CONTAINMENT AND RECOVERY TECHNIQUES 



Kenneth Biglane 



Chairman, National Response Team 



U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 



Washington, DC. 



You have heard the French expression "deja vu," meaning that a person 

 feels he has been in this place before. In working with this group, I am 

 experiencing "deja vu." Your workshop breakout sessions this morning were 

 excellent. The points that you made were right on target. Looking back to 

 the beginning of 1967, I was the only man in the government who was designat- 

 ed as an On-Scene Coordinator (OSC). To watch the field grow these 12 years 

 has been amazing. The States have assumed their rightful role, but more than 

 that, the Federal Government has exerted the kind of leadership that is 

 necessary. The public has come to expect such leadership. I hope that we 

 never shirk that kind of duty. Now, I would like to reflect on our progress 

 in oil containment and recovery. 



I started cleaning up oil spills in the stripper fields on north 

 Louisiana and south Arkansas when I was 12 years old. It was my job to take 

 care of the brine production water pit because every rain would break the pit. 

 Then, suddenly the oil would run down to the neighbor's farm pond and every 

 time that farmer would lose a blue ribbon calf. My uncle, who owned the oil 

 leases, got tired of paying for those calves. Many a morning I hitched a 

 team of mules to a wagon and took a dozen bales of straw and mopped up the 

 neighbor's farm pond. 



This brings us up to 1969 when the Santa Barbara offshore well blow-out 

 occurred. If you are wondering why straw was used on that spill, it was I 

 who ordered the initial 3,000 tons of it. I think I cleaned out every horse 

 stall in California. The field has progressed in response and cleanup tech- 

 nology since then, of course. 



The importance of cleanup technology became apparent during the Torrey 

 Canyon incident in March 1967. I was privileged to be a member on the tech- 

 nical team that cleaned up that spill. Three million gallons of dispersants 

 were used in an attempt to put down the oil off the Cornwall Coast. The en- 

 tire nearshore estuarine communities were completely wiped out. I understand 

 that in those days the dispersants used were petroleum based, solvent based 

 materials with some surfactants. The Army troops were dumping some of the 

 materials out of the drums when tea time came. They had some 20 to 30 drums 

 of their daily allotment left, so they merely threw them over the cliffs. 



Biological damages were observed when all the grazing animals were killed, 

 The following year a green fur coat of algae covered that entire coast. 



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