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11,000 boats need to be cleaned in S.F.

November 18, 2007
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Federal and state officials are trying to devise a plan for the safe cleaning of 11,000 boats fouled by the massive oil spill in San Francisco Bay.

They hope to avoid a situation in which oil from boats ends up back in the bay, The Oakland Tribune reported.

About 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel, a heavy low-grade oil, was dumped Nov. 7 when a Chinese container ship, the Cosco Busan, hit a tower on the Bay Bridge. Oil from the spill has washed up around the bay and on nearby Pacific Ocean beaches.

Cree Partridge, owner of Berkeley Marine Center, said oily boats are concentrated at the large Berkeley Marina and in Sausalito, where hundreds of people live in houseboats. He is advising owners to have their boats hauled out of the water for cleaning.

Partridge is dealing with a problem unfamiliar to him, so he is looking for advice in an area where offshore drilling means frequent spills.

"I've been calling boat yards on the Gulf Coast and the Mississippi area to get help on this," he said. "If all the boat yards in the area put their heads together, we can come up with a method to do it right."  // Copyright 2007 by United Press International

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