A marine spill expert says Alexander & Baldwin’s new response plan to keep molasses from its Maui sugar operations out of Hawaii’s waters fails to adequately address issues related to pipeline inspections and doesn’t fully consider the environmental consequences of a large-scale discharge.

Rick Steiner is a marine conservation biologist who specializes in oil spill response. He took a lead role in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska, and has worked as a consultant to fishing groups and others in the Gulf of Mexico after the 2009 blowout of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

Steiner has also analyzed the threat of oil spills in Hawaii, co-authoring a study in 1997 that found “complacency, indifference and arrogance” among government regulators and industry officials when it came to spill prevention and response here.

Civil Beat asked Steiner to review Alexander & Baldwin’s molasses spill prevention and response plan, which is the first of its kind for the state. While Steiner calls Alexander & Baldwin’s plan a move in the right direction, he says there are a series of improvements that should be made.

Steiner’s review found a lack of detail related to issues such as environmental impacts, financial liability and inspection of pipelines.

The plan should have specific explanations for what can happen to wildlife when molasses is dumped into the water, he said. There should also be plans for how to save wildlife rather than just cleaning up the carcasses.

He added that he was surprised that officials here were taken aback by the extent of the ecological effects when Matson Navigation Co. dumped more than a quarter million gallons of molasses into Honolulu Harbor in September from a faulty pipeline.

“There have been molasses spills elsewhere in the world,” Steiner said. “This is not the only place where this has happened.”

Last July a cattle feed factory in Mexico killed 500 tons of fish after spilling into a lagoon. And in Hawaii there have been several reported molasses spills over the years, including a 50,000 gallon discharge in Kahului Harbor in 2003.

Matson’s recent spill killed tens of thousands of fish as well as large swaths of sensitive coral reef. It also spawned a major response effort that included several state agencies, the U.S. Coast Guard and Environmental Protection Agency.

While Matson has halted its molasses shipments, Alexander & Baldwin is hoping to continue sending the product to the mainland, which is why it developed the spill prevention and response plan for its subsidiary Kahului Trucking & Storage. That company stores molasses from Alexander & Baldwin’s sugar operations on Maui and pumps it through pipelines onto barges for transport.

But Steiner says the main shortcoming in Alexander & Baldwin’s molasses plan is related to its pipeline, and more specifically, the inspection of that equipment.

The company said it simply can’t inspect certain parts of its pipelines because they are encased in concrete. Instead, the plan calls for visual inspections of the accessible portions of the line to monitor its condition and measure its thickness.

This is unacceptable to Steiner, who says there is technology that can clean, repair and inspect the pipelines from the inside. These pipeline inspection gauges, or pigs as they’re commonly referred to, are standard operating equipment in many industries in which pipelines are used.

“That’s one of the biggest faults I see in there,” Steiner said. “It needs to be corrected.”

An Alexander & Baldwin spokesperson said the company is refining its plan and is open to suggestions for how to make improvements.

Where the company succeeds, however, is its explanation of how serious a molasses spill can be if there is a large discharge into the environment. Steiner lauded the plan for not understating the severity of a major molasses spill, and for acknowledging that clean-up efforts are limited once a leak occurs.

“Those are very honest statements,” Steiner said. “I really wish oil companies were that honest.”

He said there shouldn’t be any excuse for companies not to have contingency plans in place for the products they ship, especially a potentially dangerous substance like molasses, saying there are “1,001 ways these systems can fail.”

Matson did not have any plans in place for a molasses spill, and has yet to develop one as the company is considering getting out of the business altogether.

Steiner noted that a lack of regulations — such as those that are in place for petroleum-based products — is a convenient excuse for companies to avoid having contingency plans in place for spills. It’s just a shame that it took a disaster to highlight the dearth of rules, he said.

“What governments require through regulation and statute is one thing,” Steiner said. “But the other thing is corporate responsibility. Matson is a big company. They know enough about financial responsibility and corporate responsibility that they need to have a contingency plan for whatever goes wrong.”

