Deleware oil spill
...erring oil from the leaking tank to another tank on board. The leak was stopped within an hour. The cause of the spill was still under investigation. The tanker, the Athos I, registered in the Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus, was carrying 325,000 barrels of oil from Venezuela, the ship was owned by Greek shipping company Tsakos Shipping and Trading SA. The nearly 750-foot-long ship, built in 1983, was last out of the water for maintenance in April. The ship had never before spilled oil. It was the worst spill on the Delaware River since 1995, when strong wind pushed a tanker away from a refinery dock in West Deptford, NJ, snapping a fuel line that spilled 40,000 gallons. In 1989, a tanker ran aground near Claymont, Del., spilling 300,000 gallons of heating oil into the river. About one million barrels of oil come through the Port of Philadelphia each day. After learning this, I am extremely relieved that the spill wasn’t even worse. Just imagine the how a larger spill could affect not only the animals but even us and our water. No wildlife has been found contaminated in Delaware waters yet, and there have been no Delaware shorelines affected either, the situation still remaining in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. They say that the oil spread for five hours! The latest news is that Coast Guard officials increasingly believe that one of the worst oil spills in Delaware River history happened when a Greek tanker struck a hidden hazard just a few hundred feet from its destination. How could a steady stream of giant tankers, following the same heavily trafficked route as the Athos I, manage to miss an object big enough to rip a six-foot gash and a two-foot hole in the steel hull of the Athos I? Or did something land in the river just a day or so before the Athos I arrived? Whatever it is, it's still somewhere in the river muck. One possible suspect is an 11-ton propeller that has been missing since it fell off an Army Corps dredge boat on April 23. Well, I’m pretty sure that’s it, it surprising that it took them this long to bring up something like this. The heavy crude oil spilled by the Athos I will remain lodged in the mu...