Who needs to clean up after an oil spill in a waterway, I mean eventually it’ll wash away, right – PB/TK
Trump’s proposed budget could cripple environmental disaster response – Natasha Geiling March 9 2017
On June 3, 2016, a Union Pacific train carrying thousands of gallons of Bakken crude oil derailed in the town of Mosier, Oregon. The derailment sparked a fire, which burned about a quarter acre of land, and sent some 42,000 of crude oil spilling into the soil, wastewater system, and — in small amounts — Columbia River.
The derailment in Mosier was, in many ways, a best case scenario for an oil train derailment in the Columbia River Gorge. On a typically windy day, the blaze might have engulfed the entire line of derailed cars. But any oil train derailment — and subsequent spill — is a problem, and emergency responders had to work quickly to prevent as much oil as possible from seeping into the town’s groundwater or into the nearby Columbia River.
And that’s where Richard Franklin — on-scene coordinator for the EPA’s Region 10 office, which includes Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho — came in. Franklin arrived in Mosier shortly after the first responders and helped coordinate on-scene response to the spill, using his years of experience and expertise working in on-scene disaster management to put into motion a local response plan that had been crafted by the regional office some years prior.
“It would have been much more confusing to not have that guidance, and the frankly, the experience of that person in knowing how to move the response quickly and responsibly,” Jim Appleton, Mosier fire chief, told ThinkProgress. “I cannot imagine going through that type of an incident, anywhere, without having a competent on-scene coordinator from EPA.”
Continue to thinkprogress.org article: https://thinkprogress.org/trump-epa-regional-offices-elimination-public-health-threat-b501edf21106#.wjymo0ydb
