ThreeBeats Media

Detainees at Suffolk County House of Correction react to an immigrant rights rally.

BOSTON– As a new shift of prison workers parked their pick-ups and strode into Suffolk County jail last Sunday afternoon, they walked past a group of activists who prayed for the release of federal immigration detainees locked inside the 11-story jail in Boston’s South Bay.

The May 6 prayer vigil, attended by a spirited crowd of about 40 local church-goers and clergy, was organized by the New Boston Sanctuary Movement, an interfaith coalition of religious leaders and lay people who support immigrant rights.

“We are here to offer a community of support to the immigrant community and to establish a kind of society where we wouldn’t have this question of documentation and these divisions,” said Peter Lowber, who sits on the group’s steering committee and is a member of Arlington Street Church.

Suffolk County House of Correction is one of three state prisons that rents a portion of its beds to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. The agency uses the space to hold undocumented immigrants as they await deportation proceedings.

ICE has been housing detainees at the Suffolk County House of Correction since July 2003, according to ICE spokesman Ross Feinstein. The agency can hold as many as 235 detainees in the prison, which has 1,892 beds. As of last week, ICE was holding 235 “illegal aliens on administrative immigration violations,” meaning they violated federal immigration laws known as the Immigration and Nationality Act, Feinstein wrote in an email.

While he didn’t have specific data for Suffolk jail, Feinstein said nationwide statistics show ICE detainees are held for an average of 26.6 days before being deported. In 2011, ICE deported a total of 396,906 individuals, according to the agency’s removal statistics.

Since May 2009, the New Boston Sanctuary Movement has organized prayer vigils on a side-street outside the prison. Lowber said each vigil brings its own surprises, particularly when the group makes contact with prisoners.

Sunday’s vigil began with prayer, singing and a somber reading of the names of 123 immigrant prisoners who Lowber said died during detention at U.S. prisons. Then the group marched along a sidewalk and up onto a highway overpass where they faced one of the windowed prison walls.

As the protestors waved American and Guatemalan flags and chanted “Free undocumented people now!,” prisoners began to appear in the barred windows, waving white towels and t-shirts and pounding their hands against the plexiglass. Then messages from the prisoners unfurled– a single letter scrawled in red on each piece of yellow paper, spelling out: “Free Us” and “Help.”

A woman wearing a Guatemalan soccer shirt, who took the megaphone and started chanting “No More Deportations!” in Spanish, said her fiance was locked inside. According to Lowber, occasionally relatives who are undocumented and afraid to enter the prison for visiting hours might catch a glimpse of a loved one through the prison window.

“This is why we do it,” he said. “To make this connection with the people inside.”

The group plans to reassemble for another vigil outside the prison in November.

“We’ll be there until the deportations and the detentions stop,” Lowber said. “But unfortunately, I think we’ll be there for a while.”

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After discussing photojournalism with my Lasell students last week, I felt an itch to get behind the camera. So on Saturday I geared up to shoot a climate action event in downtown Waltham, where Brandeis and Bentley students joined local faith leaders in urging their community to get “moving beyond fossil fuels.” After a short rally, the group moved by foot, bicycle and commuter rail to a larger rally in Boston. Both Moving Planet events were part of an international climate action day involving 2,000 similar-themed rallies in 175 countries. My camera was drawn to the colorful posters that best illustrate the passion behind this movement. Here are a few photos from the day:

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By BECKY W. EVANS

In my first summer break as a college educator, I’ve used my flexible schedule to take part in some unique opportunities for mentoring students in non-traditional settings. Two weeks after grading my last exam for Lasell College, I traveled to the flood-ravaged Crow Reservation in southeastern Montana. Here, I participated in the Eco-Stewards Program, which helps young adults explore the connections between environmental stewardship and their faith. As a journalist, my role was to teach students multimedia storytelling skills so they could document the stories of the people and landscapes of Big Sky Country.

Student reporters conduct an interview for a multimedia slideshow. Photo credit: The Eco-Stewards Program

My crash course in digital photography and audio recording recruited a handful of students curious about multimedia journalism. Each morning, we met to discuss strategies for asking compelling questions, photographing defining moments and capturing descriptive sound. At the end of the day, it was a pleasure to unpack the treasures the students had collected with my crude recording equipment and bottom-of-the-line digital camera. The resulting 8-minute multimedia slideshow is well worth your time.

The author takes notes during a guided hike through the Montana prairie. Photo credit: The Eco-Stewards Program

Since returning from Montana, I have served as editor of the Eco-Stewards blog, helping students craft reflections about the Montana program and their summer internships at organic farms and summer camps. Now that my students are scattered around the country, we use email to discuss revisions and exchange drafts. Communicating virtually about the writing process has its challenges, but it’s a skill I acquired this winter while teaching my first online writing course for Boston University.

