Courtesy Photo ExxonMobil employees team up with the Coast Guard to deploy 500 feet of deflection boom in the Houston Ship Channel. During the simulation, these boom lines were placed in six areas to contain the oil spill.

ALPENA — U.S. Coast Guard Sector Sault Sainte Marie personnel are conducting a full-scale environmental response training today at the Carmeuse facility in Rogers City.

Based on a response plan, the Coast Guard will test its operations for emergency pollution calls.

According to a press release, this includes oil spill response vehicles and equipment, unmanned aerial vehicles and response watercraft on Lake Huron.

Brian Streichert is the Sector Sault Sainte Marie’s emergency manager. He said these kinds of training exercises are meant to test the response plans to make sure they work and continually improve them.

“It’s not to say, ‘Hey, look how great we did.'” Streichert said. “We look for the flaws so that we can improve on those. And then we do what’s called ‘after action reports’. And in those reports, they talk about … [what areas] we need some more training in…”

The Coast Guard is partnering with members of the Northern Michigan Area Committee, which includes over 80 different agencies such as THE National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, local tribes, and more.

Streichert explained how, with all these different government and commercial agencies involved, training operations with the response plans are important – to make sure everybody is on the same page.

Operation “Frog Pond” is the title of this training exercise, referring to the area where barges will load and unload equipment.

Streichert explained how people can call the National Response Center to report a pollution issue and that is what the Coast Guard bases their response on.

Once the call has been received, he said the facility would initiate its response plan within minutes of receiving the call.

For standard protocol, U.S. Venture — a distributor of renewable energy products — has people on site to begin “booming” the area immediately. This means a temporary barrier is set up which is designed to contain oil, according to the United States Coast Guard News.

As for operation “Frog Pond”, a similar scenario is recreated, Streichert said, but instead mimics a worst-case discharge — when a mobile facility empties an entire container of stored oil.

To recreate this scenario, the Coast Guard uses a dye in the lake to showcase what the oil spill would look like while administering the protocols it would typically take to handle those situations.

Streichert said these operations stem back to the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. According to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the act was created to enforce the removal of spilled oil and to avoid oil spills in general by applying liability costs.

“There were many lessons learned that brought us to where we’re at today,” Streichert said. “So, exercising these types of things before anything ever happens, this helps. This is what helps you build your relationships with your locals, state, federal entities, your tribes … this is what brings us all together.

When asked whether real worst case discharges occur often in Michigan, Streichert said fortunately that it has not occurred.

However, there are times when a teaspoon of oil goes into the water at marinas when boats are being refueled. In those cases, the Coast Guard sends a member to handle that incident after the marina reports it.

While discussing the way these environmental responses are handled, Streichert said it was important to address the efforts of the design team – which consists of federal, state responders and local tribe members.

“It’s amazing what these groups can come up with, and how well they kind of come together during these events,” he said. “And again, this is a testament to everybody’s willingness to keep our Great Lakes pristine.”

Streichert said local tribes are involved in the environmental and historical unit of the Northern Michigan Area Committee. In 2017, they had similar tribal representation under unified command and found it to be instrumental in gaining perspective.

Overall efforts for these emergency environmental operations last year-round. The Northern Michigan Area Committee meets twice a year to discuss the next potential release for training in areas that have the most concerns with oil spills. Rogers City has been one of them on a list that includes five other areas, Streichert said.

After a site is chosen, it is the focus for four years, he said. In 2019, the Coast Guard began in Rogers City by doing workshop exercises, then in 2020 they did tabletop exercises to test mechanics.

The third year consists of equipment deployment where different vendors come out to demonstrate their facilities for use. Once the fourth year commences, the full-scale training exercises are executed.

Streichert said the next destination for the four-year long cycle of training is in the U.S. Route 2 Cut River Bridge in the Upper Peninsula.

This story was produced as part of the Michigan News Group Internship. Zipporah Abarca is working for WCMU this summer at The Alpena News.