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.

When Studying How to Clean Oiled Marshes, NOAA Scientists Have Their Work Cut Out for Them

This is a post by Office of Response and Restoration Biologist Nicolle Rutherford.

Oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill oozes out from beneath a vegetation mat in a marsh in Barataria Bay’s Bay Jimmy, Louisiana. (Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality/Mike Broussard)

To clean, or not to clean: That is the question.

And if you’re going to clean, how best to do it? This is a question that responders face whenever oil ends up on a shoreline after an oil spill. It’s a particularly difficult question when this happens on the shoreline of marshes.

Although we may sometimes think of marshes as murky, swampy, or smelly, marshes are highly sensitive environments with soft sediments that support a huge diversity of creatures, including birds, mammals, fish, crabs, and shrimp. Marshes are also incredibly productive habitats that act as nurseries for many juvenile organisms and whose large amounts of decaying plant material are the base of a complex food web. They also provide other important ecological services like storm surge protection and shoreline stabilization and water quality improvement. In many instances, when marshes get oiled, the best response action is no response—meaning no human-led cleanup. In the spill response world, we call this “natural recovery.”

Natural recovery is often the best option for an oiled marsh because nearly all types of active cleanup will include some unintentional habitat damage or disturbance. This can stem from the type of equipment used, the way it is used, or the mere presence of cleanup workers disturbing wildlife or trampling the marsh vegetation. The last 40 years of cleaning up oil spills in marshes has demonstrated that active, aggressive cleaning can cause as much or more short- and long-term damage than leaving the oil in place to break down naturally.

When Natural Recovery Is Not Enough

So, when over 30 miles of sensitive salt marshes in Louisiana’s Northern Barataria Bay were heavily oiled as a result of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, natural recovery was the preferred approach. However, in the areas with the most substantial and persistent oiling, the oil did not appear to be weathering or naturally degrading over time.

After the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill, a heavy layer of oiled vegetation mats were preventing the thick emulsified oil underneath from breaking down along Barataria Bay’s marshes. (NOAA/Scott Zengel)

In these areas, a dense, heavy layer of oiled, matted vegetation was lying overtop thick, fresher-looking emulsified oil (meaning it had water mixed in it). The vegetation mats were limiting the oil’s exposure to sunlight, air circulation, and tidal flushing—all natural factors which help break down oil. A number of “traditional” methods of marsh cleanup were tried earlier in the spill response, including low-pressure flushing with ambient seawater, skimming, vacuuming, applying materials to absorb the oil, and natural recovery. However, they performed poorly and in some cases caused additional damage to the marsh.

So what to do? Since the tried-and-true, traditional methods of cleanup weren’t working, this spill’s Shoreline Cleanup and Assessment Technique (SCAT) program (which surveys an affected shoreline after an oil spill) proposed a field test of various treatment methods, led by the oil spill science experts on NOAA’s Scientific Support Team. In addition to proposing a series of test treatments, they set aside several “no treatment” (natural recovery) sites with similar oiling conditions, and established nearby reference sites as well, both for later comparison to the treated sites.

All of the proposed test treatments included cutting the oiled vegetation to expose the thick oil beneath it, in order to accelerate weathering of the oil. In addition to vegetation cutting, the following treatments were tried:

• Using two different chemical shoreline cleaners that are designed to make oil “lift and float.”
• Low-pressure flushing.
• Marsh vacuuming.

Weed Whackers, Rakes, and Hedge Trimmers

As it turned out, conventional “weed whackers” were no match for the dense, heavily oiled vegetation mats, even when we tried different cutting techniques and cutting attachments. So we raked the vegetation.  In the end, the only treatment that showed promise was the vegetation raking.

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As we monitored the treated plots, however, we found that the ebb and flow of the tide laid the raked vegetation back down on the marsh, reforming the oiled vegetation mats and continuing to trap the layer of thick emulsified oil on the marsh surface. It quickly became apparent to us SCAT program scientists that any successful treatment would require removing the oiled vegetation. A fresh round of investigation into cutting devices began.

Ultimately, a heavy-duty, commercial power hedge trimmer was the solution. It was successfully used to cut through the dense, heavily oiled mats of laid-over vegetation and to cut oiled vegetation that still stood upright. By aggressively raking the oiled vegetation and the thick oil layer on the surface of the marsh, we were able to remove much of the oil, reducing the surface oiling and risk of re-oiling other vegetation.