In addition to editing blog posts, my school-free summer has allowed more time for reading them. A favorite on my summer blog reading list is Pedal Posts from the Road, which chronicles the biking adventures of New England Climate Summer riders as they travel from town to town to support and promote community efforts to reduce fossil fuel consumption. I’ve witnessed how they are living out these values: I offered one of the riders a lift in my car when I heard her bicycle was in the shop, but she declined, saying she was dedicated to a carbon-free summer and would walk instead. She and her friends from Team MAss Acceleration did, however, accept my offer of showering facilities. So, during their week-long stay in Waltham, they biked to my apartment one afternoon for some well-earned showers and naps. While the college students refueled with pretzels and cookies, we traded blogging tips and discussed the challenges of educating a divided public about climate change. At the end of their visit, I hopped on my commuter bike and joined MAss Acceleration (see their team photo here) for a short, peaceful ride along the Charles River.

The last week of July brought me to another river– the Connecticut– where I spent three days paddling, swimming, cooking and camping in New Hampshire and Vermont with a group of high-schoolers from two summer camps. Our 30-mile stretch of the Connecticut (which I learned comes from the Mohegan word “Quinnehtukqut” meaning “beside the long tidal river”) afforded bucolic views of dairy farms, cornfields and covered bridges and abundant wildlife sightings: bald eagles, belted kingfishers and bank swallows in the blue skies above and water lilies, juvenile fish and snails in the sunlit waters below. At the beginning of our journey, I had led a discussion about some of the threats to the health of the river ecosystem, among them: human waste from sewage overflows; pesticides, animal waste and other agricultural runoff; chemical waste from local industries; and the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, where a radioactive fish was just found nine miles upstream from the plant.

Paddling our way down the Connecticut River from Bradford, VT to Pompanoosuc, VT. Photo credit: Camp Wilmot

While paddling down the Connecticut, my thoughts returned to my earlier summer adventures in Montana, where rivers played a major theme. The flooding of the Little Bighorn River in June– the result of unseasonable, heavy rains– paralyzed Crow Agency for days, closing highways and bridges, damaging homes and businesses, and shuttering the hospital. The high waters also canceled our Eco-Stewards canoe trip down the Little Bighorn.

Though the waters receded somewhat during my two-week visit, we kept a wary eye on the snow-capped mountains in the western sky, fearing that warm temperatures would melt the snow cap and send the rivers surging anew. The swollen banks of the Yellowstone River were noticeable as we drove out to Yellowstone National Park on Interstate 90, which hugs the river. On our return trip, we picnicked on a bend in the river with views of the still snow-covered Absaroka Range to the west and a stand of cottonwood trees to the east.

A perfect place for a picnic on the Yellowstone River. Photo credit: ThreeBeats Media

A few weeks after our picnic, when I had returned to Massachusetts, the news media reported a major oil spill on the Yellowstone River in Laurel, a town about 60 miles east of our picnic site. An Exxon Mobil pipeline buried below the river had ruptured and dumped an estimated 42,000 gallons of crude oil into the river. The oil spread at least 30 miles downstream, fouling the shoreline, killing fish and oiling birds, among them a bald eagle and a Cooper’s hawk. As an environmental journalist who covers oil spills, I wish I had still been in Montana when the pipe burst. As it was, I was not as fortunate as Matthew Brown, an environment reporter for the Associated Press who had planned a Yellowstone fishing trip for the Fourth of July weekend. When he learned of the July 1 spill, he scrapped his plans and headed to the scene to question Exxon officials and interview affected residents. His aggressive coverage won him a $500 reporting award for the AP’s “Beat of the Week.”

Though I missed my opportunity to cover the Yellowstone oil spill, there is still plenty of reporting to be done on an oil spill closer to home: the Bouchard 120 oil spill in Buzzards Bay. In May, a federal appeals court issued a major ruling related to the spill, which dumped up to 98,000 gallons of oil (more than twice as much as the Yellowstone spill) into this productive estuary on Massachusetts’ southeastern coast. I’m planning to spend the rest of my “summer school” researching the impact of this ruling, so let me get you up to speed.

In April 2003, the Tug Evening Tide was towing the Bouchard 120 oil barge up Buzzards Bay, when the barge drifted out of the shipping lanes and struck a submerged reef, tearing a twelve-foot wide gash in the bottom of its hull. For days, thick, No. 6 fuel oil bound for a Cape Cod power plant leaked instead into the fragile estuary, polluting more than 90 miles of shoreline. Cormorants, loons and terns were among the feathered casualties.

