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BLACK HORROR: South Korea's once-pristine Mallipo Beach is coated with crude oil, spelling disaster for many local businesses. -- PHOTO: REUTERS
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MALLIPO BEACH (SOUTH KOREA) - SOUTH KOREA yesterday was tallying the environmental and economic cost of its worst oil spill as dead birds coated in oil started to wash up on the shore.
Clean-up efforts off the western coast have intensified every day since Friday's spill, which sent 66,000 barrels of crude oil gushing into the ocean after a supertanker was struck by a wayward barge.
The Hebei Spirit had been due to sail into the port of Daesan to discharge its cargo before the accident.
Using buckets, shovels and even dustpans, some 8,800 volunteers, local residents, civil servants and soldiers were working to remove sticky, foul-smelling masses of crude oil from the shore.
Some 140 ships and five planes were helping to clean the sea off the Taean region along South Korea's west coast, and the Coast Guard warned that the slick, which has already hit 50km of coastline, will spread.
The region is home to the Taean maritime national park, famous for its marine farms, oyster beds and sandy beaches popular with tourists.
It is also an important stopover for migrating birds.
Already, a dozen dead birds have been collected by workers from the Korean Federation for Environmental Movement surveying environmental damage - the first of many more birds and fish expected to fall victim to the spill.
The crude oil has so far hit 160 marine farms out of a total of 445 in the area under threat, said Mr Cho Kyu Sung, an official of Taean county, 90km south-west of Seoul.
The central government in Seoul has yet to provide an estimate of the overall damage, but Mr Cho said the damage 'will be enormous if you include long-term environmental expenses'.
Mr Kuk Eung Bok, the head of the local tourism association, said there are 39 mostly raw-fish restaurants at Mallipo Beach as well as 50 motels and other places of accommodation.
Many seafood farmers and restaurant owners have said their businesses will be lost as a result of the disaster.
More than 20 million tourists a year visit the area, providing an economic boost to the region's 63,800 residents heavily dependent on fishing and seafood farming.
The government has declared parts of Taean county 'a special disaster area' and will release an initial fund of 6 billion won (S$9 million), Minister for Home Affairs Park Myung Jae was quoted as saying by the Yonhap news agency.
Some 10,500 tonnes of crude is estimated to have spilled from the Hong Kong-registered Hebei Spirit, and the cost of cleaning up is expected to far surpass the 96 billion won it cost South Korea to deal with a 1995 spill on the south coast, when about half that much oil was released.
The total cost from the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, which was about three times bigger, was an estimated US$9.5 billion (S$14 billion) including clean-up and settlement of claims.
The clean-up is expected to take more than a month, Maritime Minister Kang Moo Hyun has said.
The government has come under criticism that its slow response to the spill led to the extensive damage.
The Maritime Ministry said in its initial report on Friday that it would likely take about 48 hours for the slick to reach the coast. But crude oil started washing ashore onto the beaches the day after the spill.
'Damage was bigger than expected because of wrong weather forecasts by the authorities,' said Mr Lee Jae Hak of the Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute.
'High waves and strong winds were the main cause. However, the authorities failed fully to take seasonal winds into consideration after booms were set up.'
Mr Lee said it may take months or a year to remove oil from the land surface.
'But it will take four or five years to remove chemicals and other pollutants,' he added.
REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, ASSOCIATED PRESS
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