Risk Management Plan -

Environmental Cleanup Risk Management Plan

RUNNING HEAD : ENVIRONMENTAL CLEANUP RISK MANAGEMENT PLAN

ENVIRONMENTAL CLEANUP

RISK MANAGEMENT PLAN (RMP

In APA style (name (university

Environmental Cleanup Risk Management Plan

Introduction

On March 24th , 1989 , a tanker , the T /V Exxon Valdez measured 987 feet long 166 feet wide and 88 feet deep spilled approximately 62 .6 million gallons of crude oil to the sea of Alaska . The spillover contaminated the shoreline of Prince William Sound , the Kenai Peninsula , lower Cook Inlet , the Kodiak Archipelago and the Alaska Peninsula . Polluted areas

br include a national forest , four national wildlife refugees , three national parks , five state parks , four critical habitat areas and a state game sanctuary . The damage to the vessel was 25 million and the lost cargo was worth 3 .4 million , but the environmental cost from the incident was immeasurable . The incident was considered the largest tanker spill disaster in United States history (`EVOS , 1993

Prevention is still the focus of today 's national efforts to avoid repetition of the Exxon Valdez tragedy . However , despite government tireless efforts of preventing such incident , thousands of oil and chemical spills are still reported annually . The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA ) has obligated chemical-related businesses to update and report their Risk Management Plan (RMP ) every 5 years , to ensure sufficiency of corporate prevention efforts and responses strategy toward chemical spills (RMP , n .d . Nevertheless , because the RMP consist only of facilities and transports safety measures , it is still categorized as a prevention effort

Within this essay , we will discuss the matter not from the `prevention perspective , but rather from the `response ' perspective . We will discuss the technical aspects of RMP for the cleanup operations of oil and other chemical spills . First , we will elaborate existing choices of methods in cleanup operations , along with their technical benefits and constraints Afterwards , we will describe a suggested outline of a cleanup operation RMP

Methods of Responding to Oil Spills

The RMP must consider various aspects of an incident . The aspects can be described by observing the methods used in responding to the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill . There are several choices of response methods toward chemical spillovers . Each of them has their own technical consideration and the National Contingency Plan (NCP ) approves not all of them . The choices are as follows

II .1 on the Water

Boom

Most cleanup operations gets done using large amount of booms . From above , boom looked like ropes , used as moving barriers to collect oil However , it actually rises to a feet above water and two feet below . It is a rather simple device , each controlled by a crew of two people on a boat . The Exxon Valdez incident called for no less than 28 ,000 feet long booms in the Gulf of Alaska (`EVOS , 1993

The technical benefit obtained by using booms is the fact that it is safe and present quick results . However , the obvious technical constraint is manpower . In the Exxon Valdez incident for instance , a crew of six could use 1...