Behind the Budget: A Look Ahead for NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration

Here, we take a peek into the world of science policy (and the budgets that make it possible) as we hear from Dave Westerholm, director of NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration, about what we can expect as a starting point for this office in the next fiscal year.

Wetland grasses replanted in Texas after a successful damage assessment and restoration process. (NOAA/National Marine Fisheries Service/Jamie Schubert)

The White House recently released the President’s Budget for Fiscal Year 2014. This budget offers several exciting opportunities for research, development, and growth in response and restoration activities at NOAA. The budget contains close to $4 million in increases for the Office of Response and Restoration (OR&R).

I am very proud of the work we do every day at OR&R and am very grateful for all the support that enables this work. In the last year we responded to 139 environmental incidents, including Hurricane Sandy, generated over $800,000 for restoration through the natural resource damage assessment process, opened NOAA’s new Gulf of Mexico Disaster Response Center, and saw passage of the Marine Debris Act Amendments of 2012 (which expanded the scope of our office to deal specifically with large amounts of natural disaster debris).

While meeting the needs of those critical issues, we have continued to support the ongoing response and damage assessment for the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill, looked forward to address emerging challenges in the U.S. Arctic by launching an Environmental Response Management Application (ERMA) online mapping tool for the Arctic region and contributed our expertise to interagency planning and preparedness in support of ongoing energy exploration in the Arctic.

I am eager to show you what OR&R can do with the latest budget from the President that will build upon our recent achievements:

The fiscal year 2014 budget proposes a $2 million increase for Natural Resource Damage Assessment to increase technical, strategic, and legal support so we can more quickly move more oil spill and hazardous waste site cases toward settlement and support the restoration process. We anticipate that this increase will more than pay for itself in settlement funds recovered from responsible parties and deliver significant return on investment for the American public.

There is an increase of $1 million for the NOAA Marine Debris Program to fund a variety of programs and efforts to reduce and prevent the impacts of marine debris. This includes funding for:

• research programs and academic institutions with demonstrated expertise in the economic impacts of marine debris.
• alternatives to fishing gear that pose potential marine threats.
• enhanced tracking, recovery, and identification of lost and discarded fishing gear.
• efforts to reduce the amount of baseline debris from ocean and non-ocean based sources.

Additionally, the Marine Debris Program’s regional marine debris coordination program will receive a funding increase to enhance regional efforts and develop response plans for states in the Northeast, Southeast, and Gulf of Mexico as described under the Marine Debris Act. These plans will help federal, state, and local authorities plan and prepare for the next major marine debris cleanup event, for example, a hurricane.

This budget also proposes funding increases for emergency response preparedness in the Arctic and Gulf of Mexico and for our innovative ERMA tool to transition to a cloud computing platform.  These funds will allow OR&R to improve our services through participation in more regional response exercises with governmental and private partners and enhance scientific support for the Arctic through increased direct engagement with Arctic communities.

I invite you to review the NOAA Fiscal Year 2014 Budget Summary [PDF] for more detailed information on all of NOAA’s proposed activities in the President’s budget.

Each budgetary increase provides a significant opportunity to build NOAA’s capacity to assess future oil and chemical spill impacts, plan for increased maritime activity in the Arctic, and expand our scientific and tactical capabilities using state-of-the-art information management. The budget also will help NOAA to develop capabilities that will lead to more effective strategies to prevent and mitigate the effects of marine debris. I hope to work with our office’s many partners and supporters in the coming months to ensure OR&R’s capacity will continue to meet the rising tide of ocean and coastal challenges to protect lives, property, and the environment and to keep commerce moving.

Dave Westerholm

Dave Westerholm currently serves as the Director of NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration. Prior to NOAA, he had several years of corporate experience as both Senior Operations Director and Vice President for Maritime Security, Policy and Communications for Anteon Corporation and then General Dynamics. He is a retired Coast Guard Captain with over 27 years of experience in a variety of fields including maritime safety, port security, and environmental protection.

NOAA and Canadian Partners Share Arctic Data Across Borders

Arctic Ocean, Canada Basin, July 22, 2005. (NOAA/Jeremy Potter)

The United States and our neighbors to the north in Canada share a border approximately 5,525 miles long. Some 1,538 miles (or roughly 28%) of which are shared with the State of Alaska alone. And with this shared boundary comes shared natural resources, shared interests, and the need for a shared understanding of how we can work together to protect our communities, wildlife, and environment from the escalating risk of oil spills and other accidents in the Arctic.

