Contingency Planning
In order to have an effective response to pollution incidents it is necessary to have procedures and plans in place to enable sound principles, founded on experience to be applied to the problem in hand.
Water pollution incidents can vary in scale from something very minor such as the misconnection of a sink into a river to something as major as a fully laden oil tanker spilling its cargo into our coastal waters. Procedures and plans have to be flexible enough to ensure that an appropriate response is initiated to deal with the sorts of incidents detailed above and everything in between.
In Northern Ireland there are various layers of contingency planning in place and these are outlined briefly below.
Our Incident Response Procedures
These detail the actions to be taken to minimise the effects of unauthorised discharges of polluting substances to inland and tidal waters. The aim of the procedures is to ensure that all incidents are thoroughly investigated and that where necessary clean up is organised quickly, efficiently and cost effectively in terms of both finance and manpower. The procedures describe a standard approach and provide sufficient information to enable those involved to determine the scale, priority and degree of response necessary to tackle any particular incident. They do not describe clean up methods as in most cases these will be dictated by the circumstances prevailing.
We have started to develop a Coastal Contingency Plan to cover the entire NI coastline. Booming plans have been produced for the major sea loughs and detailed beach surveys were conducted during the summer of 2002 for the rest of the coast.
The procedures cover all water pollution incidents that occur in Northern Ireland and those which arise from pollution crossing the border from the Republic of Ireland into our jurisdiction. Incidents arising at sea are the responsibility of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, which is an executive agency of the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions.
Ports and Harbours OPRC Plans
A statutory duty has been imposed on harbour authorities, harbours and oil handling facilities of a certain size and/or turnover produce plans to respond to marine pollution incidents in their waters to underpin a national duty accepted by the UK Government to respond to such pollution incidents. These plans are commonly referred to as 'OPRC Plans' because they implement the obligations of the Oil Pollution Preparedness, Response and Co-operation International Convention.
National Contingency Plan (NCP)
As a party to the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Law of the Sea, the UK has an obligation to protect and preserve the marine environment. The NCP is one of the measures that the UK has taken to meet this obligation. After saving human life, the key purpose of responding to a maritime incident is to protect human health, and the marine and terrestrial environment. Our Incident Procedures along with the OPRC Plans dovetail in with the overarching NCP to ensure an effective response to incidents of marine pollution. The NCP also outlines mutual support arrangements should the resources held by us become exhausted or overwhelmed due to the size of the incident.
