Secretary Announces Proposed Settlement for November 7, 2007 San Francisco Bay Area Oil Spill

California Attorney General, Kamala D. Harris, Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, U.S. Department of Justice Assistant Attorney General, Ignacia S. Moreno and NOAA Chief of Staff, Margaret Spring, announce the proposed settlement at a San Francisco press conference on September 19, 2011. Photo credit: Chip Demarest, DOI.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar joined representatives from the U.S. Department of Justice, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the State of California and the City and County of San Francisco at a press conference on September 19, 2011 on Treasure Island in San Francisco to announce a proposed settlement of $44.4 million with Regal Stone Limited and Fleet Management Limited, the companies responsible for the container ship M/V Cosco Busan that spilled 53,000 gallons of bunker fuel oil into San Francisco Bay after striking the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge on the morning of November 7, 2007.

The settlement includes natural resource damages, penalties and past costs for responding to the oil spill which fouled 3,367 acres of shoreline within San Francisco Bay and along California’s Pacific coast outside the Golden Gate, killed an estimated 6,849 seabirds and water birds, adversely affected almost a third of the Bay’s herring spawn that winter and resulted in the loss of over 1 million recreational user-days.

The State and federal natural resource trustee agencies, including National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, NOAA, California Department of Fish and Game, California State Lands Commission and East Bay Regional Parks District, have prepared a Draft Damage Assessment and Restoration Plan. This Plan, which will be available for public comment shortly, details proposals for how the $32.3 million in natural resource damages in this settlement will be spent to restore injured natural resource and resource services.

Further reading:

• Department of the Interior Press Release
• Department of Justice Press Release
• San Francisco Chronicle news article (on September 20, 2011)
• Los Angeles Times news article (on September 20, 2011)