To that end, NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration co-hosted a workshop in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, with the Inuvialuit Settlement Region Joint Secretariat (a Canadian delegate representing aboriginal interests to the Arctic Council) and the University of New Hampshire’s Coastal Response Research Center from February 12-13, 2013. The goal was to bring together representatives from both the U.S. and Canada to examine the potential for incorporating Canadian data into NOAA’s online mapping tool, Arctic ERMA®.

Arctic ERMA (Environmental Response Management Application) is an online Geographic Information Systems (GIS) tool being used to prepare and plan for Arctic pollution response, assessment, and environmental restoration. ERMA brings together critical information needed for an effective emergency response in the Arctic’s distinctive conditions, such as the extent and concentration of sea ice, locations of ports and oil and gas pipelines, and vulnerable environmental resources which could be harmed by an oil spill.

The workshop participants came from a variety of organizations. Here, top row: NASA, Consultant, Canada Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Canadian Ice Service, Inuvialuit Settlement Region Joint Secretariat. Bottom row: Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Environment Canada, NOAA. (University of New Hampshire/Kathy Mandsager)

Discussions at the workshop focused on identifying the regional gaps in data in Arctic ERMA, usable data formats, and how to improve functionality and access to information and tools that would help in the case of an oil spill or environmental accident. Workshop participants spanned multiple areas of expertise: government emergency responders, environmental protection and fisheries managers, weather and natural resource agencies, private industry, non-governmental organizations, local indigenous communities, and universities.

By the end, the workshop improved our understanding of U.S. and Canadian data management practices and systems, how we identify both the data that are available and still needed, and what the long-term training needs are for Arctic communities. We also discussed at length how to better incorporate traditional local knowledge about landscapes and natural resources in Arctic ERMA. We hope that engaging in these conversations and building strong relationships today will promote the kind of cooperation and collaboration that will carry us through any environmental emergencies in the future.

This joint workshop is a project under the Arctic Council’s Emergency, Prevention, Preparedness and Response Working Group and under the agreement between Environment Canada and NOAA. Learn more about how the Office of Response and Restoration is preparing for oil spills and other pollution incidents in the Arctic.

Digging for Data at the Alaska Marine Science Symposium

This is a post by NOAA Environmental Scientist Dr. Amy Merten.

The ShoreZone project photographs, maps, and collects information about Pacific Northwest shorelines, like in this view of Kruzof Island, Sitka Sound, Alaska. (NOAA Fisheries)

As Chief of the Spatial Data Branch in NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration, my focus is all about data. In particular, that means figuring out how to access data related to oil spills: the type of information useful for planning before a spill and for the response, environmental injury assessment, and restoration after a spill. Once we get that data, which often comes from other science agencies, universities, and industry, we can then ingest it into Arctic ERMA^®, NOAA’s online mapping tool for environmental disaster data. While at the Alaska Marine Science Symposium this week, I have spent much of my time working with experts who provide and manage that kind of data.

For example, the Alaska Ocean Observing System (AOOS) provides real-time and historical coastal data to multiple stakeholders, including NOAA for Arctic ERMA. AOOS is also the host for the newly signed data-sharing agreement [PDF] between NOAA and three oil companies (Shell, ConocoPhillips, and StatOil). These companies have agreed to share the physical oceanographic, geological, and biological data they have been collecting near areas of Arctic offshore oil and gas activities since 2009. This is an unprecedented amount of data that the industry now is sharing with the federal government and the public. The data are available at www.aoos.org.

A view of Anchorage from the Alaska Marine Science Symposium. (NOAA)

My colleague and our Arctic ERMA geographic information system (GIS) expert, Zach Winters-Staszak, attended the Arctic Mapping Workshop sponsored by our partners at the University of Alaska Fairbanks GINA program. Their geographic information network gives us access to high-resolution base maps, imagery, high frequency radar, ice radar, webcams, and more.  Zach learned about new data sets and new ways for pulling high impact data into Arctic ERMA.

Another helpful information source I learned more about was NOAA’s ShoreZone project.  ShoreZone [PDF] is a popular Pacific Northwest dataset of high-resolution aerial videos and photographs of the shoreline in Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon at extreme low tide. The photos and videos are augmented with habitat classifications of the different zones along the shoreline, such as salt marsh or kelp beds. We already pull in ShoreZone data layers into our Arctic and Pacific Northwest ERMA sites.

These data are valuable for preparedness and response to oil spills and for understanding places where oil and marine debris may accumulate naturally. It’s especially useful for understanding what the shoreline might look like before going out to survey for signs of oil or marine debris accumulation. It can help you decide how you’re going to access the shore (boat, helicopter, on foot) and what you might expect to find. ShoreZone surveyed the Kotzebue and North Slope regions of the Alaskan Arctic this past summer, which we’re excited to draw into Arctic ERMA when they are available.

Read more about Arctic ERMA and our plans for this environmental data tool.

