Geographic Response Plans – Oil Spills 101

GRP Quarterly Newsletter – April 2024

Posted on April 1, 2024 by David Prater

What are Geographic Response Plans?

Oil spills pose a risk to sensitive environmental, cultural, and economic resources. One important tool in our planning toolbox is the Geographic Response Plan (GRP). GRPs contain pre-identified strategies for specific areas of the state at risk from oil spills. These are pre-approved plans that guide early response actions during oil spills. A list of all Washington State GRPs, including those open for comprehensive updates, can be found online at OilSpills101.wa.gov.

GRP Updates: Comprehensive vs. Interim

GRPs Open for Comprehensive Updates

GRPs currently open for comprehensive updates are listed below, along with the contact information if you have questions or want to participate. Included are any comprehensive GRP updates published in 2024.

Lake Washington – Comprehensive Update Published April 2024!
Outer Coast – David Prater at David.Prater@ecy.wa.gov
Middle Columbia River-Bonneville Pool – Max Gordon at Max.Gordon@ecy.wa.gov
South Puget Sound – Kaitlin Lebon at Kaitlin.Lebon@ecy.wa.gov
Lower Columbia River – Max Gordon at Max.Gordon@ecy.wa.gov
Strait of Juan de Fuca – Wendy Buffett at Wendy.Buffett@ecy.wa.gov
Snake River: Lower Monumental Pool, Little Goose Pool, Lower Granite Pool – Scott Zimmerman at Scott.Zimmerman@ecy.wa.gov
Admiralty Inlet – Sabrina Floudaras at Sabrina.floudaras@ecy.wa.gov
Green/Duwamish River and Upper Green River – Nora Haider at Nora.Haider@ecy.wa.gov

Interim GRP Updates during Winter 2024

Because a lot can change in a GRP planning area between comprehensive updates, Ecology is committed to conducting interim GRP updates when necessary. Examples of interim updates include improvements to response strategies resulting from lessons learned during oil spill drills or actual spills, updated contact information, changes to driving directions, and other response-enhancing edits. Ecology publishes interim updates to GRPs on a quarterly basis. Interim updates completed this quarter include the following:

Grays Harbor – GRSC–0.1
Hood Canal – Economic Resources at Risk (pdf)
North Puget Sound – Economic Resources at Risk (pdf), NPS-03, new Notification Strategy ELZ-1-N
Central Puget Sound – CPS-160a and CPS-160b, new Notification Strategy CPS-160-N

Everyone has a Role in Improving the State’s GRPs

Oil industry regularly exercises oil spill contingency plans to ensure their readiness to respond to an oil spill. These exercises often involve the deployment of GRP strategies. Each deployment is an opportunity to validate a response strategy’s effectiveness, and to make improvements if it is necessary.

GRPs also rely on feedback from professional oil spill responders, natural resource agencies, tribes, and the public. This valuable feedback is reflected in either a comprehensive update or the interim update process.

If you have information or ideas that can make GRP’s even more effective, Ecology wants to know! Please email GRP feedback to GRPs@ecy.wa.gov. If you are visiting a response strategy site, you can use our new GRP Strategy Assessment Form to help document your assessment. We thank you in advance for helping the Northwest Area Committee maintain a high level of readiness to respond to oil spills.

GRP Quarterly Newsletter – January 2024

Posted on January 2, 2024 by Kaitlin Lebon

What are Geographic Response Plans?

GRP Updates: Comprehensive vs. Interim

GRPs currently open for comprehensive updates are listed below, along with the contact information if you have questions or want to participate.