An oiled bird from the Bouchard 120 spill. Photo credit: Massachusetts Natural Resource Damages Assessment and Restoration

The Bouchard 120 barge leaking oil into Buzzards Bay. Photo credit: Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection

A year after the spill, state legislators passed a score of safety provisions– known as the 2004 Massachusetts Oil Spill Prevention Act–aimed at preventing another devastating spill in Buzzards Bay. One of the provisions required both single-hulled barges (such as the Bouchard 120) and double-hulled barges carrying 6,000 or more barrels of oil to hire tug escorts to guide them up the long, narrow bay. The tugboat, operated by a federally-licensed pilot with knowledge of the shallow waters, would escort the barge safely from the mouth of the Westport River to the Cape Cod Canal. In the event of an emergency, such as a barge drifting out of the shipping lanes, this additional tugboat would be on hand to push the barge back on course. Sound reasonable? Stay with me.

Two years after the state law was enacted, it was challenged in court by the Coast Guard and the oil transport industry. A federal judge ruled in their favor, determining that the Coast Guard had federal supremacy when setting regulations for oil transport in Buzzards Bay. The following year, 2007, the Coast Guard issued its own safety rules for oil transport in the bay. The Coast Guard rule required tug escorts for single-hulled barges, but not for double-hulled barges. The agency argued that double-hulled barges were less likely than single-hulled barges to rupture if they ran aground given their added layer of protection. In the following years, Massachusetts battled the Coast Guard and oil transport industry in court, trying to reinstate its tougher protections for Buzzards Bay.

Now we return to the recent appeals court decision. Here, the court ruled that the Coast Guard, when it decided that double-hulled barges should be exempt from tug escorts, failed to conduct an environmental impact statement as required under the National Environmental Policy Act. Now, the Coast Guard must show proof that no environmental harm will result if double-hulled barges navigate the bay without tug escorts. While the Coast Guard conducts its study, the 2004 state law is back in place. And so far, double-hulled barges are adapting. “To our knowledge, all units have complied with the newly reinstated state requirements and have hired a tug escort,” according to Edmund Coletta, spokesman for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection.

Becky W. Evans teaches writing and communication courses at Lasell College and Boston University. She is a freelance multimedia journalist who covers the environment, commercial fisheries and immigration while living in Massachusetts and traveling abroad. She is passionate about teaching journalism in both traditional and non-traditional settings.

By BECKY W. EVANS

Judge Brassard hears from a plaintiffs' attorney during a final fairness hearing at Suffolk County Superior Court.

On the eve of the eighth anniversary of the Bouchard 120 oil spill, a state judge has granted final approval for a $12.4 million class action settlement that requires Bouchard Transportation Co., Inc. to pay damages to hundreds of Mattapoisett property owners whose beaches were contaminated with No. 6 fuel oil from the April 27, 2003 spill in Buzzards Bay.

Judge Raymond J. Brassard signed off on what he called a “carefully detailed” and “thoroughly negotiated” settlement during a final fairness hearing held Monday at Suffolk County Superior Court in Boston. No objections were heard, because none were filed by class members.

The parties reached a settlement in January, nine months after a two-week jury trial determined that Bouchard owed varying amounts in damages to eight Mattapoisett property owners who lost the right to use or enjoy their beaches for months or years after a Bouchard barge spilled up to 98,000 gallons of oil into the bay. The trial was part of a broader class-action lawsuit involving 1,104 Mattapoisett property owners.

Settlement payments, which range from about $5,000 to $30,000 per property, were calculated using a complex formula. To date, 873 class members– nearly 80 percent of the class– have submitted claims for settlement payments, said plaintiffs’ attorney Martin E. Levin of Stern, Shapiro, Weissberg & Garin LLC.

“We anticipate that the number will continue to rise as the summer goes forward,” Levin said. The final deadline to file a claim is July 1. According to the settlement, if a portion of the $12.375 million maximum distribution amount is not claimed, Bouchard does not have to pay that portion.

Levin said the case is the first environmental class action lawsuit to be certified and settled in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In the event of another major oil spill in Massachusetts waters, Levin said he hopes the court would “look to it as a precedent.”

The lawsuit was filed on September 29, 2004 by class representatives Kim DeLeo, Francis Haggerty and Earl Cornish. Levin praised his clients for initiating the suit and “following through” so that the people of Mattapoisett could be fairly compensated for the lost use and enjoyment of their beaches.

After the hearing, a handful of class members gathered outside the courtroom for the last time, exchanging hugs and victorious smiles.

“We fought the good fight, and we did it for our kids,” said Joseph DeLeo, who carried his young daughter on his shoulders.

