On December 14th, 2007 OSC Sonja Vega was contacted by the U.S. Coast Guard (U.S.C.G.) regarding a sunken recreational vessel and offered U.S. EPA assistance. The U.S.C.G. monitored the vessel throughout the weekend and again contacted OSC Vega on December 17th, 2007. At approximately 1300 hours on December 17th, U.S. EPA OSC Craig Thomas was contacted by OSC Sonja Vega regarding the vessel.
The vessel is an approximately 110' long house boat, which partially sank on the Mississippi River, between mile markers 811.5 and 811.6, in Washington County, Minnesota (also near Prescott, Wisconsin). The vessel is partially submerged on the port side.
On board, there is a 100 gallon vegetable oil tank, two 60 gallon vegetable oil tanks, seven 55-gallon drums of home heating oil, and approximately 12 gallons of lube oil in the engine. To date, the materials have not released to the Mississippi River.
The U.S.C.G. served the owner of the vessel with a Notice of Federal Interest on December 13th. However, the U.S.C.G. indicated that the owner has no funds available to address the potential release. The U.S.C.G. indicated that based on the Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S.C.G. and U.S. EPA Region 5, that U.S. EPA has jurisdictional authority, as the vessel is a recreational vessel. Therefore, U.S. EPA will take the lead on this response.
U.S. EPA OSC Craig Thomas was dispatched to the incident. The Oil Pollution Fund has been opened and a BOA contractor has been hired. U.S. EPA will remove the oils from the tanks, and the drums to prevent a release.
On December 19th, the contractor began pumping fuel tanks on the vessel, but could not observe any draw-down in the tanks. It was then observed that the liquid level in the tanks was the same as the level inside the vessel. It became apparent that the oil in the tanks had been displaced by water and then flowed into the wheel house.
Residual oil in the tanks was padded up with sorbent pads. Then the dive team, in dry suits, was sent in to assist in removing oil-contaminated debris in the vessel. The vessel's owner was given an opportunity to retrieve personal possessions. The rest of the debris was bagged up, tied and stored on the shoreline for placement in a roll off box.
Divers then pushed all of the oil to the rear of the vessel where the vacuum truck began sucking it up. This area was then boomed off so the oil could be contained in one location.
On December 20th, the contractor worked on separating oil from ice, continued loading debris into the roll off box, and used the vacuum truck to remove oil from the boomed area of vessel.
An access point was found to obtain entry below deck to the area the owner said contained seven 55-gallon drums of home heating oil. Divers had to remove a small ladder from this access point in order go below deck.
Two approximately 90-gallon diesel saddle tanks were discovered below deck strapped down in the stern. One was brought to the surface and vacuumed out. The other was approximately 1/3 full and extremely buoyant. Divers were unable to move this saddle tank to an area where it could be vacuumed out on December 20th.
In addition, it was discovered that in addition to the seven 55-gallon drums full of home heating oil, there were approximately thirteen more empy 55-gallon drums. This slowed the dive team down, as they had to sort through all of the drums to find out which need to be pumped out. Only two of the reported seven 55-gallon drums were pumped out on December 20th.
Also, one of the divers ripped his suit on December 20th, which caused further delay while his suit was swapped out.
On December 21st, the remainder of the 55-gallon drums of oil were pumped out. Divers were also able to remove the second 1/3 full saddle tank and pump out its contents.
After this was completed, the interior of the boat was swept from end-to-end with sorbent boom to catch any residual floating oil. The contractor also addressed a small amount of oil which was trapped in ice in the rear interior portion of the boat. The contractor bagged additional debris that was found and loaded it into the roll off box for disposal.
As a final protective measure, the interior of the vessel was lined with sorbent boom, to address any potential small pockets of oil that were not previously discovered or oil which may bleed out from porous surfaces.
A total of 1,500 gallons of water and oil were vacuumed out. In addition 5 cubic yards of oil-contaminated debris were removed.
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