NEAH BAY — A response and rescue tug at the mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca isn’t good enough for a state oil spill watchdog organization.
A state-of-the art, heavy-weather tug with firefighting capability stationed at Neah Bay 12 months a year?
That’s good enough said the Washington State Oil Spill Advisory Council.
The council released its report to the governor, Legislature and Department of Ecology on Monday.
A powerful tug year-round at Neah Bay was one of its top priorities.
No tug guards the Strait now, and none will do so until November or perhaps after January.
When a tug does arrive, it’s likely to be the Barbara Foss, a 4,300-horsepower, 126-foot-long twin-propeller vessel that did duty at Neah Bay until 2004.
It will replace the Lauren Foss, an 8,200-horsepower, 150-foot-long tug that served there starting two years ago.
Neither tug, says Mike Doherty, is good enough.
Doherty, a Clallam County commissioner who serves on the oil spill advisory council, says the report’s top recommendation is “having a permanent, year-round, multitasking tug stationed at Neah Bay in place of the 35-year-old Barbara Foss and others.”
A question of money
However, there’s the question of how much such a tug would cost and who would pay for it.
A Foss Maritime Services vessel was expected to take up station at Neah Bay last month for the start of the winter storm season.
But Foss elected not to extend the contract because of money it could make along the Gulf Coast of the United States, in Russia and in the Middle East.
Foss had charged Ecology $6,000 a day, or $1.4 million a year, for the Lauren Foss.
After the company opted out of its contract, Crowley Maritime Corp. of Oakland, Calif., bid to place a tug at Neah Bay for $22,500 a day, or $5.24 million a year.
Ecology rejected the offer.
The Barbara Foss is expected to return to Neah Bay in November and stay through December — when it may leave again.
The storm season on the Strait lasts through May.