Chehalis River – Comprehensive update published December, 2023!
Lake Chelan – Comprehensive update published July, 2023!
Grays Harbor – Comprehensive update published July, 2023!
Outer Coast – David Prater at Prater@ecy.wa.gov
Middle Columbia River-Bonneville Pool – Max Gordon at Gordon@ecy.wa.gov
South Puget Sound – Kaitlin Lebon at Lebon@ecy.wa.gov
Lake Washington – Sabrina Floudaras at Floudaras@ecy.wa.gov
Lower Columbia River – Max Gordon at Gordon@ecy.wa.gov
Strait of Juan de Fuca – Wendy Buffett at Buffett@ecy.wa.gov
Snake River: Lower Monumental Pool, Little Goose Pool, Lower Granite Pool – Scott Zimmerman at Zimmerman@ecy.wa.gov

Interim GRP updates during Fall, 2023

Central Puget Sound: CPS-182
Green River Duwamish: GRD-6.5; GRD-6.8R; GRD-21.7
North Puget Sound: VEN-03 and NPS-74
Moses Lake/Crab Creek: CRABC-0.4 and CRABC-0.5

Everyone has a Role in Improving the State’s GRPs

The oil industry regularly exercises oil spill contingency plans to ensure their readiness to respond to an oil spill. These exercises often involve the deployment of GRP strategies. Each deployment is an opportunity to validate a response strategy’s effectiveness, and to make improvements if it is necessary.

GRP Quarterly Newsletter – October, 2023

Posted on October 3, 2023October 3, 2023 by David Prater

What are Geographic Response Plans?

GRP Updates: Comprehensive vs. Interim

GRPs currently open for comprehensive updates are listed below, along with the contact information if you have questions or want to participate.

Lake Chelan – Comprehensive update published July, 2023!
Grays Harbor – Comprehensive update published July, 2023!
Outer Coast – David Prater at Prater@ecy.wa.gov
Middle Columbia River-Bonneville Pool – Max Gordon at Gordon@ecy.wa.gov
South Puget Sound – Kaitlin Lebon at Lebon@ecy.wa.gov
Lake Washington – Sabrina Floudaras at Floudaras@ecy.wa.gov
Lower Columbia River – Max Gordon at Gordon@ecy.wa.gov
Strait of Juan de Fuca – Wendy Buffett at Buffett@ecy.wa.gov
Chehalis River —Nora Haider at Haider@ecy.wa.gov
Snake River: Lower Monumental Pool, Little Goose Pool, Lower Granite Pool – Scott Zimmerman at Zimmerman@ecy.wa.gov

Interim GRP updates during Fall, 2023

Spokane River – SPR-80.0M, SPR- 61.8R
Middle Columbia River-McNary Pool – M-299.4L, M-299.5M, M-299.9R, MSN-1.56R
- Marked for deletion during the next comprehensive update: M-299.2L, MSN-2R
Central Puget Sound – CPS-135, CPS-182
Samish River —SAMR 12.9, SAMR 13.1, SAMR 19.6, SWDC-0.1, FRIC-4.5
Upper Columbia River—UCR-466.8

GRP User Survey

The GRP Sub-Committee of the Northwest Area Committee has created a survey to better understand what elements of the Response Strategies and Priorities (2-pagers) people use and value the most. The sub-committee is looking for feedback from people who deploy, update, or otherwise use 2-pagers to make them as useful as possible during a response.

Take the survey here: https://arcg.is/0y5yXb
2-pager reference for survey: https://response-jtti.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2023/10/02092331/2Pager_Examples.pdf

Everyone has a Role in Improving the State’s GRPs

If you have information or ideas that can make GRP’s even more effective, Ecology wants to know! Please email GRP feedback to GRPs@ecy.wa.gov. If you are visiting a response strategy site, you can use our new GRP Strategy Assessment Form to help document your assessment. We thank you in advance for helping the Northwest Area Contingency Plan maintain a high level of readiness to respond to oil spills.

Grays Harbor GRP: Full Update Published!

Posted on July 27, 2023 by David Prater

The Washington Department of Ecology is happy to announce the comprehensive update to the Grays Harbor Geographic Response Plan (GRP) is complete and the updated GRP is now published online. This update was a collaborative process and Ecology appreciates the work of all involved, including spill management and response experts, the oil industry, local, state, tribal, and federal governments, and the public.

