American Petroleum Institute

1993 Oil Spill Conference
 N PUBL 4580

Annotation

Scope of the manual

The (draft) manual contains guidelines for the selection of oil spill protection and cleanup techniques. The selection process focuses on the identification of techniques that themselves would have minimal intrinsic ecological impacts and that also would minimize the ecological impacts of the oil in inland waters. A secondary aspect of the manual is to provide this direction while recognizing potential human health risks of the spill and response methods. The manual can be used as an aid in contingency planning or as an aid to field response, when consensus decisions must be reached rapidly.

The manual is intended to present the ecologically preferred response options for a variety of freshwater habitats, oil types, and spill conditions. Seven habitats were identified in the original workshop discussions. In turn, these were subdivided during work sessions, which resulted in a total of ten primary habitats for the manual.

• large rivers

• small rivers and streams

• Great Lakes

open water

nearshore

• inland lakes and ponds

• marsh/wetlands

• rock shorelines or man-made structures

• gravel shorelines (coarse-grained beaches/river bars)

• sand shorelines