Featuring Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation (ADEC)

During this episode of Tank Talk, we sit with Graham Wood from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation to discuss Alaska's spill prevention and response strategies, most notably the revamped 485 Drill Program. Graham explains the updated regulations that took effect on February 5, 2023, and how it brings clarity to spill response exercises, making them more effective. We explore the specifics of compliance and examine the differences and similarities between ADEC's approach and national programs. We learn how the Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP) creates structured and scalable exercises and the challenges that enforcement brings.  Hear how to navigate the new regulations that are tailored to meet Alaska's unique environmental landscape.

Episode Transcription

Additional Resources:
ADEC Oil Discharge Prevention and Contingency Plan Regulations Update
ODPCP Regulation Implementation Tools & Resources
Spill Response Exercise Schedule

Chapters

• 0:00 485 Drill Program Regulations and Outcomes
• 13:04 Implementing Alaska's 485 Drill Program

Transcript

Shannon Oelkers: 0:43

Good morning. Welcome to Tank Talk. This is Shannon, and today I have a special guest. I have Graham Wood, the Program Manager from the Prevention, Preparedness and Response Program from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. And, Graham, I've invited you to the podcast today to talk about the 485 J Program. Welcome.

Graham Wood: 1:02

Thanks, Shannon. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be on here to talk about our prevention regulations.

Shannon Oelkers: 1:07

Thanks for having me it's a pleasure to be on here and to talk about our prevention regulations. So, Graham, could you introduce yourself and maybe talk a little bit about what led you to become Program Manager?

Graham Wood: 1:14

Sure, like most Alaskans, I wasn't born here. I found my way here by the Coast Guard. I arrived here in February 1998. I was a bit miffed that I was here and wound up staying Like most Alaskans. It kind of just grows on you in a unique way.

Graham Wood: 1:38

I got out of the Coast Guard in 2005 and needed a job, and my last four years in the Coast Guard I was stationed at what was then Marine Safety Office Anchorage what's now called Sector Anchorage, and I was there kind of on an out of rate billet. I was doing a job that wasn't in my rating, doing a lot of the work that the MSTs do the FRP reviews, facility inspections, things of that nature and turned out I really enjoyed that work. So when I got out of the Coast Guard I started looking for work in that arena and wound up in the old industry preparedness program reviewing contingency plans and doing inspections there Throughout the years. You know I just worked my way through the system and wound up being the program manager. Then the first couple of years of the prevention preparedness response program becoming a thing.

Graham Wood: 2:26

For those that don't know, my program used to be two separate programs. We had an Industry Preparedness Program which did all the Contingency Plan reviews and drills and exercises, financial responsibility. And then we had another program that did just spill prevention and response or just spill response, I should say. They also did what's now our area and Regional Planning, but back then was the sub-area Contingency Plans and the unified plan. So we brought all that together under one program and I've been leading that since 2016. I took a short hiatus to DNR for about a year and I'm back in this role.

Shannon Oelkers: 3:00

Yeah, I'm so glad to see you back in that role. Your background is a huge asset to ADEC. Thank you so, Graham, I really appreciate you being here, because I would really like to explore the 485 Drill Program with you so that our listeners, many of whom are responsible for implementing this 485 Drill Program, can kind of hear straight from ADEC what that program is looking like and what some of the outcomes are that we're all trying to meet. And one of the first things I'd like to ask you to do is kind of briefly go over the 485 Drill Program and the referenced drill and exercise guidance document.

Graham Wood: 3:38

Sure. So I think the first thing is, you know, the exercise guidance document is incorporated by reference. That's a new change, and we set a minimum number of exercises, one to be required, a minimum of every five years. As you're aware, Shannon plans are on a five-year cycle. You know, there's some methodologies laid out in that guidance document that must be followed, as well as set a bar. Finally and there's lots of companies that need to be brought up to that bar Instead of doing the same number of companies every few years, everyone has to do an exercise now.