View the draft GRP sections here: https://www.oilspills101.wa.gov/northwest-area-contingency-plan/geographic-response-plans-grps/grays-harbor-grp/

Description of the Planning Area

The area covered includes shorelines of the Pacific Coast adjacent to Grays Harbor, the Grays Harbor entrance, Oyhut Sink, Grays Harbor, North Bay, South Bay, Bowerman Basin, and the rivers and creeks in the area that drain into Grays Harbor. The communities of Aberdeen, Cosmopolis, Hoquiam, Ocean Shores, and Westport are located within this planning area, as well as portions of Grays Harbor and Pacific Counties. Grays Harbor is within the usual and accustomed territories of several American Indian Tribes. The reservation of the Quinault Indian Nation is north of the City of Ocean Shores. The reservation of the Shoalwater Bay Tribe is south of the City of Westport. The Chehalis Confederated Tribes may have interest in the area’s resources as well.

What are Geographic Response Plans?

GRPs are used to guide early response actions in the event of an oil spill. Ecology develops and updates GRPs in collaboration with state, local and federal agencies and tribes. Each GRP is written for a specific area (for example a river, a lake, or section of Puget Sound), and includes tactical response strategies tailored to a particular shore or waterway at risk of injury from oil.

GRPs have two main objectives:

Identify sensitive natural, cultural or significant economic resources at risk of injury from oil spills.
Describe and prioritize response strategies in an effort to reduce injury to sensitive natural, cultural, and certain economic resources at risk from oil spills.

More Information
• Learn more about GRPs.
• See GRPs for Washington State.

Questions

Max Gordon
Oil Spill Preparedness Planner
Max.Gordon@ecy.wa.gov
360-972-4890

Lake Washington GRP – Public Comment Opportunity!

Posted on July 24, 2023July 24, 2023 by David Prater

What’s going on?

My name is Sabrina Floudaras, I’m an oil spill preparedness planner with the Washington Department of Ecology, and I’m so excited to announce the Lake Washington (LKWA) Geographic Response Plan is now open for public comment!

Geographic Response Plans (GRPs) aim to protect sensitive natural, cultural, and economic resources at risk from an oil spill in a specified geographic area. A key part of this process is gathering input from the people who work, live, and play in this community. I hope to hear from you during this public comment period (July 24^th–August 25^th, 2023).

I was privileged to work on the first Lake Washington GRP back in 2014. A lot has changed since in the area since then, which is why we opened the GRP for a full update in June 2020. As the world began to emerge from the pandemic, coordination with the community, tribes, and other local, state, and federal partners became my central focus to help expedite needed fieldwork and narrative updates completed, and it worked! The draft plan, now available for public comment, is something we can all be proud of.

Familiarize yourself!

This area densely populated also has abundant natural areas, public spaces, and culturally rich and diverse communities. On the shores of the lake sit Boeing manufacturing, the University of Washington campus with Botanical Gardens and an Arboretum, and the NOAA HQ Northwest Fisheries Science Center Montlake Laboratory. Adjacent to Warren Magnuson Park is NOAA’s Western Regional Center, Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, and many parks supporting natural and economic resources. Importantly floating bridges, I-90 east and west bridges and 520 run across Lake Washington, and I-405 along the east side of the Lake bypasses I-5 through Seattle, crosses waterways that flow westward from eastern uplands.

Risks from oil spills in this area come from multiple sources. Aside from the bridges and recreational boating, there are two smaller oil holding facilities on the lake that store marine fuel, the Olympic Pipeline that carries refined petroleum product crosses the Sammamish River to the north, natural gas pipelines, and a large shore-side terminal with a worst case spill potential of over 2,000,000 gallons.

What has changed?

Overall I updated 20 GRP response strategies with contractor suggested changes, revised most response strategy Implementation Details to include more succinct information in support of a rapid, aggressive, and well-coordinated response, updated driving directions, photos, verified contacts, and coordinated with local officials to improve information on all the Boat Launches and Staging Areas. Additional improvements were made thanks to important feedback from the City of Seattle, Seattle PUD, Seattle Parks & Rec Dept, King County, City of Kirkland, Kirkland Parks, City of Bellevue, homeowners, and more.