By BECKY W. EVANS

Like painter Georgia O’Keeffe and photographer Ansel Adams, I found the light in New Mexico captivating, whether shining on an adobe wall, an evening songbird or a juniper bush in the high desert. After days of hiking in the hills outside Taos, I delighted in viewing O’Keeffe’s paintings of the same sprawling vistas in a new exhibit at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe. O’Keeffe, who lived in New Mexico from 1949 to 1984, said she often featured the blue sky in her paintings “as one is apt to do when one seems to have more sky than earth in one’s world.”

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After a quiet fall, ThreeBeats is back with three audio slideshows that will take you on a musical, cultural and spiritual journey from South Africa to Southern Appalachia to Nashiville, Tenn. It was here in Music City that journalist Becky W. Evans learned multimedia storytelling techniques during a workshop sponsored by the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute. She took these skills on the road and experimented with them during her travels through the Southeastern United States and South Africa. Please enjoy the show, by clicking here or visiting the “Multimedia Projects” tab above.

By Becky W. Evans

Bergsig Primary is a small, rural farm school serving 61 students whose parents work on farms in Winterton, South Africa. The students line up by grade each morning and afternoon to sing songs such as the national anthem, which incorporates five of the country’s 11 official languages: Xhosa, Zulu, Sesotho, Afrikaans and English. Last week, I visited Bergsig (meaning “mountain view” in Afrikaans) with my husband, who taught English at the school 17 years ago. He was invited to join the students for their morning songs, while I kept busy with my camera.

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Life in Khetani township

WINTERTON, South Africa– Long rows of rainbow-colored huts sit neatly on a golden field like crayons inside a Crayola box. The tiny, concrete structures shelter large Zulu families who live in poverty on the outskirts of Winterton, a rural farming town in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province. The government-built township is home to more than 6,000 Zulu, the country’s largest ethnic group. Many residents here suffer from unemployment, hunger and diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS.

The Isibani Community Centre, a compound of cheerful, mustard-colored buildings located across the street from the township, is trying to improve health, education and self-sufficiency among residents. “Fortunately the lifestyle of the Zulu people is improving, but for many, daily living is an ongoing desperate struggle to simply survive,” says Isibani facility manager Sofi Ntshalintshali.

The non-profit center, staffed mostly with volunteers, offers a mix of programs from food and clothing distribution to HIV/AIDS awareness counseling to day care for children and adults with special needs. Trained caregivers make home visits to sick residents, delivering food and assessing health. Some of the food is grown in the center’s large, shaded garden. Vegetables and seedlings from the garden are sold to residents at affordable prices. The compound includes classrooms, offices, a church, a physical therapy room, a counseling center, a kitchen and bakery, and respite rooms for victims of sexual abuse.

I toured Isibani (meaning “Bring the Light” in Zulu) on a sunny Friday afternoon, a few hours after residents had picked up their weekly food bundles, which include maize donated by local farmers. The center was mostly deserted, though a handful of children were jumping rope on the rusty-red dirt. My camera distracted them, and they posed for a shot, squealing, “Shoot!” I obliged and they crowded around me to view the digital image, which returned a spill of giggles. (Enjoy the slideshow below.)

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By BECKY W. EVANS (reporter.evans@gmail.com)

Copies of the Native Journal are sent down the chute.

RAPID CITY, S.D.– After working two days in the Crazy Horse Memorial newsroom, student journalists watched their Native Journal newspaper come to life Thursday night during a press run at the Rapid City Journal’s printing plant.

Earlier in the day, the students’ multimedia news stories about retired rodeo horses and the making of the newspaper were published online by the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute. The publications are the culmination of a week-long workshop for Native American high school students who want to pursue careers in journalism.

I joined a team of professional journalists from around the country who coached the students through the process of creating the Native Journal. Follow the links below to read two of my students’ articles and to watch a slideshow of the press run.

Following the Photo Guy, By Cheyenna Sherlock

Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation Gives Three Scholarships, By Kaylan Curley

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By BECKY W. EVANS (reporter.evans@gmail.com)

Crazy Horse Memorial, South Dakota

CUSTER, South Dakota– Native American high school students are studying journalism this week under the watchful gaze of Crazy Horse, the young Lakota (Sioux) warrior who was stabbed in the back by a U.S. solider after the government broke an 1868 treaty granting the Sioux ownership of the Black Hills.

The 563-foot Crazy Horse Memorial mountain carving, which is still under construction, was designed by the late sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski. In 1939, Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear asked Boston-born Korczak, who had helped sculpt nearby Mount Rushmore, to carve a statue of Crazy Horse in his sacred Black Hills.

For 34 years, Korczak drilled and blasted the mountain, preparing the site for his massive Crazy Horse sculpture. Since his death in 1982, his widow Ruth and some of their 10 children have continued the project, which is financed through public donations.

