Larry W4CSC wrote:

I would have thought the proper response to the leaking boat the FIRST
time it was discovered to pollute the river, several times ago, would
have been to simply put a big sheet of plastic UNDER the boat
suspended on its lift that would catch any oil dripping or drizzling
from it and order the owner to get a mechanic to fix it.

Kind of tough with a 130 foot crabber.

Silly me. I thought someone cared about the environment.

It does seem to be a variable ethic. I have seen the oil spill nazis go
berserk at the Valdez oil terminal when, literally, a single drop of
hydraulic oil from an assist tug created a tiny circle of sheen on
mirror calm water alongside the dock.

At the same time the water at the city dock across the way was literally
rainbowed with bilge oil and runoff from hydraulic leaks on the
recreational and fishing boats. Not a soul was bothered by the sheen on
the water in that area.

I am not a tree hugging anti oil, anti boating, luddite environmentalist
by any means but I would like to see some balance in how the pollution
nazis respond. On ships we are getting gray hair worrying about losing
our licenses or getting jailed over putting a half ounce in the water
due to an accident or mechanical failure while thousands of little
one-gallon spills that are not newsworthy enough to attract politicians
and ecofascists are simply ignored as were the spills you and I described.

Part of the problem is the insane position taken by the enforcers. They
say "spill a drop and die - fail to report a spill and rot in jail -
report a spill and lose your job or go bankrupt - all the while they
will not provide places to easily dispose of oil waste, do not respond
to small spills at all, or when they do show up, automatically assume a
cop/criminal relationship no matter what the circumstance of the spill.

It has made for an adversarial relationship between those who might
however innocently put oil in the water and those in a position to
quickly and economically remove that oil. People are afraid to call for
help for fear of financial disaster ... who wants to lose their house or
be fined tens of thousands of dollars for a single stupid mistake? No
one does and that translates into thousands of small spills that go
unreported and untreated. I believe those spills are cumulatively more
dangerous and do more damage to the environment than most of the spills
that are large enough to attract news cameras and politicians.

Rick