Review the draft GRP: https://fortress.wa.gov/ecy/ezshare/sppr/Preparedness/LKWA-Public/LKWACoverPage.pdf

Comment online:

Use our online comment form: https://sppr.ecology.commentinput.com/?id=TgZfF9Hpx2

Comment by mail:

Sabrina Floudaras
Department of Ecology, Spills Program
PO Box 47600
Olympia, WA 98504-7600

GRP Quarterly Newsletter – April, 2023

Posted on March 31, 2023April 3, 2023 by David Prater

What are Geographic Response Plans?

GRP Updates: Comprehensive vs. Interim

GRPs currently open for comprehensive updates are listed below, along with the contact information if you have questions or want to participate.

Outer Coast – David Prater at Prater@ecy.wa.gov
Middle Columbia River-Bonneville Pool – Max Gordon at Gordon@ecy.wa.gov
South Puget Sound – Kaitlin Lebon at Lebon@ecy.wa.gov
Lake Chelan – Kaitlin Lebon at Lebon@ecy.wa.gov
Lake Washington – Sabrina Floudaras at Floudaras@ecy.wa.gov
Lower Columbia River – Darcy Bird at Bird@ecy.wa.gov
Strait of Juan de Fuca – Wendy Buffett at Buffett@ecy.wa.gov
Snake River: Lower Monumental Pool, Little Goose Pool, Lower Granite Pool – Scott Zimmerman at Zimmerman@ecy.wa.gov
Grays Harbor – Max Gordon at Gordon@ecy.wa.gov

Interim GRP updates during Winter, 2023

Because a lot can change in a GRP planning area between comprehensive updates, Ecology is committed to conducting interim GRP updates when necessary. Examples of interim updates include improvements to response strategies resulting from lessons learned during drills or real spills, updated contact information, changes to driving directions after roadwork, and other response-enhancing edits. Ecology publishes interim updates to GRPs on a quarterly basis. Interim updates completed this quarter include the following:

San Juan Island – SJI-12, HEN-02, SJI-13, SJI-14, SJI-15, SJI-16 (New Strategy), SJI-17 (New Strategy)
Samish River – LKSAM-0.5, LKSAM-2.7, LKSAM 4.0, SLVRC-0.0
Moses Lake/Crab Creek – MOLK-39.0, MOLK-39.3
Spokane River – 80.0M
North Puget Sound – Response Contact Sheet, NPS-06, NPS-32
Nooksack River – NOOR-15.1
Middle Columbia River-McNary Pool – M-312.0L
Central Puget Sound – CPS-161, CPS-170-N

Everyone has a Role in Improving the State’s GRPs

GRPs also rely on feedback from professional oil spill responders, natural resource agencies, tribes, and the public. This valuable feedback is often reflected in a comprehensive update, or through the interim update process.

If you have information or ideas that can make GRP’s even more effective, Ecology wants to know! Please email GRP feedback to GRPs@ecy.wa.gov. If you are visiting a response strategy site, you can use our new GRP Strategy Assessment Form to help document your assessment. We thank you in advance for helping the Northwest Area Contingency Plan maintain a high level of readiness to respond to oil spills.

GRP Quarterly Newsletter – December, 2022

Posted on December 30, 2022December 21, 2022 by David Prater

What are Geographic Response Plans?

GRP Updates: Comprehensive vs. Interim

GRPs are periodically updated to ensure the information is relavant and up-to-date. These comprehensive updates require a lot of work and often take a year or two to complete. Work is coordinated with other state and federal agencies, tribes, industry partners, oil spill response professionals, and communities.

Because a lot can change in a GRP planning area between comprehensive updates, Ecology is committed to conducting interim GRP updates when necessary. Examples of interim updates include improvements to response strategies resulting from lessons learned during drills or real spills, updated contact information, changes to driving directions after roadwork, and other response-enhancing edits. Ecology publishes interim updates to GRPs on a quarterly basis.

