Bay Area oil spill: Vessel pilot suspended, feds file suit

Bay Area oil spill: Vessel pilot suspended, feds file suit The quasi-governmental agency in charge of Bay Area pilots on Friday suspended the license of Capt. John Cota, the pilot onboard the COSCO Busan when it spilled nearly 60,000 gallons of fuel oil into San Francisco Bay after sideswiping the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge three weeks ago.
   In a unanimous vote, the six-member Pilot Commission for the Bays of San Francisco, San Pablo and Suisun placed Cota on summary suspension awaiting the results of a self-conducted board investigation into the Nov. 7 incident. The action relieved Cota of active piloting duty, and the board said it had assigned him to non-piloting administrative duties during the pending misconduct investigation.
   While Cota was on hand during the meeting, he did not address the board. His lawyer reiterated Cota's previous statements that the two radar systems aboard the 900-foot-long malfunctioned while Cota was on the bridge.
   'This action should not be viewed as a prejudgment of pilot error, but is protocol when there is reason to believe public interest requires it during an ongoing investigation,' said the board in a statement following the vote.
   The board's Incident Review Committee is conducting the internal investigation. In addition to numerous government investigations into the vessel collision and subsequent clean-up response to the oil spill, Cota has also been named in several lawsuits stemming from the incident.
   A class action suit seeking unspecified damages was filed last week by Bay Area crab fishermen who claim they were economically impacted when the oil spill shut down the impending crab season. The group named Cota as one of numerous defendants.
   On Friday, the U.S. Justice Department filed a federal lawsuit in San Francisco naming Regal Stone Ltd., the Hong Kong-based owner of the vessel; Regal Stone’s insurance company, Shipowners’ Insurance & Guaranty Co.; and Cota as defendants. The federal lawsuit did not specify damages it is seeking, but said the COSCO Busan should be held for possible sale to defray costs to the taxpayers.
   According to state documents, Cota has appeared before the board several times during his 25-year piloting career. Most recently, Cota was reprimanded last summer following the grounding of a bulker near the Antioch docks in February 2006.
   “Capt. Cota had not realized that the vessel was going off track and did nothing to prevent it,” said the report on the incident.
   He also received a 'letter of concern' over a San Francisco Bay incident involving a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier in 2003. In the 10 years prior to that, Cota was also involved in several other incidents and before that had received counseling by commission officials on several occasions.
   Cota was the local pilot assigned to move the COSCO Busan on Nov. 7 from the Port of Oakland to an anchorage on the north side of the bridge. Moving in heavy fog, the vessel appeared to be close to overshooting the opening between the bridge footings when it made an abrupt starboard turn at between 11 and 12 knots, according to recorded telemetry, and then sideswiped one of the bridge's massive concrete tower footings. While the bridge itself was not damaged, the vessel sustained a nearly 180-foot-long gash in its port side that tore open two fuel tanks and spilled the bunker diesel fuel.
   A preliminary U.S. Coast Guard investigation found that found that human error, not mechanical failure, was the likely cause of the incident. The local Coast Guard commander has called into question possible communication errors between the four members of the bridge crew at the time of the incident, including Cota and three Chinese crewmembers.