By Rick Wright

Staff Writer

When Joe Payne and Matt Quinn participated in a mock oil spill two months ago, they never expected the skills they learned would be needed so soon for the real thing – an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico caused by the April 20 explosion of an offshore oil rig.

Both men participated in the Spill of National Significance exercise in Casco Bay last March. Called SONS for short, the event involved responding to a large but fictitious oil spill. 

Quinn is general manager of Clean Harbors Environmental Services in South Portland, a national company with offices located throughout the United States that specializes in collection and disposal of hazardous waste.

At the end of April, Clean Harbors sent two work boats, three employees, two pickup trucks, a skimmer and 4,500 feet of oil containment booms to Mobile Bay in Mobile, Ala., one of the areas most threatened by the spill.

Quinn said the South Portland office of Clean Harbors does not get called often to help with large national disasters but it does clean up small oil spills in Portland harbor on a regular basis.

Last weekend, the company used five workers to clean oil off the shore and out of the water after being alerted by the U.S. Coast Guard in South Portland.

“It was one of those mystery spills where waste oil showed up on the shore and the Coast Guard saw a sheen on the water,” Quinn said.

Payne is employed by the Friends of Casco Bay, a community-based nonprofit located at Southern Maine Community College in South Portland that works to improve and protect the environmental health of Casco Bay. 

Since the beginning of the Gulf oil spill, Payne and other members of the Waterkeeper Alliance have worked to help water keepers in the Gulf of Mexico prepare for and deal with oil coming ashore.

Payne is a founding member of the alliance, an international network of more than 190 water keepers.

The group, comprised of oil spill veterans from Maine, California, Delaware, Rhode Island and Alaska, has provided advice and information to four water keepers located between Louisiana and the Florida panhandle.

Since arriving in the Gulf, the Clean Harbors crew has implemented preventative measures that include setting up oil containment booms to protect marshes and wildlife from oil washing up on shore, Quinn said.

The skimmer is being used to collect oil from the ocean’s surface. The air-driven device sucks up oil and sends it by connecting hoses to vacuum trucks on land.

The 21-foot work boats, propelled by 150-horsepower outboard engines, maneuver the skimmer, deploy booms and transport people, equipment and supplies around the Gulf, Quinn said.

“There are four water keepers in the Gulf that are right on the shores. None of those four have directly experienced a major oil spill,” Payne said. “We have this committee and we’re there to support the water keepers on the Gulf.”

Payne said the Gulf waterkeepers are “local knowledge persons” who are quickly learning how to protect the water and backwaters in their areas.

“I think that they’re getting up to speed and they’re going to be fine,” said Payne. “I think the water keepers themselves will be able to do that especially since we’re really building in help for them.”

During the SONS exercise in March Quinn coordinated Clean Harbors efforts to set up oil containment booms around Scarborough, Saco and Biddeford. Some of the company’s employees worked in the command center in Portland.   

Payne recruited volunteers, attended incident command meetings and served as a member of the planning section for the command structure that managed the mock spill response. The effort involved more than 1,000 participants from the U.S. Coast Guard and many public and private agencies.

A licensed water keeper, Payne was hired as Casco Baykeeper in 1991. He played an integral role in cleaning up 180,000 gallons of oil spilled by the tanker, “Julie N” in 1996. The ship hit the former Million Dollar Bridge that connected Portland and South Portland and caused the largest oil spill in the area’s history.

Alliance members have a telephone conference every day to discuss the latest developments in the spill. Collectively and individually they communicate with counterparts in Louisiana, Alabama and Florida by telephone, e-mail and list serves.

Payne said he recently opened his e-mail and found 230 messages with questions about dealing with the oil spill.

“The e-mail is constant. It goes well into the late evening and early morning because everyone’s working very long hours,” Payne said.

Payne and the others dispense advice about everything from monitoring the spill to recruiting volunteers, getting supplies and working with state and federal agencies.

“We help them to do their jobs to protect their waters the best they can,” Payne said.

Rick Wright can be reached at 282-4337, ext. 237 or news@inthesentry.com.