U.S. Navy Ship Salvage Manual Volume 6 - Oil Spill Response

S0300-A6-MAN-060• Miami/Port Everglades, FL (Southeast)• Lake Charles/Hockberry LA (Gulf)• Port Hueneme, CA (Southwest)• Seattle, WA (Northwest)Each region will have four to six pre-staging areas where equipment and vessels will be located.Coverage will extend to Hawaii and the Virgin Islands. Regional Response Centers will have personneland spill response equipment capable of responding to EXXON VALDEZ size spills (10million gallons).Spill response equipment will be staged at about 27 sites throughout the U.S. including Hawaiiand the Virgin Islands. Its inventory is to be the largest in the world and will include:• Sixteen 200-foot offshore command vessels• Tank barges and trucks• Skimmers and booms• Dispersants• Shoreline cleanup equipment• Pumping equipment3-3.5 Cooperatives. Apart from Navy and Coast Guard assets, much of the rest of the availableoil spill response equipment in the U.S. is maintained by industry oil spill cooperatives. Cooperativesare local spill response organizations created by pooling of resources. Typically, membershipis from oil terminals or other waterfront petroleum-handling facilities. Cooperatives rangefrom small mutual-aid groups, to large organizations having specially built response vessels andfull-time staffs. There are about 90 cooperative organizations in the U.S. Virtually all U.S. cooperativesare set up to deal with spills in protected harbors, sheltered waters or inland areas; only asmall portion of the available industry maintained equipment is suitable for offshore use. Accordingto a recent American Petroleum Institute report, “...no U.S. cooperative has been designed todeal with a catastrophic spill.” Despite this limitation, cooperative resources can augment Navyand Coast Guard inventories, particularly when large offshore spills threaten coastal areas.General guidelines for accessing cooperative assets for Navy spills include:• NOSCDR and NOSC contingency plans should list cooperative resources.• Agreements for contracting for cooperatives’ participation should be in place beforespills occur.3-5