Mile 200.0 - July 2008 Oil Spill

July 2008 Oil Spill

in July 2008 a 600-foot tanker the Tintomara collided with the towboat a tugboat the Mel Oliver pulling an oil-laden barge underneath the Crescent City Connection, and broke the barge in half, spilling 282,000 gallons of No. 6 heavy oil into the river. The Mel Oliver tuboat was to blame. The captain was away from the helm, 1,000 miles away in fact, and the apprentice had fallen asleep at the wheel. Literally. If this sounds preposterous, it’s not. It’s plain stupid. Mark Twain was turning over in his grave with vehement rage when he heard about it. The story would surely be included in Life on the Mississippi if Twain ever wrote an update, but unfortunately it was no laughing matter. The thick industrial fuel pouring from the barge could be smelled for miles in city neighborhoods up and down the river, even as hundreds of cleanup workers struggled to contain the hundreds of thousands of gallons. A oil sludge coated the Mississippi River for nearly 100 miles from the center of the city to the Gulf of Mexico. There were reports of fish and bird kills in sensitive marsh areas downstream. This shut down the river to commercial traffic, and took place frighteningly near the City of Algiers Water Intake. It was the worst oil spill ever on the Mississippi. The circumstances leading to the catastrophe are frustratingly lame. The captain of the Mel Oliver tugboat -– an employee of DRD Towing -- had driven to Illinois to check on a rumor that his girlfriend was unfaithful, leaving an apprentice without a full master’s license at the helm. The apprentice had previously been fired twice by DRD Towing for sleeping on the job. Immediately after the crash, a crew member found him slumped over the steering gear and unresponsive, according to court records. His license didn’t allow him to steer without supervision from a captain. The Liberian-flagged Tintomara was cleared of any fault. The judge wrote that the Tintomara, which had the right-of-way on the river that day, shouldn’t be held responsible because its last-minute maneuvers to avoid the crash failed.