Dr. Amy Merten is pictured here with children from the Alaskan village of Kivalina. She was in Alaska for an oil spill workshop in the village of Kotzebue.

Amy Merten is the Spatial Data Branch Chief in NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration. Amy developed the concept for the online mapping tool ERMA (Environmental Response Mapping Application). ERMA was developed in collaboration with the University of New Hampshire. She expanded the ERMA team at NOAA to fill response and natural resource trustee responsibilities during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill. Amy oversees data management of the resulting oil spill damage assessment. She received her doctorate and master’s degrees from the University of Maryland.

Looking out for Sea Lions and Salmon Before a Grounded Rig Could Spill a Drop of Oil

This is a post by OR&R’s Alaska Regional Coordinator Dr. Sarah Allan.

Here you can see the rocky coast and habitats near where the conical drilling unit Kulluk sat aground on the southeast shore of Sitkalidak Island about 40 miles southwest of Kodiak City, Alaska, in 40 mph winds and 20-foot seas on Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013. (U.S. Coast Guard)

Fortunately, when Royal Dutch Shell’s offshore drilling platform, the Kulluk, ran aground on a remote Alaskan island on New Year’s Eve, it did not lead to an oil spill. However, the rig held 140,000 gallons of diesel fuel, and throughout the response, the potential for a spill remained a concern.

This was especially true because the Kulluk was located in an area with many sensitive natural resources, including harbor seals, marine birds, critical habitat for Steller sea lions, and salmon streams. On top of that, pacific cod and tanner crab harvests take place in that part of Sitkalidak Island, south of Kodiak. Subsistence foragers from the Old Harbor Native village harvest razor clams from a bed near the grounding site.

In light of the potential for an oil spill, restoration specialists from NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration, collaborating with federal and state natural resource trustees, began planning an assessment of the possible harm to natural resources. What if the oil did spill and impact those natural resources? How would we determine what was injured and how badly?

Spill Today, Gone Tomorrow

One of the first steps in this planning effort was to consider where the diesel might go if it spilled and what natural resources it might impact. Spill responders—those considering oil cleanup options—often see diesel spills as less of a concern than spills that involve thicker, heavier oils. This is due to the way that diesel acts when it is spilled on the ocean surface; most of it evaporates into the air and disperses into the water in a few hours, especially in high winds and waves. In this case, NOAA scientists estimated that almost all of the Kulluk’s diesel would evaporate or disperse in 4–5 hours if it spilled. This means there would be very little oil for cleanup workers to try to recover from the water’s surface.

The Kulluk was grounded near shore and, in the event of a spill, the wind and waves would have pushed the diesel towards the shoreline. In this scenario, diesel could have impacted nearby ocean areas, beaches, rocky shorelines, and stream outlets. The Unified Command took precautionary measures during the grounding and removal of the Kulluk, which included placing containment boom across the mouths of streams in the area to keep out any potentially spilled diesel.

A Toxic Shock

A life raft belonging to the conical drilling unit Kulluk, sits on the beach adjacent to the rig 40 miles southwest of Kodiak City, Thursday, Jan. 3, 2012. (U.S. Coast Guard)

Though diesel may not remain for very long in the environment, it is very toxic to many aquatic species. A diesel fuel spill would have had an immediate and negative effect on the environment. In high seas, like those around the grounded Kulluk, as much as 90 percent of the diesel would disperse into the water. The dispersed diesel could affect marine organisms that live in the water column, on the ocean bottom, or along the shoreline.

Past spills of comparable fuels in similar marine environments have killed large numbers of organisms living in the water column or on the ocean bottom in the area where the oil was released: the barge North Cape grounded and spilled oil off Rhode Island during bad weather in 1996, and the ship Tampico Maru grounded and spilled diesel on a remote, rough shoreline in Northern Baja California in 1957.

Diesel is acutely toxic to many zooplankton, bivalve, and crustacean species as well as unhatched and young salmon. Organisms can become “tainted” when they are either exposed to diesel at levels that don’t kill them (sublethal) or when they eat other organisms exposed to those levels. In that case, responders would test seafood for safety, and those of us evaluating environmental damages would assess marine organisms’ exposure levels with additional testing. Even these sublethal exposures can cause toxic effects that need to be considered in a damage assessment.

While initially preparing for a potential damage assessment, we focused on planning for water, sediment, and bivalve (razor clams and blue mussels) sampling as well as on planning shoreline assessments for evidence of injured or dead animals. If we could do this sampling before and/or immediately after a spill, we would have a more accurate assessment of damages to natural resources. Assessing exposure and injury to natural resources is time sensitive, especially in the case of a short-lived contaminant like diesel.

