It was 20 years ago Tuesday that the tanker Julie N crashed int the bridge connecting Portland and South Portland, spilling 180,000 gallons of oil into the Fore River in the worst oil spill in Maine’s history.
On Sept. 27, 1996, the American-owned, Liberian-registered Julie N was headed for the inner harbor with a load of nearly 9 million gallons of refined oil products when the accident occurred at midmorning. The 560-foot ship, which had only ten feet of clearance as it passed through, first struck the bridge abutment of the South Portland side.
A federal investigator attributed the crash to an error by local tanker pilot James Mooney, who issued the wrong command.
“The pilot freely admitted that he inadvertently asked for hard left instead of hard right, and the timing and limited space of the bridge did not allow him to get the ship under control in time to avoid a collision,” the investigator said at the time.
The impact left a huge gash in the port side of the Julie N, spilling 180,000 gallons of heavy fuel oil and diesel into the Fore River, which then Gov. Angus King witnessed firsthand as he toured the scene by boat.
“Oh yeah there’s it is — there’s the hole, right at the waterline,” King said on the tour. “Damn it all.”
The spill was contained primarily to the Fore River, but approximately $40 million was spent on cleaning up 14 miles of contaminated shoreline. The Coast Guard said at the time that nearly 80 percent of the spilled oil was recovered. Much of the rest stayed west of the bridge, toward the marshes near the Portland Jetport and away from Casco Bay and the islands.
Portland Harbor was closed, and fishing and shellfish harvesting was banned in parts of Casco Bay and the Fore River for more than a month.
The damaged span, known as as the “Million Dollar Bridge,” was replaced a year later with the Casco Bay Bridge, which now offers twice as much clearance.
