The Studio was an ideal venue for our event!
Our mid-year conference was sponsored by the Association and Socotec for whom we express our thanks.
It was divided into two days – Turf (inland) on the 16th and Surf (Marine) on the 17th. Turf was very well attended and we started with an excellent PFAS session with a superb panel led by Paul Nathaniel of LQM. The Panel included Richard Williams of Geo2, Duncan Sanders of ATG, Jonathan Hughes of 2 Encapsulate, Geraint Pumford of Socotec and Jack Shore, of Regenesis. It was stimulating and feedback was very positive and the audience learned a lot. There was a lot of PFAS knowledge in the room!
We then had case studies from Chris Ramsbottom of Adler and Allan on the loss of ferric acid at a waste treatment works; Ashley Curtis of GreenSpark Environmental on a Spill response from the perspective of Total Environmental Compliance and Simon O’Rourke of RSK-RAW on the Remediation of a major slurry spill to surface waters. These quite different incidents highlight the challenges companies and responders are faced with on a daily basis.
Paul Harold and Dr Jack Lort of the UK Health Security Agency gave an insightful presentation of the current and emerging health hazards from a public health perspective. The Q&A that followed was very interesting.
We then moved into a phase of discussion on the changing role of the responder and how best to manage their training, maintaining competency, and retention.
This led to a presentation from Richard Baker, Executive Director of ISAS on the launch of the Individual Spill Qualification Scheme in conjunction with the Institution of Environmental Sciences.
This is outlined in the next item in this newsletter.
Between Day 1 and Day 2 there was a Surf and Turf BBQ that was well attended and well received.
Our Surf and Turf BBQ was good fun – in the heart of Birmingham!
Surf Day kicked off with a presentation by Mark Orr on Response to Very Low Sulphur Fuel Oil and presenting the outcomes of the excellent IMAROS 2 project.
This was followed by a fascinating presentation by Dave Reddington of OSRL on the use of chemical herders that are surface-active agents sprayed around the perimeter of an oil slick to contract and thicken the oil, facilitating mechanical recovery or in-situ burning. They are primarily utilised in open water, remote areas, and ice-covered environments where traditional physical booms cannot be effectively deployed. Lately, they are being trialled to protect sensitive environments like mangroves and fish farms from the effects of oil pollution. There are approved products, and these are relevant to both inland and marine spill incidents.
Dave Reddington of OSRL briefing us on herders and their applicability to inland and marine spills
There was then a presentation on the roll out or Marine Alternative Fuels given by Mark Orr, who leads the UK Marine Alternative Fuels Preparation Group. He gave the estimated programme for the introduction of these fuels, like methanol, ammonia, e-fuels, e-LPG, nuclear etc. Despite objection by USA and some supporting states, the momentum is now unstoppable, as shipping companies are supportive and are ordering them. The only impediment to their continuing progress is access to feedstocks. As these improve so will the production of vessels that use them.
Marine alternative fuels are either volatile gases (LPG, ammonia and hydrogen) or volatile liquids (methanol, e-methane, ethanol). If there is a loss of containment, then there is likely to be a release of energy in terms of an explosion and fire that present significant harm to the health of those nearby. The best defence we have is live modelling of the incident that includes prediction of where a vapour cloud will move around buildings in ports and around the vessel itself. Ports are going to have to manage the risk around vessels, particularly when bunkering, to protect all in the area of this high-risk activity. Predictive models that integrate feeds for local weather and information from established sensors should be running live whilst these activities are being undertaken so that these models are up to date.
We heard two fascinating presentations on this topics; one by Dan Stepney of MarCast who explained how advanced incident modelling makes validated modelling fast and intuitive. For those reasons, it is used by a growing range of organisations to predict, plan and respond with confidence.
The other by Tim Culmer of Riskaware explained how their work with the UK Ministry of Defence and US Department of Defense has enabled them to develop proprietary models, particularly their Urban Dispersal Model, and software developed to show how gas and vapour clouds move around buildings and structures. These give incident commanders predictions of concentration, deposition and human effects of different chemical, biological and radiological agents enabling access to impacted areas to be planned for emergency teams and responders. They have an accompanying web app and a 4D Advanced modelling tool, called UrbanAware. They work closely on this application with Smiths Detection who produce a range of sensor products for identifying and measuring various vapours and gases.
Dan Stepnet of MarCast talking us through his modelling programme
We then had an excellent presentation by Harrison Jolly of Ambipar on the work they undertook recovering up to 17 containers and their contents that had spilled from three vessels east of the Isle of Wight in December 25 and January 26. This was hard work in exposed conditions with much of it manual picking and storing for processing through many waste streams. There were up to 80 staff involved in this throughout this period and many local volunteer beach groups that needed to be managed and supervised.
The day closed with a fascinating discussion on the management of responder stress, workload and retention. Mark Orr highlighted the outcome of a Responder Survey led by Victoria Broje of Shell that was launched at IOSC 24 . This was the first survey for many decades circulated to 10,000 people and resulted in 272 responses. The responses revealed a lot and there are learnings for companies and incident managers to consider.
We then had an excellent panel discussion on these topics and share the experience of our principal marine responders. The panel comprised:
Mathew Perkins, Adler and Allan
Harrison Jolly, Ambipar
James Woodford, OSRL
There were really good discussions over planning of work, rotation periods during long-lasting incidents and training of staff to prepare them for multiple incident types. There was a great discussion on creating a working environment that enables responders to express stress, fatigue, operational concerns so that these can be recognised by incident managers.
Our thanks were expressed to the panel who answered many different questions from the floor.
There was agreement for this to be discussed at the Annual Conference.
This concluded the Surf Day of the Conference.
It finished with a request for content of the Annual Conference for 4 November. (See below).
Presentations are available on:
https://turfandsurf.ukeirespill.org