Pollution Prevention and Response

Much of the Coast Guard’s role in preventing and responding to maritime pollution has been shaped by legislation passed, and regulations adopted, in the wake of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA 90) requires vessel operators to develop, and file with the Coast Guard for approval, plans for both the prevention and containment/cleanup of oil spills – whether they are carrying oil as cargo or as fuel. Under the international treaty known as MARPOL 73/78, the Coast Guard also has the authority to enforce protocols for preventing other forms of marine pollution, including garbage, sewage, or “noxious liquid substances.” Under the National Contingency Plan, the Coast Guard’s captains of the port are the predesignated federal on-scene coordinators for all oil and hazardous incidents in coastal (and some inland) areas.

Under the National Contingency Plan, the Coast Guard’s captains of the port are the predesignated federal on-scene coordinators for all oil and hazardous incidents in coastal (and some inland) areas.

The Valdez spill, for better or worse, occurred near Alaska’s largest population centers, with many of the assets of the Coast Guard’s 17th District nearby. In recent years, events in the state’s more remote Arctic regions – including the dramatic increase, in response to a lengthening ice-free season, in the number of shipping transits through the Bering Strait, and recent offshore oil exploration in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas – have led the Coast Guard and its regional partners to seriously address the possibility of a spill in Arctic waters.

On the heels of the Deepwater Horizon spill of 2010, during which a ruptured offshore wellhead spewed an estimated 1.5 million to 2.5 million gallons per day into the Gulf of Mexico, the nonprofit Pew Environment Group commissioned a study, “Arctic Standards: Recommendations on Oil Spill Prevention, Response, and Safety in the U.S. Arctic Ocean”, that concluded an oil spill in the Arctic could take years to clean up. Aside from the challenges presented by the region’s lack of infrastructure – the Beaufort Sea is more than 1,000 miles from the nearest Coast Guard air station – the Arctic ice is a daunting factor: Oil trapped beneath ice can’t be broken down by wave action, can’t be easily collected or burned off, and might be sealed into floes or pack ice that could drift for some distance before being released into waters elsewhere.

There is no proven response method for the recovery of oil spills in waters with ice coverage – but the Coast Guard and its partners have stepped up their efforts to evaluate methods and equipment. In July 2013, the Coast Guard teamed up with the Canadian Coast Guard, the city of Nome, and the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation for the first joint offshore oil response drill ever conducted in the Bering Strait, a passage long considered one of the world’s most treacherous. The exercise achieved mixed results: A Coast Guard skimming system was successfully deployed from a participating Canadian icebreaker, but bad weather prevented the deployment of a large vessel emergency towing system. In other words, if a real spill had occurred, responders would have been able to skim some of the spilled oil, but wouldn’t have been able to remove the leaking vessel from the stormy seas.

The Coast Guard’s Research and Development Center (RDC) in New London, Conn., in continuance of its “Response to Oil in Ice” project, conducted two sets of exercises in 2013. In February, the dead of winter, the Coast Guard teamed with the EPA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and manufacturers of high-tech oil recovery equipment to put several technologies to the test in the Straits of Mackinac, the ice-strewn waters separating Michigan’s upper and lower peninsulas. The oil-in-ice drills tested conventional methods, such as skimmers and boom, as well as newer technologies for detecting and removing oil. The performance of these technologies, in the rough winter weather of the straits, yielded interesting results:

• An aerostat (a helium balloon), equipped with sensors to provide electro-optical and infrared visual tracking of oil from the air, had difficulty launching into turbulent winds, and once in the air, its mobility was limited by powerful downdrafts. A more successful launch on the second day of drills provided excellent situational awareness.

• An autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) – a small, untethered, unmanned submersible designed to locate oil trapped under ice – malfunctioned and sank on its first day of testing, but performed an abbreviated demonstration of its ability to operate independently on the second day.

• A remotely operated vehicle (ROV), attached to a 30-foot-long tether, maneuvered well enough to recover the sunken AUV and provide a live feed, but was considered too small to perform sophisticated missions using precision sensors; a larger version with greater stability would likely be necessary in an oil-in-ice recovery effort.

• An oil spill detection and ice detection radar system displayed remarkable sensitivity in differentiating between open water and several different types of ice (i.e., solid plate, rubble, and windrowed), but since no actual oil was used – the Coast Guard uses oranges and peat moss to simulate oil spills – it was not able to demonstrate its ability to detect and identify oil.

In September, in the Beaufort Sea off Alaska’s North Slope, a second set of exercises was conducted from aboard the 420-foot Coast Guard research icebreaker Healy as part of Operation Arctic Shield 2013. The assets evaluated in the Beaufort Sea included a Vessel of Opportunity Skimming System (VOSS) provided by the Coast Guard’s Pacific Strike Team, an underwater ROV from the RDC, an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, a drifting buoy provided by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, and two small hand-launched unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) provided by NOAA and the University of Alaska-Fairbanks.