Initial monitoring showed that this approach resulted in completely removing the heavily oiled vegetation mats in the raked and cut plots. Most importantly, the character of the remaining oil on the marsh area changed from mostly thick emulsified oil to a predominance of more weathered surface oil residue that posed far less of a risk to wildlife or for refloating and re-oiling the marsh.

In all, seven miles of the most heavily oiled areas in Northern Barataria Bay, La., were treated by raking and cutting. Most of this work was conducted by hand, using walk boards to reduce the foot traffic in the marsh. It appears that the treatment was effective and that impacts to the marsh from the cleanup action were limited.

NOAA SCAT team scientist, Carl Childs.

We are continuing to monitor the test plots in order to fully understand whether this cleanup action was the best approach and what the ecological effects or impacts of “treatment” versus “no treatment” are. Stay tuned for a future post that explores the results of the data collected thus far.

Nicolle Rutherford, blog author and SCAT team scientist.

Nicolle Rutherford is a biologist in NOAA Office of Response and Restoration’s Emergency Response Division. Nicolle received a bachelor’s degree in marine science from the University of South Carolina, Coastal Carolina College, and a master’s degree from Western Washington University in biology with a concentration in marine and estuarine science.

NOAA contractor and SCAT team scientist, Scott Zengel.

After graduate school, she and her husband served in the U.S. Peace Corps in the Republic of Vanuatu. Upon her return to the States, Nicolle worked for an environmental consulting firm as a wetland ecologist for several years before taking a position as a biologist at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps). She came to NOAA from the Corps.

From Paper to Pixels: Mapping Pollution Response in the Digital Age

Just a few days after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, U.S. Coast Guard Admirals discuss search and rescue strategies in front of a satellite image pieced together by NOAA Geographic Information Systems specialists. (NOAA)

This is a post by Office of Response and Restoration Geographic Information Specialist Jill Bodnar.

The initial phase of responding to an oil spill or natural disaster can often be described as “organized chaos.” Being able to manage effectively the resulting influx of data is crucial during that time. Responders need to identify priority areas for cleanup, risks to the environment, and status of cleanup activities quickly and correctly. This enables both the response staff at the scene of the disaster and government leadership back at headquarters to make informed decisions about dealing with the event (whether it’s an oil spill, hurricane, etc.) and potential pollution.

Maps are one way to organize all these important data into a common picture that gives everyone the same “situational awareness” and tracks the progress of the pollution response over time. Traditionally, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) specialists at the incident command post (the nerve center of the pollution response) would painstakingly create and then either print or email these maps to responders and government leadership. However, over the past few years, we at NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration, which provides scientific and technical support for marine pollution, have become leaders in using web mapping to revolutionize how people respond to these environmental emergencies.

The Past: Paper Cuts

My specialty is using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) during pollution responses, and I’ve honed these skills in numerous drills and incidents over the past 12 years. Through the mid-2000s, NOAA’s information management team of GIS specialists like me would come to a pollution response with CDs full of base data as a starting point for the affected area. These CDs contained nautical charts, Environmental Sensitivity Index data showing natural resources at risk from oiling, state agency Area Contingency Plans, roads and waterways, and occasionally even aerial imagery. All of this information was fed into the GIS program on our laptop computers at the command post.

Next came the data pouring in from field observers working at the spill. This included the type and location of oil observed during overflight surveys, sightings of wildlife in the area, and strategies for placing oil containment boom. We then would build maps reflecting this information and showing the status of cleanup operations. Responders waited as their paper maps were created and printed out before they briefed the leaders of the response (the Unified Command) or headed back into the field, maps in hand. The process was time-consuming, and you often worked under very stressful conditions and late into the night. There was only enough time to get the basic information on to a map as soon as possible.

A big change in how maps were used at responses happened during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which was around the time Google Earth and its satellite imagery became accessible to people without expensive desktop GIS programs. Suddenly, everyone at the command post wanted to print large, poster-sized maps layered over satellite imagery, which helped visualize the flooded carnage of New Orleans, surrounding neighborhoods, and coastal areas. While the imagery provided unprecedented detail, printing it required a great deal of blue ink and plotter paper, which would quickly run out, hampering our efforts. Luckily I had a contact at Hewlett-Packard who sent us boxes and boxes of extra plotter paper and ink, and FedEx was able to deliver it to us despite their own issues with the hurricane. It was like Christmas (except with more paper cuts)!