This quarter, we finished comprehensive updates of two GRPs: Snohomish Basin (formerly WRIA-7) and Clark, Cowlitz, SW Lewis. GRPs currently open for comprehensive updates are listed below, along with the contact information if you have questions or want to participate.

Snohomish Basin (formerly WRIA-7) – Published December, 2022!
Clark, Cowlitz, SW Lewis — Published December, 2022!
South Puget Sound – Kaitlin Lebon at Lebon@ecy.wa.gov
Lake Chelan – Kaitlin Lebon at Lebon@ecy.wa.gov
Lake Washington – Sabrina Floudaras at Floudaras@ecy.wa.gov
Lower Columbia River – Darcy Bird at Bird@ecy.wa.gov
Strait of Juan de Fuca – Wendy Buffett at Buffett@ecy.wa.gov
Snake River: Lower Monumental Pool, Little Goose Pool, Lower Granite Pool – Scott Zimmerman at Zimmerman@ecy.wa.gov
Grays Harbor – Max Gordon at Gordon@ecy.wa.gov

Everyone has a Role in Improving the State’s GRPs

The oil industry regularly exercises oil spill contingency plans to ensure their readiness to respond to an oil spill. These exercises often involve the deployment of GRP strategies. Each deployment is an oportunity to validate a response strategy’s effectiveness, and to make improvements if it is necessary.

If you have information or ideas that can make GRP’s even more effective, Ecology wants to know! Please email GRP feedback to GRPs@ecy.wa.gov. If you are visiting a response strategy site, you can use our new GRP Strategy Assessment Form to help document your assessment. We thank you in advance for helping the Northwest Regional Contingency Plan and the Area Plans maintain a high level of readiness to respond to oil spills.

GRP Quarterly Newsletter – October, 2022

Posted on October 3, 2022October 3, 2022 by David Prater

What are Geographic Response Plans?

GRP Updates: Comprehensive vs. Interim

GRPs are periodically updated to ensure the information is relevant and up-to-date. These comprehensive updates require a lot of work and often take a year or two to complete. Work is coordinated with other state and federal agencies, tribes, industry partners, oil spill response professionals, and communities. GRPs currently open for comprehensive updates are listed below, along with the contact information if you have questions or want to participate.

WRIA-7 (Snohomish Basin) – Nora Haider at Nora.Haider@ecy.wa.gov
South Puget Sound – Kaitlin Lebon at Kaitlin.Lebon@ecy.wa.gov
Lake Chelan – Kaitlin Lebon at Kaitlin.Lebon@ecy.wa.gov
Lake Washington – Sabrina Floudaras at Sabrina.Floudaras@ecy.wa.gov
Lower Columbia River – Darcy Bird at Darcy.Bird@ecy.wa.gov
Strait of Juan de Fuca – Wendy Buffett at Wendy.Buffett@ecy.wa.gov
Snake River: Lower Monumental Pool, Little Goose Pool, Lower Granite Pool – Scott Zimmerman at Scott.Zimmerman@ecy.wa.gov
Grays Harbor – Max Gordon at Max.Gordon@ecy.wa.gov

Because a lot can change in a GRP planning area between comprehensive updates, Ecology is committed to conducting interim GRP updates when necessary. Examples of interim updates include improvements to response strategies resulting from lessons learned during drills or real spills, updated contact information, changes to driving directions after roadwork, and other response-enhancing edits. Ecology publishes interim updates to GRPs on a quarterly basis.

Interim GRP Updates for Spring 2022

Grays Harbor GRP: LKAB-0.0-N & WEST 0.0-N & CHER-0.15-N.

Central Puget Sound GRP: CPS-150; CPS-40; GRD-0.6.

Middle Columbia River – McNary Pool GRP: M-328.0L; M-326.5L.

Everyone has a Role in Improving the State’s GRPs

If you have information or ideas that can make GRP’s even more effective, Ecology wants to know! Please email GRP feedback to GRPs@ecy.wa.gov. If you are visiting a response strategy site, you can use our new GRP Strategy Assessment Form to help document your assessment. We thank you in advance for helping the Northwest Regional Contingency Plan and the Area Plans maintain a high level of readiness to respond to oil spills.

