Port of San Juan's Mystery Spill Returns

 

The long-running mystery spill at the Port of San Juan is back, but this time, the Coast Guard has found the culprit and implemented a solution. 

On April 11, Station San Juan conducted a patrol in San Juan Harbor and discovered oil pollution in the water between piers 2 and 3. The Coast Guard discovered an aging, badly corroded steel pipe that was slowly leaking heavy black oil into the harbor. It is far from the first such occurrence in the port, so the Coast Guard response team collected samples from the pipe to be analyzed at the Coast Guard Marine Safety Lab for comparison against past spills. 

To deal with the leak, the service tapped the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund and contracted Clean Harbor Environmental Services as the spill response contractor. On April 15, Clean Harbor crews plugged the aging pipe and placed containment booms around it.  

On May 5, Sector San Juan received the lab results on the spill samples. The material had similar characteristics to the oil from the spills at Pier 9 (in 2024) and Pier 4 (in 2021), indicating a common source of petroleum oil for all three.

Sector San Juan and Clean Harbor crews continue to monitor the site and replace the sorbent material as needed. The interagency response team plans to conduct a subsurface assessment to look for a possible source, and will come up with a plan to clean up any remaining free oil to reduce the odds of future leakage on the waterfront. 

“The source of the oil discharge is being contained and, while contained, will allow normal port operations to continue at Piers 2 and 3 as our investigation and response efforts continue,” Lt. Cmdr. Ray Lopez, Coast Guard Sector San Juan Incident Management Division chief.