Shannon Oelkers: 4:14

So previously in the regulation it was a little gray. There was a lot of room for individual interpretation. It sounds like the 485 Drill Programs are moving some of that gray area. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Graham Wood: 4:27

Sure, I think there was some ambiguity in the previous version of 485. You could do one, could do two, depending on the outcome, and this removes that. And really you know if this is followed correctly by both the regulated community and my team here at ADEC. There should be no failed drills, because we're giving people a script on how to do them and ADEC is involved in the planning from the start.

Shannon Oelkers: 4:51

And that script is the drill and exercise guidance document, and you guys did something a little different this time you adopted it by reference. You want to talk about what that means.

Graham Wood: 5:00

Sure, really, the biggest thing that means is that we can't just make a change, we can't just change something arbitrarily to our benefit without it going out to public comment. So if we do make a change, the regulatory community, the users of that document on the oil industry end, will have a say in that.

Shannon Oelkers: 5:18

So it's essentially by adopting it or referencing it in the regulations. If you wanted to make a change to that guidance document, you'd have to undergo public comment period and it would be treated just like a regulatory change.

Graham Wood: 5:30

Yes, okay, and I will say that's my understanding. So I will fact check that and let you know.

Shannon Oelkers: 5:36

Yes, and I would like to take this opportunity to also say that neither Graham and I are lawyers, and lawyers are very different, but my understanding of how adoption by reference works lines up with what you're thinking too, Graham. But yes, if, if something different occurs, we will post it to this episode later. So, Graham, when did this regulation come into effect?

Graham Wood: 5:58

It came into effect February 5th 2023. And really, this was the brainchild of our Article 4 update, which was, you know, a couple of years in the making. This was part of that big effort to overhaul our contingency plan regulations. Yes, there was a lot of years in the making. This was part of that big effort to overhaul our Contingency Plan regulations.

Shannon Oelkers: 6:13

Yes, there was a lot of changes that went into effect on that February date, but this one in particular sort of changes the landscape for drills. I wanted to talk about the outcomes of this program because I think that's going to be most useful to our listeners. So, setting the stage, we now have this new guidance document and regulatory 485 section that we need to meet. Graham, within this guidance document, if you're somebody sitting at a desk tasked with providing a compliant 485 Drill Program for your company, I think some of the things that would be important to take into consideration would be the outcomes. Right, like what outcomes this guidance document lists and there's four of them, sort of guiding principles. Can we talk through each one of those and maybe go a little more in depth?

Graham Wood: 7:01

So the guiding principles or outcomes, as you're calling them, that we're talking about, these guiding principles were kind of drafted or kind of. They were drafted in, you know, 2014-15, mainly when we were building the PPR program or, for those that don't know, the Prevention, Preparedness, Response Program, and they really were the principles on how we wanted the program to function, and so it made a lot of sense to put these in the 485 Exercise document as well, because you know they're not really regulation or they're not regulations.

Graham Wood: 7:33

They're more of like a way to guide yourself through this program and what the intent of the program is.

Shannon Oelkers: 7:39

So what are those four intentions? Can you share that with us? Let's start at the top.

Graham Wood: 7:43

So there's more than four in the book, but I mean the four that I think that we really want to talk about here are improving current levels of response readiness, encouraging innovation and improvement, maintaining consistency in response capability statewide with an emphasis on statewide and verifying compliance with statutes and regulations.

Shannon Oelkers: 8:03

So one of the outcomes or guiding principles that you mentioned, Graham, was improving current levels of response readiness. So if I'm sitting in a seat trying to make my 485 Program meet that outcome, what are some suggestions that you have for improving that level of response readiness like? What does that look like from the State perspective?