The testing began on Sept. 9 with the UAS launches, the first test flights of unmanned aircraft in the Arctic. Both stayed aloft for nearly two hours – longer than expected in the cold temperatures – and provided the research team with an abundance of operational data. The UUV, which mapped ice floes from below, and the ROV, which provided an underwater video feed, were deployed later that same day.

As with the earlier Great Lakes oil-in-ice exercises, weather and sea conditions proved challenging during the Arctic exercise, creating several delays and equipment problems – but the team was able to deploy each of the five technologies, evaluate its suitability for future use in the Arctic, and collect data to help provide potential solutions for spill incidents in the region and other cold-climate environments.

After these initial test deployments, the team conducted several days of simulated oil spill operations, during which the UAS provided aerial surveillance and spill detection, the VOSS demonstrated its capabilities in cold, icy waters, and the ROV tracked the skimmer’s progress.

As with the earlier Great Lakes oil-in-ice exercises, weather and sea conditions proved challenging during the Arctic exercise, creating several delays and equipment problems – but the team was able to deploy each of the five technologies, evaluate its suitability for future use in the Arctic, and collect data to help provide potential solutions for spill incidents in the region and other cold-climate environments.

 

1,400 Tons of Molasses

While OPA 90 shifted responsibility for oil spill cleanup to commercial vessel operators, the Coast Guard maintains a level of expertise that allows it to lead and assist response efforts, especially those requiring an international response. The service annually conducts response exercises with its counterparts in the Canadian and Mexican governments, for example, and its National Strike Force (NSF) provides highly trained and experienced personnel, as well as specialized equipment, to the Coast Guard and other agencies to facilitate both preparedness for and response to the discharge of oil or other hazardous materials into the marine environment.

In September 2013, the NSF sent representatives from its Pacific, Gulf, and Atlantic Strike teams to Honolulu, Hawaii, to assist in the response to one of the most unusual marine spills in recent history: the accidental discharge of 233,000 gallons of sugarcane molasses into the Kapalama Canal, a cluster of industrial piers connecting Ke’ehi Lagoon and Honolulu Harbor. On Sept. 9, the molasses was discovered leaking from a pipeline used to load molasses onto ships. The pipeline operator, Matson Navigation, shut it down as soon as the leak was discovered, but considerable damage had already been done: The thick syrupy substance had immediately sunk and blanketed the sea floor from Honolulu Harbor to the lagoon, instantly suffocating fish and other marine life.

Despite the severity of the incident – the total loss was estimated to be about 26,000 fish, along with many other marine organisms – molasses is an unregulated “non-hazardous” substance, and a maritime spill does not invoke the statutory protocols involved in an OPA 90 case. The Hawaii State Department of Health (DOH) took charge of the response effort on the grounds that the massive fish kill posed a threat to public health and safety: Among other concerns, the massive amount of dead fish seemed likely to attract predators such as sharks. Matson, while pledging to pay the costs associated with cleaning up the harbor, had developed no contingency plan for a spill; despite a similar incident a decade ago involving Matson and the same sugar company, in which 50,000 gallons of molasses leaked into Maui’s Kahului Harbor, no such plan is required by state or federal authorities for non-toxic substances such as molasses.

It’s doubtful any of these team members – or for that matter any of the Coast Guard’s approximate 42,000 active-duty members, 7,900 reservists, 8,700 civilian employees, or 32,000 volunteer auxiliarists – imagined they would someday find themselves crossing the Pacific Ocean on their way to a giant puddle of molasses.

DOH requested the assistance of the Coast Guard’s Sector Honolulu with the response, and Sector Honolulu, in turn, requested assistance from the NSF, which sent a team of six experts. Lt. Mandy Le Monde of the Pacific Strike Team was the response officer for the case. Experts from several agencies – including the Coast Guard, EPA, and NOAA – determined that there wouldn’t be much opportunity to clean up or otherwise mitigate the damage already done.

“To my knowledge, there were no recovery efforts completed on the molasses,” she said. “They were finding that the molasses, due to the tidal flux in that area, was actually dissipating on its own and flushing out of the harbor. So we were there for two purposes: First, we brought our hydro-lab to do dissolved oxygen readings of the water column in the affected area.” Strike team members’ second function – which ended up consuming most of their time and effort – involved coaching and supporting state and local officials in establishing the Incident Command System – the standardized approach used nationwide to coordinate and control emergency response – and helping to draft an Incident Action Plan (IAP). Le Monde and the other members of the team departed Honolulu on Sept. 21.

It’s doubtful any of these team members – or for that matter any of the Coast Guard’s approximate 42,000 active-duty members, 7,900 reservists, 8,700 civilian employees, or 32,000 volunteer auxiliarists – imagined they would someday find themselves crossing the Pacific Ocean on their way to a giant puddle of molasses. But as a pioneer in the “all-hazards” approach to any incident, natural or man-made, requiring an organized response to protect human life, the environment, or economic resources, the Coast Guard understands, better than most: You never know what might go wrong in the maritime environment, where the motto Semper Paratus, “Always Ready,” was born.

This article first appeared in the Coast Guard Outlook 2014 Edition.