Spanish Prime Minister Mr Jose Maria Aznar has told his ministers to cancel their Christmas holidays as a third wave of oil slicks from the sunken tanker Prestige hit Spain's northwestern coast, his office said.
The Spanish government has been rocked by charges of mismanagement since the pollution crisis broke last month, and a contrite Aznar apologised last weekend before an angry crowd in La Coruna in the stricken Galicia region for errors in handling the environmental disaster.
Tomorrow a French submersible was due to start plugging the 13 gashes in the hull of the sunker tanker, through which heavy fuel oil keeps pouring into the waters off Galicia's once-pristine coast.
The Nautile mini-submarine last week had stopped one gash in the Prestige, which is leaking fuel at approximately 125 tonnes per day.
After the remaining gashes are plugged, the oil leakage will decrease to 11 tonnes per day even under the most pessimistic scenario, a spokesman for Spain's science and technology ministry said.
The Spanish government has earmarked 1.2 million euros for the operation, which it has called called a "top priority."
The plugging will begin a day after the latest wave of pollution began to crash onto the coastline stretching from Corme in the north to Ribeira in the south, already badly fouled by two previous waves.
AFP