March 17, 2010 2:00 AM
By Deborah Mcdermott
dmcdermott@seacoastonline.com
PORTSMOUTH (http://www.seacoastonline.com) " An oil tanker collides with a car carrier 15 miles southwest of Portland, Maine, during a winter storm with rough northeast winds, subfreezing temperatures and limited visibility. The tanker's 1.3 million gallons of oil is disbursed into the ocean, currents sending it down the Maine coast, along New Hampshire and into Boston Harbor before it dissipates.
On March 24, after almost a year of preparation involving more than 100 entities and nearly 800 people from the federal government, private corporations, three states and various municipalities, this Spill of National Significance, or SONS, exercise will take place in waters stretching the length of the "spill."
"It's basically an oil spill that blackens the Northeast. It is significant and it involves a lot of people," said Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Jeff Hall of the District 1 Coast Guard in Boston, which is leading the drill's coordination.
The exercise begins March 22 in Portland with two days of tabletop preparation. Ships will head out March 23 to approximate the accident and containment measures. The storm model used is actually the Patriots Day storm of April 2007, Hall said.
Someone standing on the shore probably will not see the drill in progress, as it is occurring so far to sea, he said, but it will involve responding aircraft and ships with booms containing the "oil" off the coast of Portsmouth and Rye.
SONS exercises occur every three years throughout the nation, most recently in California and the Gulf of Mexico. According to Hall, the Portland area was chosen because so many oil companies have terminals there. And, he said, "the rocky coastline of Maine is something we haven't dealt with."
This particular exercise, in addition to providing opportunities for state and local governments to test their disaster planning, is geared toward testing the federal government's "upper levels of command."
Federal agencies involved include the departments of Defense, Labor, Transportation, Interior and Homeland Security and, under it, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Coast Guard. It also includes the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Environmental Protection Agency,
Army and Navy.
"We learned some hard lessons out of (Hurricane) Katrina," Hall said. "The writers of this exercise wanted to target intergovernmental communication."
The Coast Guard and Shell Oil Products are the two primary sponsors of the exercise. Hall said Shell is picking up most of the cost, but he did not readily know the cost for the federal government.
Hall said the city of Portsmouth, town of Rye and the N.H. Division of Ports and Harbors are involved. Lead state agencies include the N.H. Department of Environmental Services and Maine Department of Environmental Protection.
The exercise drew a mixed response from Evan Carlson of RePower New Hampshire, a clean energy advocacy group.
"First of all, what they're doing is great and very important, and we believe this is a valuable training exercise, given that we do import so much foreign oil," he said. "That said, we could make this kind of exercise irrelevant if we didn't import foreign oil."
"The Seacoast economy is driven by fishing, tourism and small businesses," Carlson continued. They're already struggling. Can you imagine what would happen if there was a spill?"
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