|
Oil Spill Response Training To Continue for Cape and Islands First Responders  US Appeals Court reinstates critical Oil Spill Act protective requirements
Important developments and key activities continue to mark MassDEP progress under the Massachusetts Oil Spill Prevention and Response Act, as the agency works with local communities to protect the Commonwealth's precious coastal resources. Some of those activities include:
- Training of local first responders (fire department and harbormaster personnel), which has been ongoing on Cape Cod. The next first-responder oil spill training exercise is set for spring 2008 at the Sea Crest Resort in North Falmouth and in the nearby Wild Harbor area. This exercise will focus on bringing local municipal responders together to coordinate deployment of oil spill response equipment provided by MassDEP and to test oil spill protection strategies found in the Buzzards Bay Geographic Response Plan.
- A project to create Geographic Response Plans (or GRPs) for 30-40 priority resource areas on Cape Cod and the Islands. GRPs are map-based specific protection strategies that provide guidance to first responders on where and how to place booms to protect sensitive coastal areas from an oil spill. The final GRPs for the Cape and Islands should be completed during the winter of 2007-08.
- A total of 21 trailers with spill response equipment were distributed in 2007 to communities along Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket (this is in addition to the 14 trailers that had already been disbursed to South Coast communities in and around Buzzards Bay in 2005). MassDEP's SERO and NERO regional offices also were the recipients of oil spill response trailers.
- On August 20, 2007, the United States Court of Appeals (First Circuit) reinstated three critical requirements of the Mass. Oil Spill Act: tug escorts; on-board crew/staffing requirements; and mandatory insurance policies for oil tank barges. On that day, the court lifted a previous injunction against the Oil Spill Act and remanded the case back to District Court, effectively reinstating three provisions of the Act.
A key funding provision in the Oil Spill Act, which took effect in the fall of 2004, established a Trust Fund that has been accumulating a two-cents-per-barrel fee paid by all vessels delivering oil to a marine oil terminal in Massachusetts. Currently, the fund has accumulated approximately $4.4 million.
In addressing the immediate need, the Act directs MassDEP to identify and deploy critical oil spill response equipment and training for various coastal communities. Yet there is also a consensus among those involved that the best way to protect coastal resources is by preventing future oil spills.
An Oil Spill Advisory Committee (comprising MassDEP, other state and federal agencies, and representatives of the oil and maritime industries) has been created to assist MassDEP in formulating spending priorities with both of these goals in mind: enhancing local and state response to marine oil spills and identifying pro-active ways to prevent these spills.
An interim Implementation Plan identifying the Massachusetts Oil Spill Prevention and Response program's spending priorities has been prepared and is now posted at: www.mass.gov/dep/cleanup/oilsprep.htm
An important oil spill prevention priority is to provide assistance to the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) in implementing its recently announced Vessel Movement Reporting System (VMRS) for Buzzards Bay. Operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE), the system will track larger vessel movements in Buzzards Bay by receiving radio transponder signals (Automatic Information System) and plotting them on a GIS map of Buzzards Bay.
The VMRS system is located at the Army Corps canal headquarters in Bourne. As devised, the system will provide an early warning to the VMRS monitor if a tracked vessel travels outside a recommended vessel route in Buzzards Bay.
Print-friendly version: MS Word 900 KB | PDF 160 KB |
communicate with dep