But an even bigger change was in store when the Office of Response and Restoration (OR&R) unveiled the jump to modern-day web mapping for pollution response: the Environmental Response Management Application (ERMA^®).

The Present and Future: Pixels

ERMA is an online mapping tool that integrates and synthesizes data—often in real time—into a single interactive map, providing a quick visualization of the situation after a disaster and improving communication and coordination among responders and environmental stakeholders. Developed by OR&R, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and University of New Hampshire, ERMA originally was released as a regional pilot project in New Hampshire in 2007. It has since expanded across the continental U.S., Caribbean, Arctic, and Pacific Islands.

The Deepwater Horizon/BP spill public ERMA site showing satellite imagery and bathymetry, forecasted paths of oil, command post locations, and sea turtle observations. Unlike a static map, the user is able to turn on any layers and zoom to their area of interest. Click image to enlarge. (NOAA)

But ERMA’s most pivotal role has been in response to the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill in 2010. Federal, state, and local spill responders used ERMA to convey what was happening at the front lines of this massive spill: what shoreline had been oiled and how badly, satellite approximations of the spill’s extent, fishery closures, and stranded marine life. At the height of the response, there were six different command posts around the Gulf of Mexico and in Washington, DC. NOAA had GIS specialists in each of them, uploading data 24/7 so that ERMA could be used in briefings to the Unified Command, the White House, NOAA leadership, and to the public via the ERMA Gulf Response website (a public-access version of ERMA). Once released to the public, ERMA was highlighted and used by media outlets to show, for example, current fishing closure areas.

The U.S. Coast Guard uses ERMA during the response to Hurricane Isaac in September 2012. (NOAA)

In addition, ERMA allowed hundreds of responders and thousands of public users to see the information they needed—coming from multiple sources—at any time, heralding a new era in response where access to data and maps wasn’t limited to a GIS specialist’s printing capabilities. Nearly three years later, our NOAA GIS team and other responders around the country are still working on the Deepwater Horizon/BP spill, which includes documenting resulting environmental injuries, and ERMA is a key technology helping us do that job.

More recently, ERMA was put into action during the Hurricane Sandy pollution response in the fall of 2012. During that response, ERMA was used successfully to show federal and state responders and NOAA and Coast Guard leadership post-hurricane satellite imagery, dozens of priority pollution locations, and on-the-ground field photos of impacted areas. Throughout this high-visibility event, ERMA put the most important data they needed to see in their hands.

To some extent, paper maps will always have their place at a response, especially since there is often no Internet connection, say, on a boat in the Gulf of Mexico. GIS specialists will always manage data and create maps to tell a story, but more than ever, ERMA is placing data at the fingertips of responders, often reducing the number of paper maps printed. The emerging technologies behind ERMA and the power of the Internet are transforming how we collect and manage information and how we make decisions during an oil spill or hurricane response—resulting in more efficient and effective use of time, resources, and money. Not to mention saving my fingers from future paper cuts.

Jill Bodnar, NOAA GIS specialist.

Jill Bodnar graduated from the University of Rhode Island with a Masters degree in natural resources, specializing in using GIS for oil spill response. She has been a geographic information specialist with NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration for over 11 years and has responded to numerous incidents in that time, including Hurricanes Katrina, Ike, Isaac, and Sandy, and the 2007 Cosco Busan and 2010 Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spills.

Submit Your Comments: Projects to Improve Bird and Sea Turtle Nesting Habitats Injured in Deepwater Horizon/BP Oil Spill

A hatchling loggerhead sea turtle takes to the beach on Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge in Florida. One proposed project focuses on reducing artificial lighting impacts on nesting habitat for these sea turtles. (Paul Tritak/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

The public has until December 10, 2012, to submit comments on $9 million in early restoration projects [PDF] related to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill.

This draft early restoration plan includes two projects aimed at restoring injuries to bird and sea turtle nesting habitats around the Gulf of Mexico. In the wake of the 2010 well blowout, the pollution response operations disturbed these sensitive habitats.

The natural resource trustees, including NOAA, hope to have the habitat improvements in place for the spring 2013 nesting season.