“I’m a storyteller in stone,” Korczak says in a documentary that plays regularly at the Crazy Horse Memorial’s orientation center.

I’ve joined a group of journalists and educators who are teaching students here how to sculpt news stories using print, photography and multimedia journalism techniques. The workshop, sponsored by the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute, aims to prepare Native American students for careers in journalism. Over the next two days, the high school juniors and seniors will produce a newspaper edition and online publication.

At the beginning of the workshop, keynote speaker Gerard Baker of the National Park Service challenged the students to become a generation of “new warriors” who use their storytelling skills to tell positive stories about their people.

By BECKY W. EVANS (reporter.evans@gmail.com)

The view of Buzzards Bay from Round Hill Beach in Dartmouth.

BOSTON– In the two weeks since new oil spill prevention rules went into effect, Massachusetts has dispatched four tugboats to shadow oil barges traveling through Buzzards Bay. A fifth so-called “tug escort” is scheduled for today, said Edmund Coletta, spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection.

“There is no indication that any ships are transiting without calling us at this point,” he said.

Coletta said the tug escorts, which were designed to protect the sensitive bay from oil spill disasters such as the Bouchard 120 spill, will continue as scheduled despite a lawsuit that members of the oil transport industry filed Wednesday against Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and DEP Commissioner Laurie Burt.

“We have gotten a copy of the lawsuit … and are still reviewing it,” Coletta said.

In the civil lawsuit, the plaintiffs argue that the state’s rules for tug escorts and state-licensed pilots, as described under the state’s 2009 Oil Spill Act, are “invalid” because they conflict with federal law. The five plaintiffs include American Waterways Operators, International Association of Independent Tanker Owners, Chamber of Shipping of America, International Chamber of Shipping, and International Group of P&I Clubs.

“The 2009 Oil Spill Act impermissibly seeks to establish an overlapping
and competing legal regime with its imposition of operating and manning requirements on foreign and domestic tank vessels operating in Massachusetts waters,” according to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court.

American Waterways Operators and the U.S. government used the same legal argument in 2005 when they challenged parts of Massachusetts’ 2004 Oil Spill Act, separate from the 2009 law. After more than five years of courtroom battles, the case ended a week ago when  federal judge Douglas P. Woodlock issued a permanent injunction preventing Massachusetts from enforcing the tug escort and state-licensed pilot provisions of the 2004 law.

“In the final analysis, the law of preemption … leaves the last word under Federal law regarding the formulation of regulations to control vessel
traffic, to enhance vessel safety and to decrease environmental
hazards in Buzzards Bay to the Coast Guard,” Woodlock wrote in his decision.

The Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office “is still reviewing the ruling and exploring all of our options, including whether to appeal the decision,” said spokeswoman Jill Butterworth.  She said an appeal would have to be filed within 60 days of the judgment.

The ruling has no impact on the state’s current rules for tug escorts and state-licensed pilots, Coletta said.

While the lawsuit pertaining to the 2004 act was being fought in court, Massachusetts legislators set to work crafting a new law that would provide the same protections for Buzzards Bay. The resulting law, known as “An Act Preventing Oil Spills in Buzzards Bay,” was signed by Gov. Patrick on Sept. 24, 2009.

The 2009 law differs from the 2004 act in that the provision and cost of tug escorts and state-licensed pilots falls to the state, rather than the oil transport companies. The system is designed to be voluntary, rather than mandatory. Companies are encouraged to give the state 24-hour notice that they will be sending a barge through Buzzards Bay. If they do not give notice, they will face triple the fines in the event of an oil spill.

The new rules have taken effect in recent weeks. On March 1, the DEP began dispatching state-licensed pilots, who have knowledge of the narrow bay, to operate tugs towing double-hulled oil barges. On March 29, the state began sending tug escorts to shadow double-hulled barges carrying 6,000 barrels or more of oil.

Tug escorts aim to provide a quick response in the event of an emergency. If a tug was nearby when the Bouchard 120 barge drifted out of the Buzzards Bay shipping lanes on April 27, 2003, it could have kept the barge from running aground and spilling up to 100,000 gallons of oil, said Mark Rasmussen, director of the Coalition for Buzzards Bay, an advocacy group.

On April 1, the state increased the Oil Spill Trust Fund’s per-barrel oil fee from 2 cents to 5 cents. The fee is charged to companies who offload oil in Massachusetts. The fund will pay for the $5,000 tug escorts and the state-licensed pilots, the cost of which Coletta did not know. McAllister Towing of Narragansett Bay won the tug escort contract through a competitive bid process. State pilots are assigned by a district pilot commissioner.