San Juan Islands GRP Update – May 2022

Posted on May 19, 2022May 19, 2022 by Max Gordon

The comprehensive update of SJI-GRP has finally come to an end. You can find the new and improved plan on oilspills101.wa.gov.

The plan was opened in May 2019 and after three years a great many changes have been made. Among other things, many response strategies have been added and the planning area now encompasses the entirety of San Juan County. Ecology wishes to thank the local experts who shared a lot of excellent information so that the plan could become better than ever.

In the future, this plan will be tested at various oil spill exercises and errors will be corrected as they are discovered. If you yourself wish to suggest an improvement of some kind, please email GRPs@ecy.wa.gov and our team will be happy to make an interim update.

Updates to Washington’s GRPs

Posted on April 26, 2022April 26, 2022 by David Prater

What are Geographic Response Plans?

GRP Updates: Comprehensive vs. Interim

WRIA-7 (Snohomish Basin) – Nora Haider at Nora.Haider@ecy.wa.gov
South Puget Sound – Kaitlin Lebon at Kaitlin.Lebon@ecy.wa.gov
Lake Chelan – Kaitlin Lebon at Kaitlin.Lebon@ecy.wa.gov
Lake Washington – Sabrina Floudaras at Sabrina.Floudaras@ecy.wa.gov
Lower Columbia River – Darcy Bird at Darcy.Bird@ecy.wa.gov
San Juan Islands – Max Gordon at Max.Gordon@ecy.wa.gov
Clark, Cowlitz, Southwest Lewis – Max Gordon at Max.Gordon@ecy.wa.gov
Strait of Juan de Fuca – Wendy Buffett at Wendy.Buffett@ecy.wa.gov
Snake River: Lower Monumental Pool, Little Goose Pool, Lower Granite Pool – Scott Zimmerman at Scott.Zimmerman@ecy.wa.gov
Grays Harbor – Max Gordon at Max.Gordon@ecy.wa.gov
Outer Coast – Scott Zimmerman at Scott.Zimmerman@ecy.wa.gov

Because a lot can change in a GRP planning area between comprehensive updates, Ecology is committed to conducting interim GRP updates when necessary. Examples of interim updates include improvements to response strategies resulting from lessons learned during drills or real spills, updated contact information, changes to driving directions after roadwork, and other response-enhancing edits. Ecology publishes interim updates to GRPs on a quarterly basis.

Interim GRP Updates for Spring 2022

Grays Harbor GRP: new information provided by NRCES from a site visit resulted in updates to CHRC-0.1 (site access, site safety, and land owner contact information) and NSKC-0.2 (site access and safety information).

Central Puget Sound GRP: during a recent spill in Elliott Bay, notification strategy CPS-31-N was utilized. New contact information for this strategy has been added.

North Puget Sound GRP: We updated NPS-75, NPS-74, and NPS-73 to remove references to the old refinery name; and updated contact and access information for NPS-07.

Moses Lake/Crab Creek GRP: after lessons learned from a GRP deployment exercise, we moved the location of MOLK-39.3 slightly east so that it is further away from a dam gate and allows for better access, monitoring, and boom maintenance.

Strait of Juan de Fuca GRP: A lot of good work and collaboration with tribes and other stakeholders has been done on this GRP. Equipment, boom, and/or location information has been updated for the following strategies while the rest of the plan is undergoing a comprehensive update: STR-01, STR-02, STR-03, STR-04, STR-05, STR-06, STR-07, and STR-11.

Everyone has a Role in Improving the State’s GRPs

If you have information or ideas that can make GRP’s even more effective, Ecology wants to know! Please email GRP feedback to GRPs@ecy.wa.gov. If you are visiting a response strategy site, you can use our new GRP Strategy Assessment Form to help document your assessment. We thank you in advance for helping the Northwest Regional Contingency Plan and the Area Plans maintain a high level of readiness to respond to oil spills.