate of sea level rise in the state is at the rapidly subsiding Humboldt Bay. In San Diego county, the most biodiverse in all of California, preserving its many fragile and endangered species is an urgent priority. Francesca Hopkins from UC Riverside found that the highest rate of childhood asthma in the state isn’t an urban smog-filled city but in the Imperial Valley, where toxic dust from Salton Sea disaster chokes communities – and will only become worse as higher temperatures and less water due to climate change dry and brittle the area.
According to the Bay Area Regional Report, since 1950 the Bay Area has already increased in temperature by 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit and local sea level is eight inches higher than it was one hundred years ago. Future climate will render the Bay Area less suitable for our evergreen redwood and fir forests, and more favorable for tolerant chaparral shrub land. The region’s seven million people and $750 billion economy (almost one-third of California’s total) is predicted to be increasingly beset by more “boom and bust” irregular wet and very dry years, punctuated by increasingly intense and damaging storms.
Unsurprisingly, according to the report the Bay Area’s intensifying housing and equity problems have a multiplier affect with climate change. As Bay Area housing spreads further north, south, and inland the result is higher transportation and energy needs for those with the fewest resources available to afford them; and acute disparity in climate vulnerability across Bay Area communities and populations.
“All Californians will likely endure more illness and be at greater risk of early death because of climate change,” bluntly states the statewide summary brochure for California’s climate assessment. “[However] vulnerable populations that already experience the greatest adverse health impacts will be disproportionately affected.”
“We’re much better at being reactive to a disaster than planning ahead,” said UC Berkeley professor and contributing author David Ackerly at a California Adaptation Forum panel in Sacramento on August 27th. “And it is vulnerable communities that suffer from those disasters. How much human suffering has to happen before it triggers the next round of activity?”
The assessment’s data is publicly available online at “Cal-adapt,” where Californians can explore projected impacts for their neighborhoods, towns, and regions.
The results are alarming for our state’s future: an estimated four to five feet of sea level rise and loss of one to two-thirds of Southern California beaches by 2100, a 50 percent increase in wildfires over 25,000 acres, stronger and longer heat waves, and infrastructure like airports, wastewater treatment plants, rail and roadways increasingly likely to suffer flooding.