Rasmussen was not surprised when the new rules were met with a lawsuit brought by the oil transportation industry.

“Unfortunately, it seems to be general operating procedure for American Waterways Operators to challenge anything individual states do to try to protect their waters,” he said.

But Rasmussen, whose organization joined the state as a co-defendant in the 2004 Oil Spill Act lawsuit, doesn’t think oil transporters will win their case this time.

“All this law does is say, ‘Call ahead and tell us your coming,’” he said. “I think they will have a very hard case trying to convince a judge that that’s an unreasonable request by the state of Massachusetts, for an industry that poses so much risk to our coast.”

Rasmussen added that it is telling that the U.S. government has not joined the industry as a plaintiff as it did in the first lawsuit.

“This time it is the industry by themselves,” he said.

The Coalition for Buzzards Bay will consider in the coming weeks whether it will join the lawsuit as a co-defendant, Rasmussen said.

Court documents show that the case has been assigned to the same judge who issued the ruling in the first lawsuit.

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This story was also published on the front pages of Saturday’s The Cape Cod Times and The Standard Times. For a list of damages, see the chart at the end of this post.

By BECKY W. EVANS (reporter.evans@gmail.com)

Justice Raymond J. Brassard reads the eight verdict slips.

PLYMOUTH, Mass.— In a precedent-setting environmental case, jurors agreed Friday that Bouchard must pay eight Mattapoisett property owners varying amounts in damages for oil that polluted their beaches for months or years following the April 27, 2003 Buzzards Bay oil spill.

After 10 hours of deliberations, the 13-member jury rendered eight verdicts, one for each of the eight plaintiffs in the case. The trial was part of a broader class-action lawsuit involving 1,100 Mattapoisett property owners.

The awarded damages, which range from $1,575 to $22,650 per property, will be doubled in accordance with state law, said Judge Raymond J. Brassard. In addition, the plaintiffs will receive 12 percent annual interest going back to the filing date of the lawsuit in September 2004.

After the trial, plaintiffs’ lawyer Martin E. Levin of Stern, Shapiro, Weissberg & Garin LLP said the case was “definitely” precedent setting.

“This is the first environmental class action to be certified and go forward in Massachusetts,” he said, noting that by “certified” he meant the court had approved of pursuing the claims on a class action basis.

Levin said he was “happy” with the verdicts, even though the damages were smaller than those calculated by the plaintiffs’ real estate appraiser who testified during the 10-day trial at Plymouth County Superior Court. The appraiser’s estimates ranged from about $5,000 to $60,000 per property.

Defense lawyer Ronald W. Zdrojeski of Robinson & Cole LLP said the verdicts were “much closer to our end of the spectrum.” During his closing statements, Zdrojeski had suggested that jurors consider awarding damages in the range of $200 to $3,000 per property.

Zdrojeski said he plans to visit his client and “consider our options.” The defense disagrees with some of the legal rulings in the case, he said.

Levin said he hopes Bouchard will take “full responsibility for the damages it caused and step forward to compensate the rest of the class.”

Lawyers from both sides must agree on how to proceed with the more than 1,000 plaintiffs who remain in the lawsuit.

“We now have some good benchmarks that I hope will be of help to all of you as you determine how best to resolve your cases,” Judge Brassard said.

Potential options include a “series of trials over a series of years” or “some form of negotiation among you,” Brassard said.

Jurors met in the courtroom at 9 a.m. Friday to begin their third day of deliberations. By 9:40 a.m., they had decided on eight verdicts involving 11 Mattapoisett properties, some with the same owners.

In addition to determining damages, the jury was asked to decide the length of time plaintiffs’ beaches were polluted with Bouchard oil. During the trial, the defense argued that most of the beaches were clean by Memorial Day of 2003, just a month after the spill. The plaintiffs’ real estate appraiser said the pollution lingered for 1.1 to 6 years, depending on the property.

For nine of the 11 properties, the jury found that beaches were polluted until the fall of 2003. Francis and Natalie Haggerty’s property at 126 Brandt Island Road near Leisure Shores beach was considered polluted until October 2007. W. Bradford Chase’s property at 15 Seamarsh Way was considered polluted until September 2009.

Haggerty and his wife, who attended all but one day of the trial, were awarded $11,880 in damages, considerably less than the plaintiffs’ request for $50,800.

“We’re glad the jury stood up for the residents of Mattapoisett against the Bouchard oil company,” Haggerty said.

Kim DeLeo, who is the class representative, was not among the eight plaintiffs involved in the trial.

“This gives us a starting point in moving forward with the rest of the class-action lawsuit,” she said. “I think the jury awarded us a fair amount.”