Weather Or Not

However, the far-flung location of the grounding site, as well as the harsh weather conditions, would make sampling in the area challenging. Our planning had to address those logistical challenges. That meant having resources and personnel standing by 40 miles away in Kodiak City, Alaska; arranging for transportation to the site of the rig; securing permission to access the area, and procuring the resources we needed to sample. Given the conditions, accessing the site would have required a helicopter or boat trip to the island and overland transit through grizzly bear habitat, across rough terrain, and private property.

Again, we’re happy that the diesel aboard the Kulluk stayed in its tanks while the rig was grounded and moved off of Sitkalidak Island. But new opportunities for oil drilling, commerce, and tourism in the Arctic are expected to bring more marine traffic through these areas. That creates more opportunities for accidents. It is important for us to be prepared to undertake a natural resource damage assessment in the event of an oil spill. Understanding what is at risk, what to expect from the particular oil spilled, and how it all fits in a specific environment is the first step.

Dr. Sarah Allan.

Dr. Sarah Allan has been working with NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration Emergency Response Division and as the Alaska Regional Coordinator for the Assessment and Restoration Division, based in Anchorage, Alaska, since February, 2012. Her work focuses on planning for natural resource damage assessment and restoration in the event of an oil spill in the Arctic.

A Trip to the Arctic, Where Shrinking Ice Is Creating Bigger Concerns

In Barrow, Alaska, stands a monument constructed of bowhead whale bones and dedicated to lost sailors. (NOAA).

It was my first trip to Barrow, Alaska, and I was excited at the possibility of seeing a polar bear for the first time outside of a zoo. Unfortunately I did not get a glimpse of a bear, but as I am telling my friends back in Seattle, perhaps a bear saw me.

In early November, I returned to the Arctic, this time to the northern hub of Barrow (get out your map of Alaska and go straight to the top). Although this was a new destination for me, I came to Barrow with the same intentions when first visiting the Arctic in the city of Kotzebue, Alaska, this spring: to discuss oil spill response and restoration issues with the residents of the North Slope Borough.

As a result of climate change, the Arctic environment is changing rapidly, and the retreat of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean opens new doors for human activity in the region by creating new paths to places previously inaccessible. The all-but-certain increases in ship traffic and offshore oil and gas exploration are setting up a situation where the likelihood of oil spills increases drastically. It was under these circumstances that I found myself sitting in the locally famous Pepe’s North of the Border Mexican restaurant in Barrow on a night in November. I was chatting with my fellow NOAA colleagues and University of New Hampshire Coastal Response Research Center staff about the workshop starting the next morning.

The goals of this two-day workshop revolved around community involvement in responding to oil spills and in assessing and restoring resulting damages to natural resources. The workshop also included discussions about how to integrate local community and traditional knowledge into our new Arctic planning and response tool, the Environmental Response Management Application (Arctic ERMA®). Most importantly, the workshop was an opportunity to enhance relationships between local communities and government agencies.

A sign in town points out the remoteness of Barrow, Alaska, from the rest of the world. (NOAA)

During the course of the meeting, community members from Barrow expressed their concerns about oil spill response capabilities and how a spill would affect their subsistence lifestyle.  As this was only the second time my feet had ever walked above the Arctic Circle, I was humbled to hear whaling captains and other residents speak about the remarkably unique natural resources of the Arctic.

During meeting breaks I spoke with several residents who commented on a video playing in the lobby of the meeting center. The video showed numerous local walrus and whale hunts. The residents pointed out features of the ice and how they always had to be prepared at a moment’s notice to deal with the changing ice conditions.

How can we restore environments injured by spilled oil in an amazing setting like this—vast, remote, and mostly undeveloped? While there are no easy answers, we must work together now so we are better prepared if an oil spill occurs and we need to restore the environment.

For NOAA and other government personnel to figure out how much an oil spill has hurt Arctic marine environments and then fix them, we will require the help of local residents who hold generations of knowledge about the landscape. Workshops like these can be an introduction to each other, but we really look forward to sustaining these relationships.

Want to hear more about the challenge of Arctic oil spill response and restoration from the perspectives of Arctic residents? Recently a workshop report from our spring meeting in Kotzebue [PDF] has been released. Staff from our office also just returned from Kotzebue where they attended a meeting about a great new project to map subsistence use of natural resources (e.g., hunting, fishing, etc.) in the Northwest Arctic Borough.

UPDATED 3/29/2013: The workshop report and presentations from the Barrow workshop are now available.

NOAA Launches ERMA Mapping Tool for Responding to Arctic Oil Spills

Ice and open water in the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska. (NOAA)

The uncertain, rapidly changing conditions of the Arctic Ocean call for emergency responders to take extra precautions in preparing for the possibility of a remote oil spill. Because of this, NOAA‘s Office of Response and Restoration, along with the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), have launched an Environmental Response Management Application (ERMA^®) for the Arctic region.

