Jan 28, 2016.

 

JUNEAU, Alaska — The Coast Guard, a co-chair of the Alaska Regional Response Team (ARRT), in coordination with four other signatory agencies announced the new policy for the Dispersant Use Plan For Alaska, Wednesday in Anchorage.

 

The new policy is more inclusive, comprehensive, and conservative and includes a preauthorization area with a more protective protocol for use of chemical dispersant during responses to spills of crude oil in certain waters offshore of Alaska.  The policy allows for case-by-case decision-making criteria for dispersant use in waters outside the preauthorization area and enhances stakeholder and tribal government involvement in dispersant use decision-making, provisions for a framework to develop dispersant use avoidance areas, compliance with federal species and habitat protection measures, and changes in dispersant efficacy monitoring protocols.  Almost all coastal states and territories have dispersant use plans, but such a plan has not existed in Alaska since September 2008.

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TRAVERSE CITY — The U.S. and Canada have done well at preventing Great Lakes water from being overused or raided by outsiders but should take additional steps to strengthen their legal protection against future grabs, an advisory organization said Tuesday.

 

A compact between the region's eight states, and similar legislation approved by the provinces of Ontario and Quebec in the past decade, banned nearly all diversions of water outside their geological boundary and set conservation requirements for users within the region. Since then, no exports have been approved that would have "significant negative impacts on the ecological integrity of the Great Lakes," said a report by the International Joint Commission, which advises both nations on issues affecting shared waterways.

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January 19, 2016 

 

gCaptain has learned that former Salvage Master and managing director of TITAN Salvage, Captain Richard Habib, was killed January 10th on an inbounds ski slope at Park City Mountain Resort in Park City, Utah.

According to Summit County Sherriff’s Office, Rich, 60, had been snowboarding and was found unconscious by ski patrol at about 3:45 p.m. Habib was taken down the mountain for a helicopter medevac to a Salt Lake City hospital, but he was pronounced dead a short time later.

 

During his tenure, he was an integral leader in many marine salvage and wreck removal efforts, Crowley tells gCaptain. He was perhaps best known for his role in the effort to raise and refloat the Costa Concordia in Italy, the largest marine salvage job in history, where Habib worked alongside Senior Salvage Master Nick Sloane.

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December 29, 2015

The largest natural gas leak ever recorded is jeopardizing health and causing evacuations for thousands of Southern California residents. And two months into it, scientists and engineers still can’t figure out a way to contain the seeping gas.

 

It is easily the worst environmental disaster since BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. Tellingly, some experts who stopped that leak are working to contain this one.

 

On October 23, the Southern California Gas Company discovered a leak in its natural gas storage facility in Porter Ranch, a neighborhood about 25 miles northwest from downtown Los Angeles. Engineers don’t know what caused it, but believe that a well casing failed deep below the surface. It will take at least several more months to find the source and repair the leak, which requires careful drilling far from the tank itself to avoid igniting the gas and causing an explosion.