Litigation and New Laws

Matson has said it will take responsibility for the September spill, and pay for the initial clean-up costs. Beyond that Matson has been careful not to make any other promises. A spokesman for the company was unavailable for comment last week.

Matson is under investigation for possible federal Clean Water Act violations, which could carry fines, and the company has been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury. There’s also a movement underway to force Matson to pay for any environmental restoration that might need to occur.

Under the federal Superfund law, Matson would not be on the hook for the long-term effects of the spill because molasses is not considered a hazardous substance. Initial reports from the Department of Land and Natural Resources are that more than a thousand colonies of coral have been killed by the molasses in addition to the more visible fish kill.

U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz is working on legislation that he hopes will close the gap in the Superfund law, but it’s doubtful that even if those rules were approved that Matson would be liable for any restoration costs related to the September spill.

But the state is also looking at its own options for long-term cost recovery and restoration.

Hawaii Attorney General David Louie is in the process of hiring outside counsel to help in case there is environmental litigation as a result of the spill.

Anne Lopez, special assistant to the attorney general, told Civil Beat that her agency hasn’t yet finalized an offer, but that the hope is the attorneys will help analyze the state’s options when it comes to recovering costs from Matson.

“I don’t want to say the intent is to sue anybody, but I think what we want to do is look at what the issues are,” said Anne Lopez. “When you look at complex litigation you have to determine whether or not there really are any damages and what the costs are to try and recover those damages.”

State Rep. Chris Lee, who chairs the House Energy and Environmental Protection Committee, wants to make sure that any funds recovered from Matson go to the proper restoration initiatives, such as to rehabilitate coral or restore fish populations.

Lee said he intends to introduce legislation that will set up the mechanism to do this. He also wants to commission the University of Hawaii and other agencies to review the state’s spill disaster and response policies to make sure those contingency plans account for materials like molasses.

The last time procedures were reviewed was the mid-1990s, he said, and the report only revolved around Hawaii’s readiness to respond to oil spills.

“While this caught everybody off guard, it shouldn’t have. We should have had procedures in place, knowing for years and year that we were moving this material,” Lee said. “We have a responsibility to make sure the area is cleaned up, our resources are restored and any damages caused are fixed by those who have a responsibility for that to happen.”

A third component he’s hoping will be addressed in the upcoming session, which begins Jan. 15, is related to who has responsibility to act once a leak, or potential for a leak, is detected.

Both the Hawaii Department of Transportation — the agency in charge of the state’s harbors — and Matson knew the company had a faulty molasses pipeline more than a year before it discharged 233,000 gallons into the harbor.

Lee said the idea is to develop a system that pins down who should be on the hook once a problem, such as the leaking molasses line, is found to then ensure it is fixed.

But even if additional layers of bureaucracy provide stricter oversight of a once-unregulated industry, many questions linger about whether enough is being done administratively to stave off future spills.

DOT is now requiring harbor tenants to submit spill response plans and inspection reports for any pipelines companies use to transport potentially dangerous goods. But beyond that it’s hard to tell what else the DOT and other state agencies plan to do to improve oversight of the harbors.

DOT Spokeswoman Caroline Sluyter said in an email that her agency is working with harbor tenants to make sure they’re complying with their lease agreements, particularly when it comes to maintaining and inspecting pipelines. Before the molasses spill, DOT did little to monitor those agreements.

Both DOT and Matson knew the company had a faulty molasses pipeline more than a year before it discharged 233,000 gallons into the harbor.

“Lease agreements are being reviewed and will be updated if needed at the time of renewal,” Sluyter said. “The review of what happened (is) ongoing and as such no reports are available.”

Sluyter did not provide specifics on what the agency’s next steps would be to make sure Hawaii’s waters are safe from pollutants nor did she provide any details about how the state plans to protect itself from future liability.

She also said DOT officials likely would not be available for interviews to discuss these matters.