Arctic ERMA, the same interactive online mapping tool used by federal responders during the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill, will help address the many complex challenges the Arctic presents. This comes at a key time for the area, as growing ship traffic and proposed energy development, including offshore drilling, are increasing the risk of oil spills.

ERMA brings together all of the available information needed for an effective emergency response in the Arctic. In an emergency situation, ERMA is equipped with constantly updated oceanographic observations and weather data from NOAA as well as critical information from BSEE and other federal and state response agencies. Depending on the need, responders can further customize the tool with environmental, logistical, and operational data, such as areas where sensitive species may be, fisheries may be closed, or navigation may be restricted.

“Arctic ERMA builds on the lessons we learned on usability, data management, and data visualization from the Deepwater Horizon/BP disaster,” commented Dr. Amy Merten, OR&R Spatial Data Branch Manager. “The Arctic ERMA team is thrilled to work with our diverse group of partners, ranging from Alaskan village elders to federal agencies, as they challenge us in how we share data and visualize information that can improve our collective oil spill preparedness. The Arctic ERMA site is now live, but it’s a living work in progress.” Dr. Merten led the team developing Arctic ERMA.

An aerial view of beluga whales, a species which may be vulnerable during an Arctic oil spill, in formation in the Chukchi Sea. (Laura Morse/NOAA)

Integrating and synthesizing data—some in real time—into a single interactive map, ERMA provides a quick visualization of the situation, improving communication and coordination among responders and environmental stakeholders.

NOAA developed Arctic ERMA to address escalating energy exploration and transportation activity in the region, which increases the risk of oil spills and other accidents.

The Alaska Ocean Observing System; the State of Alaska; the University of Alaska, Fairbanks; the University of New Hampshire; and Alaska’s Northwest and North Slope Arctic Boroughs are working with NOAA to keep this database current with information as it becomes available. Arctic ERMA pulls into one platform data such as the location, extent, and concentration of sea ice; locations of ports and pipelines; and vulnerable environmental resources. This tool also includes cultural and subsistence resources based on traditional and local knowledge.

In addition to providing local and natural resource information, BSEE has helped improve access to key environmental, commercial, and industrial data sources throughout lease areas in the Arctic. BSEE and other organizations will optimize real-time sensors to feed the data directly into ERMA during both potential oil spills and exercises simulating the release of hazardous materials.

You can view Arctic ERMA online at https://www.erma.unh.edu/arctic.

Earlier this summer, NOAA, BSEE, and the U.S. Coast Guard used Arctic ERMA during an industry-sponsored training exercise simulating an oil spill in the Chukchi Sea. “It’s an incredibly popular tool,” said John Whitney, NOAA’s Scientific Support Coordinator for Alaska. “My colleagues responding to oil spills in local, state, and federal government as well as industry continue to give very positive feedback about how valuable Arctic ERMA will be when they are trying to get information about a spill.”

Arctic ERMA is the product of a partnership among NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration, NOAA’s Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management, the Oil Spill Recovery Institute, DOI’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, and the University of New Hampshire’s Coastal Response Research Center. Besides the Arctic, ERMA is currently available for seven other geographic regions. The launch of Arctic ERMA is part of ongoing efforts by the Interagency Working Group on Coordination of Domestic Energy Development and Permitting in Alaska, which President Obama established in July 2011. This working group aims to coordinate the federal agencies responsible for overseeing the safe and responsible development of onshore and offshore energy in Alaska.

Read the press release here.

How Would Chemical Dispersants Work on an Arctic Oil Spill?

This is a post by John Whitney, OR&R’s Scientific Support Coordinator for Alaska.

An arctic cod, a key part of the Arctic food web, rests in an ice-covered space in Alaska’s Beaufort Sea, North of Point Barrow. This species was one of the subjects of the research program on dispersant effects in the Arctic. (Shawn Harper/Hidden Ocean 2005 Expedition: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration)

If there were a huge oil spill in the Arctic, would chemical dispersants work under the frigid conditions there?

And once dispersants break down oil into smaller droplets, how toxic are the oil and chemicals to key species in the short Arctic food web?

Would the dispersed oil and dispersant actually biodegrade in cold Arctic waters?

With Shell currently on track to drill several exploratory wells in the Chukchi and Beaufort Sea this summer, these are very timely questions—and finally, we are beginning to find some answers.

