Barge spills diesel fuel into Hudson
By DAN SHAPLEY
POUGHKEEPSIE JOURNAL

(Original publication: December 14, 2005)

A K-Sea Transportation barge spilled about 6,500 gallons of diesel fuel into the Hudson River last week, the Coast Guard said yesterday.

The KTC-55 barge leaked low-sulfur diesel fuel as it was being pushed upriver Thursday by the tug Baltic Sea on a daylong trip from Staten Island to an Exxon Mobil terminal at Albany, Coast Guard spokesman Dan Bender said.

"There was a sheen everywhere," said John Lipscomb, captain of the R. Ian Fletcher, the boat of Riverkeeper, an environmental group based in Tarrytown.

Lipscomb first saw the rainbow sheen near Saugerties at about 4 p.m. He noted the sheen again about seven miles south in Kingston an hour later.

A small crack or hole that has yet to be identified is believed to be the cause of the trickling leak, Bender said.

Shortly after the barge arrived in Albany at about 9:30 p.m., the crew noticed "diesel oil bubbling up along the side of the barge on the port side," Bender said.

Crew members then reported the spill to a national hotline, and a test showed one of the barge's chambers had lost about 6,500 gallons in transit, Bender said.

Mike Hanson, a spokesman for K-Sea Transportation, confirmed much of the Coast Guard's account but didn't comment further.

Environmental damage from the spill should be "minimal," Bender said, because the fuel trickled out over the course of a day and more than 140 miles.

"When (the Department of Environmental Conservation) and Coast Guard responded, no sheen was detected; so it's believed the amount of diesel fuel spilled was dispersed, primarily due to the weather conditions, so no remediation was necessary," said Gabrielle Done, spokeswoman for the DEC.

K-Sea Transportation operates 42 barges and is based in Staten Island. According to its Web site, it is a member of the Responsible Carriers Program of the American Waterways Operators, a voluntary industry program to improve safety and environmental performance.

Thursday's spill was the second fuel spill from a barge on the Hudson River this year. On April 28, a barge spilled 28,000 gallons of gasoline near New Hamburg when it hit a rocky underwater reef.