Part of BP’s $1 billion funding for early restoration in the Gulf, this second round of projects includes the following proposals:

• A comprehensive program for enhanced management of avian (bird) breeding habitat injuries by response in the Florida panhandle, Alabama and Mississippi. This project proposes to protect nesting habitat for beach-nesting birds from disturbance in order to restore habitat impaired by disturbance from oil spill response activities. It is to be conducted on sandy beaches in Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, Walton, Bay, Gulf, and Franklin counties, Florida; Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) in Baldwin and Mobile counties, Alabama, and the Gulf Islands National Seashore (GUIS) – Mississippi District.
• Improving habitat injured by spill response: Restoring the night sky. This project proposes to reduce artificial lighting impacts on nesting habitat for sea turtles, specifically loggerhead turtles, to restore habitat impaired by disturbance from oil spill response activities. It is to be conducted on sandy beach public properties in Baldwin County, Alabama; and Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, Walton, Bay, Gulf, and Franklin counties, Florida.

You can submit your comments on these projects in the following ways:

• Via the Web: http://www.gulfspillrestoration.noaa.gov.
• Via email (for electronic submission of comments containing attachments): fw4coastalDERPcomments@fws.gov
• Via U.S. mail: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, P.O. Box 2099, Fairhope, AL 36533.

The trustees considered projects based on criteria laid out in federal and state regulations and in the agreement with BP. This is the second in a series of draft early restoration plans developed outlining projects agreed to by the trustees and BP and presented for public input. These draft plans will be finalized to ultimately form a Final Early Restoration Plan.

To access both Phase I and II  Draft Early Restoration Plans and Environmental Reviews, as well as additional details on the proposed projects, please visit NOAA’s Gulf Spill Restoration website.

The long-term damage assessment will continue while early restoration planning is under way. BP and the other responsible parties ultimately will be obligated to compensate the public for the entire injury and all costs of the natural resource damage assessment.

NOAA Awards $500,000 to Research Projects Exploring Impacts of Chemical Dispersants on Marine Habitats

The University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science in Baltimore, Md., has been awarded $150,000 to study the effects of dispersants and dispersed oil on the commercially important blue crab, a keystone species of the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic coast, and its larvae. A female blue crab (Callinectes sapidus) is pictured here on a beach on Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay. (NOAA)

Earlier this year I wrote about NOAA making funding available to study the effects of chemical dispersants on the marine environment.  NOAA partnered with the Coastal Response Research Center at the University of New Hampshire to make a formal call for research project proposals.

We received 36 proposals from researchers and universities across the U.S. and Canada and even a few from scientists in Europe. Those proposals were peer-reviewed this past summer and early fall, and while there were lots of great proposals, only three research projects could be selected for funding.

We’re pleased to announce that NOAA will provide grants, totaling $500,000, to the following studies [PDF], which will focus on:

• Developing a worldwide quantitative database of the toxicological effects of dispersants and chemically dispersed oil.
• Conducting research to improve understanding of chronic impacts of chemical dispersant and chemically dispersed oil on blue crabs, a commercially important species of marine life.
• Researching public concerns and improving risk communication tools for oil spills and dispersants.

Over the next year we’ll get progress reports from the researchers, and all of the materials will be available online at the University of New Hampshire’s website.

Congress provided money for these grants out of supplemental research funding following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill.

Eyes in the Sky to Boots on the Ground: Three Powerful Tools for Restoring the Gulf of Mexico

Volunteers. The Internet. Remote sensing. NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration has been using all three to deal with the environmental aftermath of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. At Restore America’s Estuaries’ recent conference on coastal restoration [PDF], three of my colleagues showed how each of these elements has become a tool to boost restoration efforts in the Gulf.

Managing Data

OR&R scientist George Graettinger explained how responders can use remote sensing technology to assess damage after a major polluting event, such as the Deepwater Horizon/BP spill. He has helped develop tools that allow both Geographic Information Systems (GIS) specialists and responders to visualize and manage the onslaught of data flooding in during an environmental disaster and turn that into useful information for restoration.

Here, the ERMA Gulf Response application displays information gathered by SAR remote sensing technology to locate oil in the Gulf of Mexico following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon/BP incident. (NOAA) Click to enlarge.