For the last three years, a special oil industry research group (called a “joint industry program”) has been trying to resolve these questions before any major oil exploration, development, and production happens off the northern Alaskan Arctic coastline. Lead scientists Dr. Jack Word of Newfields Environmental (Port Gamble, Wash.) and Dr. Robert Perkins of University of Alaska, Fairbanks, coordinated this research program to determine the viability of using dispersants on Arctic Ocean oil spills.

The illustration, not associated with this study, shows potential oil spill impacts to wildlife and habitats in the Arctic Ocean. Click for larger view. Credit: NOAA/Kate Sweeney, Illustration.

Aiming for as realistic Arctic conditions as possible, they captured arctic zooplankton (krill and Calanus copepods, which are tiny marine crustaceans) as well as larval and juvenile fish (arctic cod and sculpin) from the coastal waters of the Beaufort Sea.

These organisms are key players in the Arctic food web and culturing them in order to conduct toxicity tests hopefully would reveal how negative impacts from oil and dispersants could cascade through the ecosystem. The researchers also conducted toxicity and biodegradation tests in actual waters collected from the Beaufort Sea.

Five oil companies were pooling their talents and financial resources to conduct these tests and gather information: Shell, ConocoPhillips, Statoil, ExxonMobil, and BP. As NOAA’s Scientific Support Coordinator for Alaska, I was fortunate enough to serve on a unique, yet very important, part of the group: the Technical Advisory Committee, which is composed of non-industry technical and non-technical stakeholders. We met once a month to discuss the results and advise them on ongoing scientific tests.

Drs. Word and Perkins and their colleagues recently presented the results of this research at a workshop in Anchorage, Alaska. The workshop began with Tim Nedwed of ExxonMobil making a strong case for immediate and robust access to all the major oil spill response options—mechanical methods, in situ burning, and dispersants—in order to deal with a large oil release in the Arctic or any other location.

Mechanical methods (e.g., skimmers) and in situ burning typically encounter spilled oil at low rates, historically removing only 5% to 15% of the oil on the water’s surface. This makes chemical dispersants a very attractive option when approaching a big spill using a large aircraft (such as a C-130) to deliver dispersants. After all, Dr. Nedwed pointed out, the ultimate goal of dispersants is to deliver a significant boost to the rate of oil biodegradation that happens naturally after most oil spills.

Here are some of the major findings from their research:

1. Arctic marine species show equal or less sensitivity to petroleum after exposure than temperate (warmer water) species.
2. The Arctic test organisms did not show significant signs of toxicity when exposed to recommended application rates of the dispersant Corexit 9500 by itself, which also tends to biodegrade on the order of several weeks to a few months.
3. Petroleum does biodegrade with the help of indigenous microbes in the Arctic’s open waters under both summer and winter conditions.
4. Chemical dispersants more fully degraded certain components of oil than petroleum that was physically dispersed (for example, from wind or waves breaking up an oil slick).
5. Under various scenarios for large and small oil spills treated with Corexit 9500, the effects on populations of arctic cod, a keystone species in the Arctic, appeared to be minor to insignificant.

This workshop garnered attention from the oil industry, government regulatory and natural resource agencies, academia, Alaska North Slope residents, private consultants, and non-governmental organizations. It concluded with a brief discussion of Net Environmental Benefit Analysis, a scientific process of weighing the costs against the benefits to the environment, with emphasis on the importance of making this process both science-based and, at the same time, compatible with listening to the subsistence Alaska Native population, a significant and valuable voice in the Arctic.

John Whitney has served as the Alaskan Scientific Support Coordinator for NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration for over 25 years. His responsibilities include primary scientific support to the U. S. Coast Guard, as well as to industry, government agencies, and stakeholders for oil spills and other hazardous materials response in Alaska’s offshore waters. John’s background is in physics and geophysics, earning a PhD in geophysics from the University of Washington in Seattle. Currently, John participates in deliberations with the Arctic Council Emergency Preparedness, Prevention, and Response working group and also chairs the dispersant working group of the Alaska Regional Response Team.

Building Relationships out on the Ice in Kotzebue, Alaska

Overlook of Kotzebue, Alaska. Credit: Elspeth Hilton.

I could read reports and attend meetings until I’m blue in the face, but until I made my first trip above the Arctic Circle to the village of Kotzebue, located on Alaska’s northwest coast, I couldn’t fully appreciate the challenges of dealing with an oil spill in Arctic conditions. Last week, however, I finally was able to see some of those challenges first hand.

The purpose of this trip up north was to attend a workshop on involving the community not only when responding to oil spills but also when measuring and restoring the resulting damage to natural resources. Due to the prospect of increased ship traffic and offshore oil drilling in Arctic regions, the risk of an oil spill in Arctic waters is growing.

