Summer 1998

AREA EXERCISES TEACH VALUABLE LESSONS

OPS helped plan and evaluate area drills in the Deep South, New England, and the Pacific Northwest. As a drill participant aptly put it, each player makes you see your work from a different perspective.

SUN IN MISSISSIPPI

April 20 - 22 found Melanie Barber from OPS Headquarters and Derick Turner from the Southern Region in Oxford, MS for an OPS area drill with Sun Pipe Line at Sardis Lake. Key players represented the EPA, the Corps of Engineers, Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, the Sheriff's Department, and University of Mississippi journalism students portraying an aggressive media pool. The State and Federal representatives had worked together at the February 12 EOTT and April 9 Southland table tops in South Mississippi and at the March 25 Sun Agency planning meeting. These bonds strengthened the area drill and readiness to respond to oil spills in Mississippi. Edith Coen from Sun said, "The drill was successful because there was none of the my daddy can beat up your daddy. All the children played well together. One of the twists in the scenario that required extra coordination was having the spill come from a pipeline running under a lake for which the Corps of Engineers is the trustee. Sun deployed boom in Sardis Bay without disrupting fishing in Sardis Lake. Dedication to bringing all resources needed to solving the problem and a diverse team working well together were two of the hallmarks of the Sun drill."

BUCKEYE IN CONNECTICUT

Phil Nguyen, an OPS Eastern Region inspector, went to the Nutmeg State Capitol on April 30 to take part in an EPA area drill with Buckeye in Hartford, CT. Lessons learned included the need to improve communications from the field to headquarters and clarifying unified command roles and responsibilities. Participants represented the County Emergency Management Office, the City Fire Department and its hazardous material response unit, City Police, State and County Departments of Environmental Protection, the EPA, and the Coast Guard. Buckeye put booms in the river, employed heavy equipment at the leak, used emergency breathing equipment, and simulated repairs on a piece of pipe.

TEXACO IN WASHINGTON STATE

The Coast Guard led an area drill with Texaco off the coast of Washington State in Anacortes. Texaco and Shell are merging some of their downstream operations, which meant that one of the challenges was to figure out the corporate entities to which the industry participants were or may be assigned. The Texaco team working on the May 10 - 14 drill would be Olympic Pipeline's secondary response team in a major spill. Olympic will conduct an area exercise with OPS September 8 - 10, 1998 at Arco's facility near Bellingham, Washington. The September drill will build on lessons learned at the Texaco drill. Like the Sun and Buckeye exercises, the Texaco drill strengthened bonds responders forged at drills. Participants included the Coast Guard, the Washington Department of Ecology, the County Emergency Management Agency, and the Sheriff.

The scenario involved the controversial practice of in-situ burning near residential areas. The Coast Guard and OPS were able to take pictures and to evaluate the boom deployed in Samish Bay from a Coast Guard reservist's plane. Joe Haley from Texaco noted, "Having the opportunity to work with the agency personnel who would respond to real spills was very valuable. There were minor problems, such as radio frequencies, that had to be worked out but overall it was an excellent drill."

OPS RESPONSE PLAN REGULATION

On Christmas Eve, 1997, Santa had his elves at OPS change the requirement for filing oil spill response plans from three years to five. This was so operators could file their OPS plans or their one plans the same year they file plans with the Coast Guard, the EPA, and the Minerals Management Service.

In January 1993, OPS published an interim final rule Response Plans for Onshore Oil Pipelines (49 CFR 194). OPS will not issue a response plan final rule in 1998. OPS is waiting to issue a final rule to see how the program evolves.

As we analyzed, made recommendations, and approved the first round of plans in 1995, we learned a great deal about the public representatives on the OPA '90 program. We are fine-tuning facility response plan review to make it more efficient and to give operators clearer, better guidance. We are working with the pipeline industry to measure how well the OPA '90 program works. The interim final rule is in effect.

UNCLE SAM WANTS YOU

OPS is looking for operators to volunteer to conduct a table top exercise in Fiscal Year 1999. To sign up, please call Melanie Barber at (202) 366-4560 or send her an e-mail at melanie.barber @rspa.dot.gov.

RESPONSE TEAM MEETINGS STRENGTHEN

EFFECTIVE PARTNERSHIPS TO KEEP OIL OUT OF THE WATER

Jim Taylor, OPS Response Plans Officer, and Melanie Barber, OPS Environmental Planning Officer, continue to work with the thirteen Region Response Teams (RRT) on OPS' risk management demonstration, oil spill prevention and response, unusually sensitive area definition, and national pipeline mapping issues. The RRTs address emergency management, environmental protection, antiterrorism, and hot issues in each Region. The RRT members represent fifteen Federal agencies, the States, local emergency responders, and the public. RRT members play key roles at OPS table top and area exercises. The 1998 RRT schedule follows.

OPS PROPOSES CHANGES TO BREAK OUT TANK STANDARDS

To clarify and improve our tank regulations, OPS published a notice of proposed rulemaking in the May 21, 1998 Federal Register identifying the industry standards OPS will adopt as part of our hazardous liquid pipeline rules. The American Petroleum Institute and the National Fire Protection Association wrote the standards which reflect the latest in industry safety and prevention. The standards OPS proposes to adopt are in the NPRM. You can comment on the proposed rule until July 20, 1998. If you need copies of the notice or have questions about the rule making, please call Al Garnett at (202) 366-2036 or e-mail him at albert.garnett@rspa.dot.gov.