The principle tool for this work is OR&R’s ERMA, an online mapping platform for gathering and displaying environmental and response data. During the Deepwater Horizon response, ERMA pulled in remote sensing data from several sources, each with its own advantages and disadvantages:

• MODIS and MERIS, NASA satellite instruments which each day captured Gulf-wide oceanic and atmospheric data and photos during the Deepwater Horizon response. While very effective in the open ocean, these sensors do not perform well in coastal waters [PDF].
• AVIRIS, another NASA sensor which took high-resolution infrared imagery from a plane to estimate the amount of oil on the water surface. Its disadvantages included being able to cover only a small area and being limited by weather conditions.
• SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar), a satellite radar technology with super-fine spatial resolution. This technology actually transitioned from experimental to operational during the 2010 oil spill response in the Gulf of Mexico. While very effective at “seeing” through cloud cover to detect ocean features, SAR does not allow easy differentiation between thinner and thicker layers of oil on the water surface.

Managing People

Volunteers plant vegatation to restore a section of Commencement Bay, WA which was injured by hazardous releases from industrial activities. (NOAA)

“If you spill it, they will come,” declared Tom Brosnan, scientist and communications manager for our Assessment and Restoration Division, at his presentation. “They” were the hordes of volunteers offering their eager help after the 2010 well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico caused the largest oil spill in U.S. waters.

Brosnan outlined some of the many challenges of using volunteers productively during an oil spill: legal liability, safety, technical training, logistics, reliability. The National Response Team, a federal interagency group coordinating emergency spill response, has taken a strategic approach to these challenges by creating guidelines for incorporating volunteers into response activities [PDF].

Brosnan also pointed out other great opportunities for harnessing the energy of concerned citizens for environmental restoration. One example was partnering with Citizens for a Healthy Bay in Tacoma, Wash. This is a community group soliciting and overseeing volunteer efforts to maintain already completed restoration projects making up for the decades of industrial pollution around Tacoma’s Commencement Bay.

Managing Communications

And no less important, explained NOAA communications specialist Tim Zink, is keeping people engaged after an oil spill is out of the public eye. For the Deepwater Horizon/BP spill, this has been a challenge particularly during the environmental damage assessment process. Zink described the difficulties of continuing to communicate effectively after initial interest from the media has diminished, of many different government trustee organizations trying to speak with one unified voice, and of the need for communication with the public to be framed carefully within the legal and cooperative aspects of the case.

He cited something as simple as a well-run online presence: the Gulf Spill Restoration website. This is a joint effort representing no fewer than three federal government departments (Commerce, State, and Interior) and five state governments. Well-organized and user-friendly, this website serves as a one-stop source of information about the ongoing effort to evaluate and restore environmental injuries in the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon/BP spill.

Among the closing speakers at the conference, Dr. Dawn Wright, chief scientist at GIS software company Esri, reinforced the importance of communicating “inspired science” to policymakers, communities, and other stakeholders throughout the restoration process. As a GIS specialist, she spoke to the many types of sophisticated spatial analysis that are available to anyone with a smartphone. The average person now has unprecedented access to geographic data on earthquakes, flu epidemics, and sea level changes. However, it is up to us to decide how we use these data-rich maps—and other tools—to understand and tell the story of environmental restoration.

Internet in the Restroom and Other Survival Tips from NOAA’s Disaster Response Center

Phone and internet network ports located in the nearly tornado- and hurricane-proof restrooms allow responders to continue working in the NOAA Disaster Response Center even during severe weather. (NOAA)

Occasionally, newcomers at the NOAA Gulf of Mexico Disaster Response Center will ask me, “Why are there internet and phone hook ups in the restrooms?”

When I hear this, I reply with another question, “Have you noticed how even the smallest sounds seem to echo in those restrooms?” Some will nod in agreement, comparing the restroom to a cave or an underground tunnel, and they’re not far off.

The main restroom complex at the Disaster Response Center in Mobile, Ala., may not be underground, but it was built as a steel-reinforced concrete bunker, intended to function as a Force-5 tornado shelter. The amount of steel and concrete is so thick that you immediately lose cell phone reception upon entering. It is like being in a cave.

But why do we need to connect to a phone or the internet from the restrooms? Not because we love to multi-task, but this way, even if a tornado threatened the area, the staff and any visitors can take shelter in the restrooms while still being able to monitor the response situation outside. In fact, the entire facility is hardened to survive the kind of severe weather generated by a strong hurricane, though only the restrooms are built to withstand the damaging 200 mph winds of a Force-5 tornado. If you’re lucky (unlucky?) enough to be in the Disaster Response Center during a deadly tornado, head to the restrooms, where you’ll even enjoy the relative luxuries of the survival gear and emergency supplies stored there.