As a result, Alaska’s Northwest Arctic Borough sponsored this workshop to discuss oil spill response and restoration issues. NOAA attended along with several other state and federal agencies, and the Coastal Response and Research Center facilitated the meeting. The workshop also included discussions about how to integrate local community knowledge into the newly released Arctic Environmental Response Management Application (ERMA), an online mapping tool that integrates different types of environmental information for decision makers during disasters.

A classic building on the Kotzebue waterfront. Credit: Elspeth Hilton.

Located 33 miles north of the Arctic Circle, Kotzebue is a hub of travel for this area of Alaska, allowing participants from eleven villages in the Northwest Arctic Borough to attend this workshop. During the course of the meeting, community members from Kotzebue and surrounding villages expressed concerns about oil spill response capabilities and how a spill would affect their subsistence lifestyle.

These initial discussions are extremely useful in NOAA’s efforts to broaden our understanding of how people are so closely tied to and dependent on natural resources in the Arctic—and how we would be able to evaluate those connections in case an oil spill interfered with them. The most important goal of the workshop that we were able to achieve was to enhance relationships and the knowledge exchange between local Alaskan communities and government agencies.

I’m not sure of the best way to explain how important this is, but I’ll give it a shot. When we first arrived in Kotzebue, we spent a good amount of time looking out over the vast sea ice; it was the first time I had ever seen this thick layer of ice frozen over the Arctic Ocean. We saw snowmobilers and skiers speed across it, and we observed numerous small groups ice fishing on it. Two days later, the first layer of snow on the ice had firmed up, enabling us to walk out onto it without sinking up to our knees in snow.

The big question was, How safe was the ice? (Because this was my first trip to the Arctic and I only know Seattle’s mild winters, I was justifiably apprehensive about it.) We could see some cracks in the ice, but two days ago it was being heavily used. Even though there was no one out on the ice at the time, eventually we figured that it was safe.

I finally venture out onto the ice in Kotzebue. Credit: Elspeth Hilton.

Very timidly, we walked out onto the sea ice, but no issues arose except cold fingers. What we needed and desired, however, was guidance from the locals who knew the ice. Those who live in this amazing corner of the world know the status of the ice and would have been able to direct us if there were any safety problems.

I think this experience, although on a very small scale, can be compared to the objectives of this workshop.  One of the central goals was to start building relationships between those who know the local environments with those emergency responders and restoration experts who will need their guidance and expertise if an oil spill does occur.

Solid Returns: NOAA Prepares for Future Oil Spills in the Arctic

Polar bear on Arctic sea ice (NOAA).

In recent years, NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration (OR&R) has turned its focus to the remote Arctic region of Alaska due to proposals to increase oil and gas exploration and production there.

The environment above the Yukon River and beyond the vast Brooks Range is warming rapidly. Scientists estimate that by 2020-2030, the Arctic Ocean will be free of multi-year ice in the summer, increasing opportunities for maritime transportation, tourism, and oil and gas exploration.

The likelihood of hazards will also increase as access to Arctic oil reserves becomes easier.

Shoreline erosion and the long-term effects of climate change will also affect the stability and safety of communities in the Arctic region. Oil pipelines and other infrastructure located in permafrost will become less stable, also increasing the risk of spills. The potential expense—in terms of damage to fisheries, to wildlife, and to the formerly pristine environment—could be staggering.

The icebreaker Coast Guard Cutter Healey (left) cuts through Arctic ice (U.S. Geological Survey).

“The Arctic’s remoteness, its gale-force winds, lengthy periods of darkness, and lack of infrastructure combine to make any efforts to manage its resources and protect the environment extra challenging,” says Fran Ulmer, chair of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission. “It’s essential that we develop the right technologies and techniques to reduce risk and proceed cautiously in the largest expanse of wilderness currently under our care.”

For this reason, OR&R is working with the oil and gas industry, international governments, the University of Alaska, University of New Hampshire, University of Rhode Island, and the Prince William Sound Oil Spill Recovery Institute to understand and prepare for any future spills in the Arctic.

The stakes are high, says Margaret Williams, managing director for the World Wildlife Fund-US Arctic Program. “The Exxon Valdez spill has been the best studied oil spill in history and scientists have found that even 20 years later, the damage from the spill continues,” she says. “Fishermen’s livelihoods were destroyed, many wildlife and fish populations still haven’t recovered, and the Alaskan economy lost billions of dollars.”

“We have a slogan, ‘Our role is stewardship, our product is science,’ that pretty much explains what OR&R is doing in the Arctic and elsewhere,” says John Whitney, NOAA Scientific Support Coordinator for Alaska. ”We take our work seriously, regardless of the size or severity of the spill, and the results speak for themselves.”

Find out more about our office’s work in the Arctic, from oil spill preparedness to marine debris removal, at http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/arctic [leaves this blog].