After the rule is final, OPS will work with the Environmental Protection Agency to amend the 1971 Memorandum of Understanding that defines the agencies' jurisdiction over above ground petroleum storage tanks. The goal of the discussions with EPA is to ensure that the public and the environment are protected from tank spills while reducing the agencies' overlapping regulatory requirements.

MAPPING, ENVIRONMENTAL INDEX, AND DAMAGE PREVENTION

Mapping

OPS does not have an accurate, up to date map of the pipelines in the United States. For about four years, we have been working with States, other Federal environmental agencies, and the industry to create a national map that will show pipelines and environmentally sensitive areas, densely populated areas, hydrography, places where natural disasters are probable and have high consequences, and transportation networks. OPS wants people to let us know where natural gas transmission pipelines, hazardous liquid trunk lines, and LNG facilities are. To learn more, please come to a mapping work shop near you this Summer or Fall. OPS is having mapping work shops from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Adam's Mark Hotels and Resorts in Houston, Texas on July 14 - 15, the Radisson Hotel Arlington Heights, Arlington Heights (Chicago), Illinois on September 1 - 2, the ANA Hotel in San Francisco, California on September 23 - 24, and the Washington Plaza Hotel in Washington, D.C. on October 28 - 29. To sign up or get more information on these meetings please call Janice Morgan at (202) 366-2392 or send her an e-mail at janice.morgan@rspa.dot.gov.

Environmental Index

PHMSA has drafted a drinking water data catalog that covers the fifty States and includes information on ground water wells, surface water intakes, aquifers, sole source aquifers, wellhead protection areas, and geology. The catalog has the government agency that gathered the data, data descriptions, data problems, and data quality and completeness. Before too long, the catalog will be on OPS' home page. For more information, please call Christina Sames at (202) 366-4561 or send her an e-mail at christina.sames@rspa.dot.gov.

Damage Prevention

OPS will set up a team of government, industry, and public representatives to study best damage prevention practices for underground utilities. On Aug. 25 - 26, we are having a public meeting at the Ritz Carlton Pentagon City in Arlington, Virginia to get the public's views on one call best practices. If you are interested in working on a damage prevention team, please call Eben Wyman at (202) 366- 0918 or send him an e-mail at eben.wyman@rspa.dot.gov.

ELECTRONICALLY SUBMITTING PIPELINE FACILITY RESPONSE PLANS

If you would like to file an oil spill response plan with OPS electronically, please read the following. OPS is scanning all facility response plans (FRPs) in our library to create an electronic plan library. OPS will allow operators to file their plans electronically. If you want to keep filing paper plans, you may do so. 49 CFR 194.119(a) requires each operator to submit two copies of the response plan. You may submit one paper copy and an electronic copy. If you have questions, please call Jim Taylor (202) 366-8860 or send him an e-mail at jim.taylor@rspa.dot.gov.

Electronic Submission Requirements

Electronic plans submitted in PDF format would be the easiest for PHMSA to process. You can submit the other formats listed below. To ensure that your paper copy of the plan is an exact copy of the electronic plan, it is important that all pages (i.e., OSRO equipment lists, figures, drawings, tables, etc.) in the paper plan be in the electronic plan. The number of separate files constituting the plan should be kept to a minimum to further our adding your plan to PHMSA's electronic response plan library. Large maps, charts, drawings, schematics, etc., can be submitted in separate files since they are not always easy to incorporate into a word processing file.

Electronic Media

• 1.44M 3.5" HD floppy disks, CD-ROMs, Iomega Zip format, Iomega Jazz format, and Imation Superdisk format.
• Word Processing with incorporated figures, tables, and images.
• PC* (ClarisWorks 1.0 or higher, MS Word for Windows 6.0 or higher, MS Works 2.0 or higher, PDF, and WordPerfect Windows 6.1 or higher)
• Macintosh* (ClarisWorks 1.0 or higher, MacWrite, MS Works 2.0 or higher, MS Word for Windows 6.0 or higher, and WordPerfect Windows 6.1 or higher)
• Graphics Formats: Windows ArcView, GIF, TIFF, and DWG

* Note: Many other word processing programs that may be acceptable are not on the list. Please call Jefferson Tancil at (202) 366-8075 or send him an e-mail at Jefferson.Tancil@rspa.dot.gov if your company uses another program to see if OPS can open and maintain the original format of your files. You can also contact Jefferson Tancil if you would like your files transferred in a different media than the ones listed above.

SUMMER SURFING

Does your morning sometimes start with no e-mail? Do you ever wonder what's going on in Washington? Are you always the last one in your office to know about a Federal requirement? If you answered yes to at least two of these questions, you need to go to the OPS home page. That's where you'll find the latest information about OPA '90 drills, mapping, risk management, and other hot topics. The address is http://ops.dot.gov. Questions? You can e-mail Jim Taylor at jim.taylor@rspa.dot.gov and e-mail Melanie Barber at melanie.barber@rspa.dot.gov