Rising from Rubble

U.S. Senator Richard B. Shelby joins NOAA Fisheries Assistant Administrator Eric Schwaab (left) and NOAA National Ocean Service Assistant Administrator David Kennedy (right) in cutting the ribbon formally opening the new $11 million LEED silver standard Gulf of Mexico Disaster Response Center. (NOAA)

The vision for the NOAA Gulf of Mexico Disaster Response Center was borne out of the devastating 2005 hurricane season that included Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Congress recognized the need for and later funded a central NOAA facility and program in the Gulf of Mexico dedicated to preparing for, responding to, and recovering from all types of disasters in the area.

The new center, based in Mobile, Ala., was designed to expand NOAA’s regional presence and expand federal capacity to plan for and respond to all types of emergencies, both natural and man-made.

It is a testament to the need for this center that its construction began in 2010 shortly before the Deepwater Horizon/BP well blowout off the Louisiana coast and the formal dedication of the building took place on October 15, 2012, a little over a month after Hurricane Isaac swept through Louisiana and Mississippi.

The new center itself is an environmentally friendly, 15,200-square-foot, hardened structure built away from storm surge threats, designed to withstand the wind assault of a major hurricane, and providing a physical location to pre-stage and coordinate post-disaster response activities. The NOAA Disaster Response Center aims to streamline coordination and communication of disaster planning and preparedness information. In between actual emergencies, the center serves as a coordination and training hub for federal, state, and local response preparedness activities.

To better support federal and regional emergency planners and managers, the facility will improve the accessibility, redundancy, and distribution of NOAA data, information, and tools to the people who most need them during disasters. Here, we can share with the Gulf of Mexico response community the broad range of products and services NOAA provides before, during, and after emergencies, whether it’s a grounded ship or a tropical storm.

A Melting Pot of NOAA Knowledge

In addition to office space, the NOAA Gulf of Mexico Disaster Response Center, located in Mobile, Ala., includes a training room, conference rooms, and a large multifunction space that can be used for emergency response operations and drills. (NOAA)

The mission of the new center may be very large in scope, but those of us who work full-time here are small in number—only eight at present, but that number is expected to double. However, hundreds of NOAA staff are spread across the five states that boarder the Gulf of Mexico, working hard each day to protect the public and our natural resources. These men and women are the NOAA front line.

Prior to accepting the director position for the Disaster Response Center, I was one of them, coordinating scientific support for oil and chemical spills and several hurricanes in the western Gulf of Mexico for 13 years. During that time, one of the first things I learned is that you learn something new from each disaster, and you have to put that hard-earned knowledge back into planning for the next one—no matter how many oil spills you’ve worked on.

We are setting up the Disaster Response Center to be the gathering place for that information and expertise gleaned from each experience. The goal is to make NOAA better prepared to deal with whatever crisis may strike the Gulf of Mexico next.

I hope to never have to take shelter in the center’s restroom during severe weather—or resort to plugging my laptop into one of the network ports there—but I take comfort knowing there is a secure place for my staff just in case. Tornadoes, droughts, harmful algal blooms, oil spills, chemical accidents, wildfires: These events are part of life for those living along the Gulf of Mexico coast. The Gulf isn’t unique in this way; every part of our nation faces some sort of risk. No matter where you live, you are wise to plan for the worst and hope for the best (the NOAAWatch website is a great resource for that). We’re no different; that is our plan as well.

NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration Responds to Hurricane Isaac in the Gulf

Office of Response and Restoration staff continues to support the U.S. Coast Guard’s assessment and response efforts following the landfall of Hurricane Isaac last week. Our office has two Scientific Support Coordinators and two information management specialists on scene in Louisiana.

Flooding on the Mississippi River, just west of New Orleans, La., in the aftermath of Hurricane Isaac. (NOAA)

Additional support is being provided remotely for ERMA^® (an online mapping tool for visualizing key environmental response data) and for response management. The Gulf of Mexico Regional ERMA site is being used as the U.S. Coast Guard Common Operational Picture and is providing operations, environmental, and situation unit support for the federal response efforts.

Our information management and ERMA team members are coordinating with the Coast Guard, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and state and local partners to provide real-time situational awareness for local and remote agency personnel. The primary focus is on oil and chemical pollution from sunken vessels, facility releases, toppled tanks and rail cars, and pipeline and rig spills. Pollution is to be expected following major storms like Isaac when flood waters carry all sorts of household and industrial debris.