Levin said the eight plaintiffs in the trial were selected at random. They represented beaches with four different levels of oil pollution, ranging from “very lightly” oiled to “heavily” oiled, he said.

A second class-action lawsuit against Bouchard is pending in federal court. The lawsuit was filed by property owners outside of Mattapoisett who are seeking damages from the oil spill.

On April 27, 2003, the Bouchard No. 120 struck an underwater reef in Buzzards Bay after drifting outside a marked channel. The punctured barge, which was on its way to a Cape Cod power plant, leaked up to 98,000 gallons of No. 6 fuel oil. The oil polluted more than 90 miles of coastline, killed 450 federally-protected birds and temporarily shut down about 180,000 acres of shellfish beds.

Both Bouchard and the mate of the Tug Evening Tide, which was pulling the barge, pleaded guilty to violating the Clean Water Act and killing 450 birds. Bouchard paid the federal government $9 million in criminal fines, while mate Franklin Robert Hill served six months in federal prison. Bouchard spent $36 million in cleanup activities as required under federal oil pollution law.

Awarded Damages (prior to being doubled, without interest):

Verdict 1:

$3,180, 14 Harbor Rd., Harbor Beach (Armen and Pauline Barooshian)

$3,210, 15 North Rd., Harbor Beach (Armen and Pauline Barooshian)

$1,575, 18 Centre Dr., Harbor Beach (Armen and Pauline Barooshian)

All three properties polluted until Sept. ’03.

Verdict 2:

$2,820, 37 Silver Shell Ave., Crescent Beach (Ronald and Daniele Bick)

Polluted until Nov. ’03

Verdict 3:

$22,650, 15 Seamarsh Way (W. Bradford Chase)

Polluted until Sept. ’09.

Verdict 4:

$2,070, 6 Avenue A, Pease’s Point (Margaret Churchill)

Polluted until Sept. ’03.

Verdict 5:

$13,800, 16 Water St. (Anne Downey)

Polluted until Sept. ’03.

Verdict 6:

$1,845, 19 Noyes Ave., Shell Beach (Thomas and Georgia Glick)

$2,910, 21 Noyes Ave., Shell Beach (Thomas and Georgia Glick)

Both properties polluted until Sept ’03.

Verdict 7:

$11,880, 126 Brandt Island Rd., Leisure Shores (Francis and Natalie Haggerty)

Polluted until October ’07.

Verdict 8:

$1,823, 11 Highland Ave., Brandt Beach (John and Maureen Mullen)

Polluted until October ’03.

By Becky W. Evans (reporter.evans@gmail.com)

PLYMOUTH, Mass.— After nearly 10 hours of deliberations, jurors agreed Friday morning that Bouchard must pay eight Mattapoisett property owners varying amounts in damages for oil that polluted their beaches for months or years following the April 27, 2003 Buzzards Bay oil spill.

The 13-member jury rendered eight verdicts, one for each of the plaintiffs in the trial, which is part of a broader class-action lawsuit involving 1,100 Mattapoisett property owners.

The awarded damages, which range from $1,575 to $22,650 per property, will be doubled in accordance with state law, said Judge Raymond J. Brassard. In addition, the plaintiffs will receive 12 percent annual interest going back to the filing date of the lawsuit in September 2004.

Read more about the verdicts tomorrow on ThreeBeats and in The Standard-Times.

By Becky W. Evans (reporter.evans@gmail.com)

Lawyers wait for the verdict that never came on Thursday.

PLYMOUTH, Mass.– The brilliant blue waters of Cape Cod Bay were visible from the courtroom windows, but jurors remained hidden behind closed doors Thursday as they deliberated eight verdicts in the April 2003 Buzzards Bay oil spill case.

Attorneys and a handful of SouthCoast residents waited seven hours in the Plymouth Trial Court building. They passed the time talking, working on their laptops and taking in views of the bay offered by the third-floor windows.

At 4 p.m., it appeared the jury had rendered a verdict, and the lawyers took their places in the courtroom. Then, the clerk announced that the jury had requested additional time Friday morning to deliberate the case. Afterward, a lawyer joked that given the date, the false appearance of a verdict must have been an April Fool’s Day prank.

Thursday marked the ninth day of civil proceedings in a class-action lawsuit involving eight Mattapoisett property owners who are seeking damages from Bouchard due to oil contamination from the Bouchard 120 oil spill. The eight plaintiffs are part of a 1,100-member class who filed the lawsuit against Bouchard in September 2004.

The jury must make eight verdicts involving 11 properties. They must decide how much, if any, in damages Bouchard owes the eight plaintiffs.

Outside the courtroom, Kim and Joseph DeLeo of Mattapoisett appeared content to return to the courthouse Friday.

