ROSEAU, Dominica (CMC) — A three-day National Workshop on Contingency Planning began here on Tuesday with a senior International Maritime Organisation (IMO) consultant praising the island for seeking to develop strategies to deal with oil spills.

“I’m glad that Dominica gets it and that’s one of the reasons why we are here today, its to help preserve the marine environment, to be prepared in case there’s ever an oil spill incident,” the consultant, Paul Lattanzi, told the workshop, which is also being facilitated by the Regional Marine Pollution Emergency Information and Training Centre for the Wider Caribbean.

He said most of the work to be covered during the workshop applies across all different kinds of incidents, not just oil spills, but it can help prepare for incidents such as hurricanes.

“We have two goals for our activities for this week and the first is to raise awareness and preparedness for an oil spill, and that’s a big part of what we’re doing here today,” Lattanzi said, adding “you are encouraged … [to talk about] about what would we do in the case of a major oil spill,

“What you want to do is remove confusion in the wake of an incident and it’s always good to know what each other’s plans are, what the responsibilities are in the case of a major incident,” Lattanzi noted.

The second goal of the workshop is to develop the contingency plan for Dominica for a major environmental disaster, particulary one involving oil.

“This plan is going to …be reviewed probably by most all of you and your agencies and you can add to and contribute to that plan, and then once we add the plan, we hope to have exercises in the future that we try out that plan and exercise it,” Lattanzi added.

The workshop targets senior government officials from national authorities with responsibility for implementation and enforcement of the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships.

The workshop was told that, while Dominica is not among oil-producing countries, there was still a need to develop a contingency plan.

Elliott Taylor, who is also an IMO consultant and a facilitator, worked on the responses to the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska and Deep Water Horizon’s Spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

“Of course we would never see something like that here. You don’t have oil exploration production here, but you do have other risks, most of them not too challenging because they’re mostly going to be light oils, but you do have a lot of vessel traffic in the region and sometimes spills happen from other sources outside of what you may be thinking and that’s what we really want to be aware of and be prepared to deal with,” Taylor stated.

In addition, the participants will be introduced to a tool which has been developed to help gauge preparedness to deal with or manage an oil spill.

“That tool is something that really is being used throughout, not just the Caribbean but worldwide, in terms of really defining and benchmarking where your preparedness is; are you just starting, are you somewhere intermediate or are you very accomplished in terms of your preparedness,” Taylor said.