Graham Wood: 8:22

First and foremost. You'll hear me say this throughout this conversation. If you have questions about anything in this guidance, call me or a member of my team and we'll walk you through it. That said, improving current levels of readiness, response readiness you know, I think of that as a company who has never had to do one of these before or hasn't done one in many, many years. You know they have a level of response readiness through themselves or through a response contractor of some way, and I would think that improving current levels of response readiness would mean planning a drill with ADEC that strengthens the relationship between that company and their contractor, builds knowledge within their own what I'll call response workforce, which we all know are the day-to-day workers who get responsibilities as what I'll call collateral duty, whether they want it or not.

Shannon Oelkers: 9:12

Anybody on the spill team internally?

Graham Wood: 9:14

Yes, yeah, to build that knowledge within those folks. And, you know, design a drill so people can be successful. That's what I think response, improving that response, readiness looks like.

Shannon Oelkers: 9:25

I think, as somebody who's worked in the industry for 20 years, the current level of employee turnover and some of the retirement the graying of the fleet has now turned into the retiring of the fleet. I think this is especially well-timed for that, because there's a lot of people that are new to positions where maybe 10 years ago, we had people that have been doing this for 20 years, 30 years in those same positions. Okay, so, starting where you're at and building knowledge, building experience, strengthening relationships with your response action contractor, that sounds doable. What about encouraging innovation and improvement? Because that was one of the other outcomes that we were looking at.

Graham Wood: 10:03

Well, if you look at the exercise guidance document, it lists many kinds of operational exercises there. Operational-based exercises, excuse me, building and improving and innovating. I mean again, if you're a company who hasn't done one of these in a long time, it's kind of like running a marathon. You're not just going to go out there and do it, you need to train for it, you need to think about how that's going to work and whatnot. And again, call ADEC. Let's plan a drill and as we work through these drills, we want to see improvement, especially, and if you have something that could innovate, something in the environmental unit or something in the planning section or a different piece of equipment, we want to talk about that.

Shannon Oelkers: 10:43

Correct me if I'm wrong too, but maybe innovation and trying different response, different sections of the response, not just doing the same boom pole over and over again, but exercising all components of the program. Correct?

Graham Wood: 10:56

And the guidance document is built to make that really not a factor, because across the board, across the entire regulated community, we saw a lot of the same drills over and, over and over again and that's just a fact, a factor of not having a guidance document like this that lays out clearer framework.

Shannon Oelkers: 11:13

So, Graham, you also mentioned consistency in response capability statewide. We work statewide and I know what you mean by this, but could we talk about what consistency statewide is going to look like prior to this?

Graham Wood: 11:27

regulation update being a thing, there was a lot of emphasis on drills on the North Slope in Cook Inlet and Prince William Sound, for obvious reasons, yeah, high-risk areas right.

Shannon Oelkers: 11:37

Lots of oil transfers, high volume ep makes sense.

Graham Wood: 11:41

But what consistency statewide looks like is, you know, Shannon, you have clients that do business not only in Anchorage but in, you know, Adak, or somewhere out on the chain or on the Alaska Peninsula, or in Kodiak or in Southeast, and we want their drills to be run the same, while the scenario may not be the same and the people may not be the same. You know, not only is it the intent of ICS, but it's the intent of this program to do things the same across the board of ICS, but it's the intent of this program to do things the same across the board and could you talk a little bit about the same, because I do think some of our clients their knee-jerk reaction is oh no, I can't do what Alyeska does, I don't have resources and people.

Shannon Oelkers: 12:18

But I don't think that's the same that the state is talking about. It is not the same.

Graham Wood: 12:20

You are right, that's not the same. The same is. You know we're going to work through building a scenario the same way we're going to expect similar outcomes. The Alyeska serves outcome is not going to be the same as for a small operator in Sitka.

Shannon Oelkers: 12:32

It's just so it'll be scaled to the size of facility, the number of people that you have, and it is based on your C-Plan right, your ODPCP.

Graham Wood: 12:42

So if the operational-based exercise needs to be based on the approved Contingency Plan.

