Suin' 'Bout the Schlock of the Bay

San Francisco sues over oil spill, South Korea spill cleanup ongoing

Posted at 12:54 PM on 11 Dec 2007

The city of San Francisco has sued the owners of the container ship that hit the iconic Bay Bridge last month and blackened the bay with 58,000 gallons of oil. The "wholly avoidable" accident caused "more injury to the San Francisco Bay Area than we can yet begin to fathom," says the suit, which seeks damages for costs ranging from overtime pay of employees to lost tourism revenue to the deaths of at least 2,200 birds. Crab fisherfolk are also negotiating a payout from the ship's owners, as the spill caused a two-week shutdown of commercial crab season. In other oil-spill updates, cleanup is ongoing over the spill that resulted from the collision of a tanker and a barge in the Yellow Sea off of South Korea on Friday. As of yesterday, less than 10 percent of the oil had been recovered, and some 6,325 acres of seafood farms had been destroyed or severely damaged.

sources:  Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Associated Press