Galicians are braced for disaster as a 9,000-tonne oil slick from the tanker that broke in half 10 days ago off the coast of Spain heads for the coastline.
The slick is less than 14 mile from the coast blown by winds from westerly directions.
"The worst is yet to come," Mr Rafael Mouzom, the mayor of the coastal town of Corcubion said.
A fisheries official in Galicia's regional government has said it is now inevitable the slick would reach land for the second time in less than two weeks by Sunday.
"The slick is close...The way it's going, there's no doubt it's coming toward the coast," Mr Enrique Lopez Veiga, told Spanish radio.
"Everything is against us. The winds have turned against us, the sea has turned against us," he said.
The slick is estimated to contain some 11,000 tonnes of fuel oil, far bigger than the first slick which hit the Galician coast two weeks ago.
The new slick appears destined to hit many of the same beaches that teams have laboriously cleaned. But the big fear is that it will strike rich shellfish grounds further south which have so far been spared.
Fishermen are putting nets across river mouths to try to prevent the slick from reaching beds of shellfish and barnacles, a delicacy for which Galicia is famous.
Ten thousand tonnes of fuel oil ran from the tanker Prestigeon November 19th after the stricken vessel broke apart 150 miles off the Atlantic coast, coating hundreds of birds with oil and severely endangering the local fishing industry.
The first wave of pollution sullied about 250 miles of coastline in the northwestern province of Galicia.
Spain's Deputy Vice President Mr Mariano Rajoy told a Madrid news conference yesterday the new slick was expected along beaches already affected last week. "It should not go into zones spared by the fuel, it should not be any different," he said.
Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar said King Juan Carlos, accompanied by Mr Rajoy, will visit the area on Monday.
Meanwhile, A top EU official said today the tanker should have been banned from the high seas months ago.
"The sea belongs to all Europeans and it is high time that we all applied the various measures taken after the Erika," EU Transport Commissioner Ms Loyola de Palacio said.
The Erikashipwreck disaster of December 1999 caused devastating oil pollution along France's Atlantic coast.
Ms de Palacio's claim comes as officials in southern France are preparing to fight the oil slick.
"We're preparing ourselves for the worst, even if we are not sure whether the worst will actually happen," local government official Mr Pierre Dartout said in Bayonne.
AFP