Shannon Oelkers: 12:47

Okay. So when we say consistency and response capability, it's how the response is run, how the data is communicated and documented and how the training and skills building occurs. Is that fair to say?

Graham Wood: 13:02

Yes.

Shannon Oelkers: 13:03

Okay, all right. And then this last piece, and I will ask this but verifying compliance with statutes and regulations, what are the state's thoughts on that kind of outcome?

Graham Wood: 13:15

So our intent with this program is not to show up, have a company fail and then find them. I want to be very clear about that, you know. Yes, this is a requirement. Yes, a company could not do a great job, but, from my perspective, early in this program, we want compliance through assistance and we need to make sure that companies that haven't done these exercises in a long time, or even companies that are currently doing them I mean, we're all human beings, we just need to be there, as that's part of why we want to be involved in the planning. So there's no surprises for anyone.

Shannon Oelkers: 13:51

I like that, and and I in our experience as a firm the state has definitely been showing up and having that helping hand attitude and, you know, encouraging people to improve rather than nailing someone for not being ready, so I definitely appreciate that piece of it. So another question that we have pretty frequently is why did ADEC enact this program when NPREP was already in place? And for those of you who don't know, NPREP is the National Preparedness for Response Exercise Program, and almost everybody who transfers oil over water has to meet this NPREP guidance. It's typically through the Coast Guard, and it does have a drill component. It's a little more limited than this 485 guidance, though, so why the 485 if NPREP's already in place?

Graham Wood: 14:45

Sure. So I can tell you that when we were looking at making this change we looked at many options. HC wasn't even on the original list of options. It was given to us by a section of the regulated community to look at and we did that and it turns out there's a lot of similarities with HC and ICS common language, common use of terms et cetera. But really the the main reason we didn't use NPREP I mean, and it was on the original list of ideas was it doesn't meet our statutory or regulatory requirements. It's a federal program, as you mentioned. But our exercise guidance and new regulations in 485 have a demonstrative requirement I don't like the word demonstrative, I'm going to say demonstrative and the plan holders can demonstrate that they can achieve a ADEC response planning standard requirements. NPREP is way more loose than that and that's why there's not a connection between the two. It doesn't mean that as long as we're brought into the planning, a plan holder can't combine an end prep and a ADEC exercise and check both boxes at the same time.

Shannon Oelkers: 15:52

So let me summarize and make sure I understand this correctly. So the prep program was designed to show compliance with the SPCC, or spill prevention, control and countermeasures plan, or maybe the facility response plan that we see from the EPA and the Coast Guard. However, the state of Alaska Oil Discharge Prevention and Contingency Plan, or ODPCP, has different requirements. So the state looked at the PREP program, but you mentioned HSEEP or the Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program. What about HSEEP? Attracted the state enough to include it in the guidance Like could you talk through the HSEEP decision-making?

Graham Wood: 16:33

Well, I mean, as I previously mentioned, HSEEP was pointed out to us by a section of the regulated community and when we started looking at it, the evaluation part of that was a critical reason of why we adopted that, not the only reason. Another big reason was it's scalable, so it fits big large crude oil transportation companies as well as a small operator in the Southeast of the Alaska Peninsula storing refined products. Everyone can use that tool and when you base, you know you talked about in our previous question about you know the guiding principles and you know improving response readiness statewide and things of that nature. You can use that evaluation tool and as we do drills and plan drills with these plan holders throughout their plan cycles, these drills should become more robust, thus improving response capability statewide and you know building that innovation and things that within your response team.

Shannon Oelkers: 17:28

So now we've got this program in place, I wanted to ask you about any challenges that the state of Alaska has in implementing this program, because it's a big bite, graham. There's a lot in there.