So far, Coast Guard and Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality assessment teams have investigated about 90 separate reports of pollution throughout the impacted areas. Facility owners are taking steps to clean up the majority of these incidents. Six sites require further assessment, and environmental response crews are taking steps to clean up or contain any oil releases.

The OR&R team is also tracking marine debris and evaluating the effect of the passing hurricane on shorelines affected by the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill. Shoreline Cleanup and Assessment Technique teams are beginning operations along the Gulf Coast looking for new spills but also focusing on tarballs and oily residue discovered in the area oiled by the Deepwater Horizon/BP spill in 2010. Samples of tarballs are being collected and will be analyzed to determine the source.

The Toxicity of Oil: What’s the Big Deal?

This is a post by the Office of Response and Restoration’s Mary Evans.

Dealing with a major oil spill is a huge effort, sometimes requiring billions of dollars and involving hundreds, even thousands of people. Yet, oil is a natural material that seeps from the ground or into the ocean in many locations around the world.

So why is it so important to respond to an oil spill, anyway? The main reason is that oil is also a toxic material that can cause environmental damage where it spills. The central purpose of oil spill response is to reduce that damage.

Toxic Effects

We call something toxic if it harms living things. The amount of harm caused depends on how an organism is exposed and to how much oil. For example, crude oil is considered toxic and causes two main kinds of injury: physical and biochemical.

Dr. Brian Stacy, NOAA veterinarian, prepares to clean an oiled Kemp’s Ridley turtle during the response to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill. Veterinarians and scientists from NOAA, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, and other partners worked under the Unified Command to capture heavily-oiled young turtles 20 to 40 miles offshore as part of animal rescue and rehabilitation efforts. Credit: NOAA and Georgia Department of Natural Resources.

The physical effects of freshly spilled crude oil are all too obvious. You’ve likely seen the disturbing images of birds and other animals coated in crude oil, struggling to survive. When oil washes ashore, it can completely cover and smother the plants and animals living there. Crude oil not only destroys the insulating properties of animal fur and bird feathers, which can lead to hypothermia, but it also impairs animals’ abilities to fly and swim, sometimes causing oiled animals to drown.

During the months after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, researchers collected about 30,000 dead birds–ranging over 90 different species–from the oiled areas, and they estimated that perhaps ten times as many birds died.

Spilled oil also can harm life because its chemical constituents are poisonous. As we previously learned, petroleum-derived oil is a complex mixture of thousands of chemical compounds. Given oil’s chemical complexity, we need to consider how these different components—and their very different effects on living things—cause harm.

Breaking It Down

Let’s look at two important components of crude oil: volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). In terms of how long they remain in the environment, they represent two ends of a spectrum.

All crude oil contains VOCs, which readily evaporate into the air, giving crude oil a distinctive odor. Some VOCs are acutely toxic when inhaled, in addition to being potentially cancer-causing. At the site of a fresh oil spill, these VOCs can threaten nearby residents, responders working on the spill, air-breathing marine mammals, and sea turtles at the water surface. However, VOCs are generally a response concern only right after oil is spilled, because oil floating on the sea surface quickly loses its VOCs.

Years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, heavy residual oiling remains in sediments of Smith Island in Prince William Sound, Alaska, June 2011. (David Janka, R/V Auklet, NOAA)

In contrast, PAHs can persist in the environment for many years, in some cases continuing to harm organisms long after the oil first spills. How PAHs in oil do that is an active area of research.

For example, our colleagues at NOAA’s Auke Bay Laboratory near Juneau, Alaska, investigated the possible biological effects of oil that spilled from the Exxon Valdez in 1989 but still remains at very low concentrations in weathered oil in beach sediments at locations scattered around Prince William Sound.

The Auke Bay Lab researchers conducted a series of studies that continued for more than a decade. They found that even though the levels of PAHs leaching from weathered oil buried in beach sediments were very low, the PAHs still caused negative effects to incubating herring and salmon eggs. The good news from these studies is that over the years, the concentration of PAHs has declined in the Sound’s beach sediments, to the point that those particular toxic effects on fish eggs have diminished as well. However, at a few sites in the Sound, sea otters are eating clams that may continue to be contaminated by leaching PAHs in buried oil.

The Northwest Fisheries Science Center, another NOAA research laboratory in Seattle, Wash., has studied the chemical physiology of how PAHs harm developing fish. The researchers found that some PAHs in oil inhibit proper heart development in fish embryos, which can either kill the fish outright or make them more susceptible to predation and disease.

