Coast Guard asking for help

ALEXANDRIA BAY — The Coast Guard needs the support of local entities and volunteer groups to prepare better for the first 12 hours of an oil-spill emergency, a security specialist and contingency planner of the U.S. Coast Guard said at a training session Saturday at the Fire Hall.

Ralph F. Kring, a security specialist and contingency planner for the U.S. Coast Guard, spoke to river residents about safety precautions, responsibility and emergency procedures in dealing with an accident on the shorelines at the session.

He said the Coast Guard needs the locals, who know the area inside and out, to assist in an emergency.

"I'm glad that we are the first region to do this," Mr. Kring said.

He said the Coast Guard has been planning since January to gather a group of volunteers to help provide quicker and more efficient response to shoreline accidents, in part in response to the San Francisco Bay oil spill.

In November, a 900-foot container ship struck the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and spilled 54,000 gallons of fuel into the San Francisco Bay. The spill caused beaches in the Bay Area to close, killed thousands of birds and damaged the region's fishing industry.

Among the problems identified was the lack of coordination between the Coast Guard and local volunteer networks, Mr. Kring said.

"When volunteers showed up at San Francisco Bay, the Coast Guard simply turned them back," he said. "I don't want that to happen up here."

Several community members at the training session criticized the Coast Guard for the handling of the 1976 spill in the St. Lawrence, and argued that the Coast Guard needs more resources, such as booms and helicopters, readily available in the area.

In late June 32 years ago, a 465-foot barge hit a shoal and blackened the water of the river with 308,000 gallons of oil, stretching 62 miles downriver. The spill damaged the local tourism business and individual properties, and the cost to wildlife was beyond determination.

"We need to get volunteers up to speed with pretraining to prevent something like that," Mr. Kring said.

Petty Officer Karri E. Moran said the Coast Guard does not have the capacity to cover the whole region in a timely manner.

"There is no way 12 people in our office can cover the whole river area running from Massena to Sackets Harbor," she said. "That's why we need local volunteers."

More recently, a 394-foot Canadian barge leaked 12,000 gallons of liquid salt into the St. Lawrence River. It crashed into a shoal near Heart Island in July 2004 and the Seaway was closed for about 15 hours.

"Alexandria Bay is known to be the most difficult area to transit," said Jennifer J. Caddick, executive director of Save the River.

She said the salt that leaked into the river four years ago did not have an adverse effect to the ecosystem but added that every ship navigating the Seaway is exposed to a lot of risk due to rapid currents and many islands. Ms. Caddick said early opening and late closing of the Seaway makes it even more dangerous.

"If you want to clean up an oil spill in ice, you have to wait until the ice melts," she said.

Ms. Caddick said Save the River is coordinating a volunteer group and collecting regional contacts. The group will create a phone tree for speedy reaction to future accidents, she said.

"We want more community involvement," she said to a group of volunteers. "I can't possibly know the entire river, but you guys do."

"This is the first step in progress. We need eyes and ears on the ground so we can effectively dispatch people and material to hazard sites," Ms. Caddick said.

Kenneth E. Walsh, a resident of Ogdensburg, said there is a lack of funding for proper emergency response in the first place. Mr. Walsh said that there isn't a single helicopter stationed in the region that can promptly respond to an emergency while there are several dozen covering the rivers of Iraq.

"It's sad how little we spend to protect ourselves while spending so much protecting others," Mr. Walsh said.

The Coast Guard and Save the River are coordinating a volunteer group to assist the Coast Guards in future and plans to hold two more training sessions this summer for the river community.