August 27, 2008
Oil Spill Response Time Shortened
The California State Assembly passed a bill on Tuesday "that lowers the allowable response time to an oil spill in the San Francisco Bay from from six hours to two hours." Penned by sanity-estranged Sen. Carole Migden, she says that the bill is "necessary to combat the bay's natural tidal action" that spreads oil spills right-quick. And it will, hopefully, prevent tragic events like this from getting even muckier. That's right, muckier. (CBS 5)
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I'm an officer on a tanker-assist/ spill-response vessel in Valdez, Alaska and the arrangement we have in place in the event of a spill is incredible up there, but the only way we'll ever have anything that resembles the infrastructure of Prince William Sound/ Valdez is if we have a spill that causes that much damage and media exposure. What we had here was minor, just a few percent of the oil that found the water in Valdez, and not nearly as important to the US economy as the damage to the Alaskan fishery as what happened in 1989.
The technology exists to skim the oil off the water, and a few barges with towing boats and skiffs alongside or at least dedicated to them in case of a spill could be anywhere in the bay within two hours.
If this bill passes, I hope and think it will necessitate more boats and jobs for US sailors in the Bay. When we had our spill, I was at work, but when I came home almost two weeks earlier, I could still smell the bunker fuel on Ocean Beach from my front door.
I'm an officer on a tanker-assist/ spill-response vessel in Valdez, Alaska and the arrangement we have in place in the event of a spill is incredible up there, but the only way we'll ever have anything that resembles the infrastructure of Prince William Sound/ Valdez is if we have a spill that causes that much damage and media exposure. What we had here was minor, just a few percent of the oil that found the water in Valdez, and not nearly as important to the US economy as the damage to the Alaskan fishery as what happened in 1989.
The technology exists to skim the oil off the water, and a few barges with towing boats and skiffs alongside or at least dedicated to them in case of a spill could be anywhere in the bay within two hours.
If this bill passes, I hope and think it will necessitate more boats and jobs for US sailors in the Bay. When we had our spill, I was at work, but when I came home almost two weeks earlier, I could still smell the bunker fuel on Ocean Beach from my front door.