With so many varying factors coming into play, predicting the impacts of an oil spill can be quite challenging. It’s important to know the specific chemical makeup of an oil (and how that makeup changes over time as the oil weathers). This information will give us clues about how that oil will interact with organisms and the environment and, hopefully, will help us figure out how to keep those impacts low.

Mary Evans provides science communication and research analysis
support to OR&R’s Emergency Response Division in Seattle. She develops educational and training materials and research reports, helps out with oil spill responses and the division’s training programs, and has taught emergency response courses in the U.S. and abroad.

Let’s Get Chemical: What Is Oil?

This is a post by Vicki Loe with OR&R chemist Robert Jones. Technical review by Robert Jones and OR&R biologist Gary Shigenaka.

Emulsified oil from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon/BP spill remains on, and pooled below, vegetation in Pass a Loutre, La., following a previous week’s storm. Image shot on May 22, 2010. (NOAA)

I recently began an ongoing conversation on this blog about our relationship with oil and oil products and the large part oil plays in all of our lives. Walking through just the first hour of a typical day for me, I managed to list 20 products I use that come from oil. But for something that we all depend on every day, how much do we really understand about what it is and why it’s so useful?

As most of us know, oil comes from beneath the ground. It is made of dead animal and plant matter, buried deep under layers of sedimentary rock. Pressure and heat cause oil deposits to form over long periods of time. But what is oil at its most basic?

A diagram of the molecular structure of benzene, an aromatic hydrocarbon and component of oil.

Oil is a complex mixture of molecular compounds.  A molecule is the smallest unit of a substance that retains the substance’s characteristics. Molecules, in turn, are composed of atoms.  There are only 90 naturally occurring types of atoms on earth; these form the basis of the innumerable types of molecules found in nature.

Crude oils, while mixtures of thousands of types of molecular compounds, are predominantly composed of only two types of atoms: hydrogen (H) and carbon (C). Molecular compounds composed exclusively of these two elements are called hydrocarbons.

Petroleum hydrocarbons are predominantly one of two types, aromatics or alkanes. Aromatics, which are based on a 6-carbon ring, tend to be the molecular compounds in oil that are the most toxic to marine life. A notable case is polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which have multiple carbon rings and can also be quite persistent in the environment. Alkanes, on the other hand, tend to be less toxic and are much more readily biodegraded naturally; most can be ingested as food by some microorganisms.

For example, the oil spilled from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon/BP well blow-out was relatively high in alkanes and relatively low in PAHs. But, like all crude oils, it contained benzene, toluene, and xylene, which belong to the single-ring aromatic group. Benzene is very toxic and known to cause cancer but is not as persistent as PAHs.

Oil in marsh vegetation during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill. (NOAA)

Refining crude oil to produce fuel oils like gasoline and diesel does not significantly alter the molecular structure of the oil’s components. So fuel oils usually contain the same types of molecular compounds that are found in their parent crude oils.

Different chemical compounds can be extracted from crude oil and then recombined or altered to make what are called petrochemicals. Petrochemicals are used to make a vast array of products, including acetic acid, ammonia, polyvinyl chloride, polyethylene, lubricants, adhesives, agrochemicals, fragrances, food additives, packaging, paint, and pharmaceutical products. And that’s just the start!

NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration is the primary science adviser to the U.S. Coast Guard during a major oil spill. Knowledge of the chemical make-up of the particular oil, whether it is a crude oil or refined fuel oil, is critical in making response decisions when there is spill. Among the scientists that work in OR&R’s Emergency Response Division are chemists that are experts in this field.

Crude oil is predominantly a mixture of hydrocarbons, but every crude oil is a unique mixture of molecular compounds. There are thousands of named crude oils in use around the world. Our chemists make recommendations by determining the source of the spill and the optimal cleanup methods and safety issues, based on the unique properties of the oil released.

The next blog post in this series will delve into the toxicity of oil and the harm it can cause when accidentally released into the marine environment. Look for it coming soon!

Robert Jones

Co-author Robert Jones is a chemist in OR&R’s Emergency Response Division. He is a member of the spill response team and is involved in the development of computer models used to predict the fate and transport of oil and other chemicals in the environment. Robert received his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Indiana University. Prior to joining NOAA in 1990, Robert taught chemistry at Western Washington University.