Developing of a plan to restore damaged areas
Federal and state agencies have started looking at natural resource damage in an effort to come up with a dollar estimate from a March barge and cargo ship collision in the Houston Ship Channel that dumped thousands of gallons of oil into Galveston Bay.
“You’ve got all kinds of different wildlife that could be impacted,” Chip Wood, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist, told The Galveston County Daily News. “You’ve got marshes, you’ve got sand beach, you’ve got recreational issues, so it’s quite an extensive evaluation.”
The assessment could take years and will include developing of a plan to restore damaged areas, putting the plan in place and getting the party responsible for the damage to pay for it, Wood said.
No one was hurt in the March 22 accident that still is being examined by the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board, but nearly 170,000 gallons of heavy fuel oil spilled into the busy waterway between Texas City and Galveston and then into the Gulf of Mexico. Traces of the oil were found as far as 200 miles down the Texas coast.
Wood said his agency also is working with the National Park Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, the Texas General Land Office and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
“We go out and look at both an environmental perspective, the impacts of the oil on biological communities and organisms, as well as the recreational use that was impaired as a result of the spill,” said Don Pitts, with Texas Parks and Wildlife.