Mt Irvine Bay Watersports is a frontline Tobago tourism service provider. The oil spill from the wrecked Gulfstream affects our income. In this blogpost we – as a local stakeholder, discuss the ‘people’ aspect of current struggle to disrupt the flow of oil from the wreck.
In a previous entry we posited via zombie analogy the process of battling an oil spill, essentially describing war against environmental and economic zombies that pose hazard to our well-being. Luckily, if that is the word to use now, our country has developed an oil spill contingency plan. That document has identified the various sources from which people will come who are qualified and outfitted to deal with our present event.
Image courtesy Sean McCoon
Is that happening as we enter the seventh day of the spill? We have indeed gotten the people. Incident command is populated by the author of the National Oil Spill Contingency Plan, Maritime Services Division, the Coast Guard, Environmental stewardship is well catered to, given the august presence of the Environmental Management Authority and the scientists from the Institute of Marine Affairs. There are many more people involved but hopefully you get the picture. We’ve got resources and qualified people and the zombies that want to take out Tobago’s fragile ecosystems are gonna get killed. (Again).
Except. After seven days of working a relatively non-remote site and despite almost every modern convenience that a mature oil producing country can bring to bear, we still are nowhere near resolving the issues. The barriers to resolution are plural. We have a vessel on a delicate nearshore locale and despite happy incident of balmy calm Caribbean waters no progress is being made.
The people at the site are saying the booms aren’t working. Stakeholders are saying those qualified people brought the wrong gear – as its not like geography around Cove Point is undocumented. Fer chrissakes comprehensive Environmental Impact Assessments exist. Were done for the marina proposed (by the Tobago Plantations Company) and for the feed line to the National Gas Company’s proposed gas hub. These are not trivial studies. Relevant too, given the study area in both EIA’s overlap and include the nearshore where the inundation is greatest.
What is apparent here is, those ‘correct’ people are somehow forgetting part of their training spoke to customising solutions to local affected conditions. Environment Tobago, a local NGO consulted on this scenario suggested that perhaps non-skilled, non-oilspill savvy people be brought to bear. That the shallow water might be just the place to deploy hommade booms utilising wrapping plastic strips for instance.
However while the ‘boom’ oversight is entering its early arc of clusterfook. The next thing Tobago stakeholders might want to watch out for is the use of dispersant. Oil dispersant may be approved for offshore spills but its not something watersport companines (for instance) want to see used in their lagoons and near their beaches. Long and short, in a war against zombies it can be hard at times to tell just who is the enemy. It could turn out to be the good guys.