Environmental groups grateful but vigilant after Key Bridge collapse

When Alice Volpitta watched the video of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse, and the trucks tumbling into the Patapsco River in the darkness, she thought first for the people who had fallen.

And as her mind raced, the Baltimore Harbor Waterkeeper thought of the river.

“What’s on that ship?” thought Volpitta, of environmental nonprofit Blue Water Baltimore.

As it turned out, the massive container ship that struck the bridge carried more than 1 million gallons of fuel and 4,679 shipping containers, 56 of them filled with hazardous materials.

But, for the most part, two weeks after the collapse, environmental advocates are breathing a sigh of relief.

Cleanup officials have maintained the wreck doesn’t pose an environmental threat, and have kept existing fish consumption restrictions the same for that section of the Patapsco. They’ve been testing air and water at the collapse site periodically since the wreck. The first rounds of water testing from the crash site, obtained by the Baltimore Sun, show no evidence of fuel or hazardous materials leaching into the river from aboard the ship.

“It could have been a lot worse,” said Bill Dennison, a marine science professor and interim president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.

In the initial days after the collapse, officials did report a visible sheen on top of the water near the ship, and crews deployed thousands of feet of protective booms. At the time, authorities attributed the sheen to a possible fuel discharge following the collision.

Dennison, who has spent time at the Unified Command center coordinating the collapse response as an adviser, said he heard the sheen could have been a small amount of “hydraulic fluid from the ship’s bow thruster.”

“It’s a very contained, small leak, considering the magnitude of what was carried on the ship,” Dennison said. “They were ready to go to Sri Lanka. They had a full load of fuel.”

Officials from the

Unified Command center overseeing the cleanup and rescue operation declined to specify the nature of the fluid, but said “the safety of first responders and protection of the environment is a priority” for the Coast Guard and the command center.

Crisis was averted by a combination of luck and design, said Stefano Brizzolara, a professor specializing in ship design in Virginia Tech’s aerospace and ocean engineering department.

Modern ships like the Dali, a Singapore-flagged vessel built in 2015, typically locate fuel tanks close to the engine room, which is situated toward the stern. Regulations dictate how far from the sides and bottom of the ship they can be placed, he said.

And since the ship’s bow struck the bridge, fuel wasn’t likely to escape, though pipes in that area carrying lubricating fluid may have been damaged, causing the sheen. And the strike also left the ship miraculously upright.

“It was a lucky accident for the ship. It could have been worse if it was maybe at mid-ship … on just one side,” Brizzolara said. “If large, watertight compartments were flooded with water, the ship could have healed on a side.”

While small leaks often dissipate quickly, Dennison envisioned the nightmare scenario — a massive fuel spill — when he heard about the wreck.

“It would have covered the entire Inner Harbor,

Middle Branch, the marshes, the pilings, the floating wetlands that the National Aquarium is installing,” Dennison said. “Also, the tide would have gone out into the bay, and who knows how far. But presumably, it could have been devastating to the Chesapeake Bay.”

Of the 56 hazmat containers aboard the Dali, 14 were breached during the crash, according to Unified Command. All 56 were accounted for.

“The hazardous materials onboard that spilled from 14 damaged or destroyed containers were lithium metal batteries, soap products, perfume products, or not otherwise specified resin. There is no threat to wildlife,” read a statement from the command center.

“When you hear soap and perfume as potential contaminants, you worry about the soap. Soap can be not very healthy for the environment. So we definitely would be watchful if any of that soap or perfume came out of those hazmat containers,” Dennison said.

But now, amid good sampling results, environmental advisers and advocates have largely turned their attention to the next possible ecological challenge, Dennison said.

“At this point, the attention has turned mostly to the sediments,” he said.

Ungrounding the ship’s bow, which is lodged in the mud, and lifting the fallen bridge from the river bottom is certain to kick up plenty of sediment, Dennison said. And as officials clear the channels for ships, it’s possible they will need to dredge.

And buried within that sediment are legacy contaminants from Baltimore’s industrial past.

To the west of the bridge site sits Wagner’s Point, Curtis Bay and Hawkins Point, which host numerous industrial sites, from coal piers to incinerators and chemical plants.