Graham Wood: 17:40

It is a big bite. I'd say our biggest challenge is, you know, balancing that with our current workload. We're no different than any other company. When we also put new regulations out that require us to do things like assist with planning and exercise, there's a workload that comes with that. So we're sympathetic to the regulated community that this is a bit of a more of a workload. That said, whether you're a large crude oil transportation company or you are a small operator and have one facility that stores the minimum to be regulated by ADEC, contact us early to plan an exercise, because that will reduce the workload tremendously on both sides.

Shannon Oelkers: 18:19

So, related to my last question, I want to ask sort of the inverse of that is what can, what can see plan holders do to be proactive about implementing this plan?

Graham Wood: 18:28

proactive is just that is, you know, be the squeaky wheel not getting a bill for calling us about asking about drills and exercises. So we didn't call. We encourage plan holders to pick up the phone and call email, schedule a meeting, do what it takes. We will be happy to give you the information. We want every plan holder in this state to be successful with this program.

Shannon Oelkers: 18:46

All right. I find that really encouraging and that has been our experience as well on the consulting side. Graham, thank you so much for walking us through the 485 regulations and the Drill and Exercise guidance, and I really appreciate your thoughts on the state side of what we are both going to have to do together as far as the industry and the state. I was wondering if you could provide us with a list of resources that you could point our listeners to and we've talked about a few of them, but I thought a list at the end might be really helpful.

Graham Wood: 19:18

Absolutely so. There's lots of resources out there. First and foremost is the drill and exercise guidance document itself. Give that a read and I'm sure there'll be questions. There's many resources as well as some frequently asked questions on our ODPCP regulation implementation resources webpage as well as there's also an exercise scheduler. The scheduler is the intent. So not only does ADEC know when we're doing drills, but also as companies are scheduling drills. They're not scheduling on top of one another, so we all have the appropriate manpower resources to meet our goals.

Shannon Oelkers: 19:56

Can I ask a question related to that scheduler, Graham? Because everybody who has a C lan has a five-year window at this point, right, right, and you had mentioned being proactive and calling the state early. I imagine, as we get closer to the five-year renewal dates, that that schedule is going to become more and more limited and less and less flexible.

Graham Wood: 20:14

Yeah, and we're trying like crazy to avoid that if possible, which is why we're encouraging plan holders to start having conversations with us sooner than later. Especially a plan holder who has not done a drill in a long time. Give us a call, let's talk about scheduling. Let's talk about the things that need to be planned and planned for well ahead of time, so that even if you're doing an operational-based ICS drill or a small equipment deployment, that may be a bigger hurdle to a company that hasn't done it in a long time. So let's get that on the books and start planning it. So there's no surprises, no high hurdles for anyone.

Shannon Oelkers: 20:49

Okay, so there's a scheduler. Let's make sure, if you are responsible for a 485 Drill at your company, that you check that scheduler. That'll give you an idea of the availability of the state around your internal schedule.

Graham Wood: 21:02

That'll give you an idea of the availability of the state around your internal schedule. Okay, and then you know. Next to last resource is reach out to program staff, specifically about questions about the 485 drill regulation. You can reach out to Diane Munson or Elva House. We also have an email address, to submit questions about those regulations or any other of our 4 or Article one regulations you might have questions about. Shoot us an email there. And then, last but not least, is the exercise lessons learned as well. After a drill is completed and a plan holder gets a letter saying you know, thank you, you've done the drill. You know. Here's your letter that says you've crossed the finish line. The lessons learned are going to be captured and posted on our website as well, and we've gotten a lot of positive feedback about that.

Shannon Oelkers: 21:52

Oh, that is interesting. Okay, so everything Graham just listed, we will make sure to include a link and we'll include that email as well in our show notes. Graham, I so appreciate your time today. I really appreciate you talking us through that and I think this is going to make the 485 drill program a little easier for our listeners to navigate, and I appreciate the resources that you just listed because I think that's going to be critical to them understanding and being successful at this 485 drill program.

Graham Wood: 22:19

Thanks for the opportunity to get the word out. Thank you.

Shannon Oelkers: 22:22

Yeah, absolutely.