“We waited seven years, what’s a couple days more?” Mr. DeLeo said.

The jury is “really thinking about the verdict,” said Mrs. DeLeo, the class representative. “They’ll make the right decision.”

Jurors will return to court Friday at 9 a.m.

Outside the Plymouth Trial Court building.

Jurors will continue deliberations in the Bouchard 120 oil spill trial today at Plymouth County Superior Court. Stay tuned to ThreeBeats for news about the eight expected verdicts. Meanwhile, read Becky W. Evans’ coverage of Wednesday’s proceedings here on ThreeBeats and in The Standard-Times, The Cape Cod Times and The Boston Herald.

By Becky W. Evans (reporter.evans@gmail.com)

Defense attorney Ronald W. Zdrojeski makes closing remarks to the jury.

PLYMOUTH—  Capping off six days of testimony, lawyers made closing statements to jurors Wednesday during a class-action trial involving eight Mattapoisett property owners whose beaches were polluted when a Bouchard barge spilled up to 98,000 gallons of oil in Buzzards Bay on April 27, 2003.

The 13-member jury, which began deliberating the case Wednesday afternoon, must decide how much, if any, in damages Bouchard must award to each of the eight plaintiffs.

The trial at Plymouth County Superior Court is likely the first of many trials in a class-action lawsuit that 1,100 Mattapoisett property owners filed against Bouchard in September 2004.

Jurors will issue eight verdicts, one for each property owner. Each verdict will require an agreement by 11 out of the 13 jurors, Justice Raymond J. Brassard said.

Plaintiffs' attorney Martin E. Levin makes his closing statements to the jury.

During his closing remarks, plaintiffs’ attorney Martin E. Levin told jurors that the case “is really about the right to use and enjoy one’s property.”

“The defendant took something special away from the homeowners, their right to use and enjoy their beach without interference from oil that should never have been there and would not be there if not for the defendant’s negligent grounding of that barge,” said Levin, who works for Boston law-firm of Stern, Shapiro, Weissberg & Garin LLP.

To measure compensation for Bouchard’s interference, Levin said plaintiffs hired a real estate appraiser who used comparable rental data to calculate the lost rental value for each property. He said the concept was a “practical,” though “imperfect,” way to measure lost beach enjoyment, such as “taking pleasure in the company of one’s friends and family, the peace and quiet of a contemplative walk along the shoreline, the small challenge of finding just the right seashell … or just enjoying the sun on your skin.”

Levin said the jury should decide how long the beaches were polluted based on evidence from property owners who testified during the trial. He suggested jurors consider awarding damages greater than or equal to the appraiser’s “conservative” findings for lost rental value, which ranged from about $5,000 to $60,000 per property.

Defense attorney Ronald W. Zdrojeski, who was the first to deliver closing remarks, told jurors that the case is “about damages and how much money do we owe these people.”

He asked the jury to consider whether “a reasonable person” could have used the plaintiffs’ beaches following oil spill cleanups that were overseen and approved by government agencies. He said all the beaches were open for public use by Memorial Day weekend in 2003.

“The reality is the beaches were never closed,” said Zdrojeski, who works for Robinson & Cole LLP of Hartford, Conn.

Zdrojeski advised jurors to use their “God-given common sense” to decide whether the plaintiffs’ figures for lost rental value “make any sense.”

In place of those figures, he suggested that jurors award $200 to six of the eight plaintiffs who were “inconvenienced” by the spill. For the remaining two plaintiffs, he suggested that Bradford Chase of 15 Seamarsh Way receive $500 in damages for “traces of oil on his property.” He suggested awarding $3,000 in damages to Francis Haggerty of 126 Brandt Island Road near Leisure Shores beach. He said that amount would give Haggerty $500 for each of the six years that residual oil affected his use of the beach.

Following the closing statements, Brassard gave instructions to the jury to guide their deliberations.

“Your duty is to return the right verdict, the truthful verdict,” Brassard told the 13 jurors. Two of the original 15 appointed jurors dropped out during the trial due to personal reasons.

On April 27, 2003, the Bouchard No. 120 struck an underwater reef in Buzzards Bay after drifting outside a marked channel. The punctured barge, which was on its way to a Cape Cod power plant, leaked up to 98,000 gallons of No. 6 fuel oil. The oil polluted more than 90 miles of coastline, killed 450 federally-protected birds and temporarily shut down about 180,000 acres of shellfish beds.

Both Bouchard and the mate of the Tug Evening Tide, which was pulling the barge, pleaded guilty to violating the Clean Water Act and killing 450 birds. Bouchard paid the federal government $9 million in criminal fines, while mate Franklin Robert Hill served six months in federal prison.

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