Coast Guard training on oil spill management

By G Saravanan

Published in The New Indian Express, Chennai, on October 26, 2010:

CHENNAI: With a view of handling any oil spill emergency that may occur within the territorial waters or Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), the Coast Guard (CG) in the Eastern seaboard has planned a regional-level pollution response training and exercise on Tuesday and Wednesday.

According to CG sources, the exercise, which would be conducted at Chennai during these two days, would be attended by over 40 delegates from state pollution control boards, ports and oil handling agencies from Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh,Orissa and West Bengal.

The exercise would include workshop/mock drill on various topics related to pollution response operations, followed by practical demonstration of pollution response operations at sea and shore line clean up.

The ships and aircraft of Coast Guard, vessels of Chennai Port Trust and Ennore Port would participate in the exercise at sea.

The simulated part of exercise would be conducted on Tuesday aimed at training all participants for the actual exercise.

During this part, a seminar on oil spill response and contingency planning would be conducted along with a table top exercise with similar situation as that of actual emergency.

On receipt of the situation, resource agencies would be required to initiate actions as laid down in their respective contingency plans - National Oil Spill Disaster Contingency Plan (NOSDCP) in real time.

The major part of exercise would be conducted, north of Chennai port on Wednesday.

This part would include fire fighting, towing, containment booming, recovery by skimming, collection and transfer of oil to shore reception facility.

The shoreline cleanup demo would be conducted on the beach front near the Cooum River mouth on Wednesday at 2 pm. This  would consist of preventive booming close to beach, cleaning of beach sand /rocks.

The exercise would be a learning ground for all participants to react to a pollution situation. An expert team of Coast Guard officers would evaluate the exercise.
Source:http://expressbuzz.com/states/tamilnadu/coast-guard-training-on-oil-spill-management/218121.html