For more information on how this office helps protect and revitalize economic interests through environmental response and restoration, read the first part of this series, Solid Returns: Response and Restoration Efforts Create Big Economic Benefits to Coastal Communities.

500 Miles from Help, Preparing for the Worst in a Remote Arctic Village

The Great White North: Looking out onto an iced-over Kotzebue Sound, Alaska. Credit: NOAA.

In a small town set not far above the Arctic Circle, residents of Kotzebue, Alaska, brace themselves for a worst-case scenario that looms uncomfortably close: an oil spill in the frigid, remote waters of the Chukchi Sea. This fall, they and a variety of federal and state agencies, including NOAA, imagined what would happen if a fuel barge broke up, spilling 400,000 gallons of oil onto the northwestern Alaska coast near Kotzebue. Would subsistence hunters in the area be affected? What would happen to nearby whales, seals, or shorebirds?

A break-out group discusses NOAA's projections at one of the oil spill workshops. Siikauraq Martha Whiting, left, is mayor of the Northwest Arctic Borough, where Kotzebue is located. Credit: NOAA.

This nightmarish scenario presented everyone, from Kotzebue’s mayor (of a town that is almost three-quarters Alaska Native) to the U.S. Coast Guard, with the dilemma of figuring out how and which cultural and natural resources to protect—if even possible—in the event of a major oil spill.

Oceanographers from the Office of Response and Restoration used NOAA models to forecast where the intermediate fuel oil released in this scenario might end up. They projected that hundreds of thousands of gallons would wash onto an Arctic coast that in the summer, according to OR&R ecologist Alan Mearns, is not unlike Louisiana, with barrier islands and large lagoons hosting extensive marshes and packed with migratory birds and other wildlife. In the scenario, thousands of gallons of fuel oil slipped into several lagoons. Most of the oil, however, came ashore at the village of Shishmaref, about 100 miles southwest of Kotzebue.

Recalling the headaches of dealing with oiled Gulf of Mexico marshes, Mearns walked away from the Kotzebue exercises realizing that these sensitive lagoons needed to be protected during a spill. The Coast Guard has response equipment in Anchorage, but, for a town more than 500 miles away, what could the community do before this kind of equipment arrived? Those attending the exercise saw the need to train local residents to be the first line of defense against oil spills. Mearns likens this to the model of volunteer fire departments. He notes a (quite effective) example of this already exists among Washington state’s San Juan Islands: the community-staffed Islands’ Oil Spill Association [leaves this blog].

However, the next phase of spill response would have to come from the “big guns,” an established rapid response organization that could bring in the heavy equipment and experience in dealing with oil spills. Unfortunately, there aren’t any such organizations currently committed to filling this role for the northwest coast of Alaska. Even if there were, it would take five to ten days to get most equipment to Kotzebue in the first place. That, in itself, is a challenge: imagine a helicopter transporting a skimming boat across the Arctic horizon.

Once response equipment is there to deal with any oil, a new suite of concerns appears for the local Native community. For example, they have burial sites and historic camps from traditional subsistence activities—fishing, whaling, trapping, camping, etc.—spread across the coast. Because these places are so meaningful for local Natives, decision makers should also be planning where (and where not) to land a helicopter or send out trucks loaded with oil boom.

“Some of the greatest concerns [are about] the ability of the environment to recover from a spill and provide healthy subsistence and cultural resources to communities,” said Ukallaysaaq Tom Okleasik, Planning Director of the Northwest Arctic Borough, based in Kotzebue. “Subsistence is inseparable from the way of life in rural villages that would be impacted by an oil spill in the Northwest Arctic—it would impact a way of life.”

A large sled, next to a City of Kotzebue pickup truck, highlights the mix of Native and Western cultures at play in this corner of the world. Credit: NOAA.

Native Elders, hunters, and fishers also represent an extensive and too-often underutilized source for what is known as “traditional ecological knowledge” about local plants, animals, and the environment. Elevating and acknowledging this resource could be an important step in building up an arsenal of tools to use against a spill, whether it comes from maritime transport or the offshore oil and gas drilling expected to begin in the Chukchi Sea in 2012.

NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration and the other federal, state, and local organizations involved in this workshop in remote Kotzebue are trying to bridge the gap between ecology and culture in evaluating potential impacts of responding to oil spills. And that’s just the first step: Once a spill happens, these groups need to be ready not only to evaluate the impacts of the spill itself, but how to compensate for those impacts and restore natural resources. Of course, these questions—and their proposed solutions—can be complicated by the shifting conditions in the Arctic [leaves this blog] as the air and sea temperatures continue to rise. Which is why there is no such thing as being too prepared, especially in a place like the Arctic.