Environmental
Stewardship
Arctic Oil Spill
Response Training
byLCDRJENNIFERHNATOW
U.S. Coast Guard Offce of Commercial Vessel Compliance
MR. MARK WAGNER
Supervisor
U.S. Coast Guard District 17 Response Advisory Team
The temperature is just above freezing,
and it is snowing and raining sideways.
For any other crew, it would be tme to
tuck tail, run to the nearest harbor, and
wait out the squall.
However, the crew of the Coast Guard
Cuter Sycamore, a 225-foot buoy tender, turns into the wind of the coast
of Barrow, Alaska, as district response
advisory team members lead the arduous task of deploying the vessel's
spilled oil recovery system's outrigger,
boom, skimmer, and temporary storage device.
U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Offcer Kelly Parker.
TheOilPollutionActof1990mandatedthattheCoast
Guardformdistrictresponseadvisoryteams(DRATs)
toenhancepollutionresponsepreparednessandto
provide expertise and technical assistance to the federalon-scenecoordinatorduringoilspills.Today,
DRATshaveevolvedandtheircompositionnowvariesfromCoastGuarddistricttodistrict.
Forexample,CoastGuardDistrict17(D17)inAlaska
containsmorethan34,000milesofcoastline.Thisis
morethantherestoftheUnitedStatesputtogether.1
46
Proceedings
Summer 2013
Additionally,Alaskaisestimatedtohaveapproximatelyonly5,000milesofpavedroads;therefore,
formanylocationssuchasthestate'scapitol,Juneau,
thereareonlytwowaystogetinorout yplaneor
—b
boat.2
TheD17DRAThasadaptedtoAlaska'suniquelogistic
andenvironmentalconditionsbyannuallytraining
onfrozenlakesandconductingspillresponseexerciseswiththeNavySupervisorofSalvage.
www.uscg.mil/proceedings
