Conference Schedule

National Incident Commander Admiral Thad Allen, U.S. Coast Guard, and Secretary Ken Salazar, U.S. Department of Interior, have been invited to address the response efforts of the devastating explosion of the Deepwater Horizon Drill Rig.

Thad Allen is a retired United States Coast Guard admiral who served as the 23rd Commandant of the Coast Guard. Allen is best known for his widely-praised performance directing the federal response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the Gulf Coast region from September 2005 to January 2006. Following his position as commandant, Allen continued to serve on active duty for 36 days in his role as National Incident Commander of the Unified Command for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Allen officially retired from the U.S. Coast Guard on June 30, 2010, but continues to serve as a civilian as the National Incident Commander of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Ken Salazar was confirmed as the 50th secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior on Jan. 20, 2009, in a unanimous vote by the U.S. Senate. Prior to his confirmation, Salazar served as Colorado's 35th U.S. senator, winning election in November 2004 and serving on the Finance Committee, which oversees the nation's tax, trade, social-security, and health-care systems. He also served on the Agriculture, Energy and Natural Resources, Ethics, Veterans Affairs and Aging Committees.

Charged with protecting America’s natural and cultural resources, the Department of the Interior and its Bureaus have been working to support the Administration’s response efforts since the tragedy first occurred by:

• Helping oversee BP’s efforts to close the leaks and clean up the oil;
• Anticipating and preparing for the worst case scenario;
• Jointly spear-heading the investigation into the event itself with the U.S. Coast Guard.

On Tuesday, April 20, an explosion rocked Transocean's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in what has escalated into one of the nation's largest offshore drilling and oil spill response incidents. The entire oil spill response community has come together in some capacity to help assist in the response. Operating alongside the U.S. Coast Guard and the Bureau of Emergency Management, Response and Enforcement, BP launched a comprehensive, pre-approved oil spill response plan following the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon. The company has dedicated millions of dollars per day to construction vessels, oil spill booms, ROVs, personnel, and three deepwater drilling rigs working to stop the flow of oil from the Macondo well. This incident provides a wide array of oil spill prevention and response techniques, processes and developments both in technology and services. Our panel of the key participants and leading personnel from the operator, regulator and responder communities will give an information-packed review of what has been learned to date and what we expect to occur in the immediate future as a result of the DH Incident.

This panel involves those who were on the front lines for building and coordinating one of the largest temporary and volunteer corps involved in an oil spill response. What were the lessons learned and how is the process evolving of the long duration of this clean up effort? How were the resources and logistics handled for the wide variety of tasks and operational centers? What challenges were overcome with a response for both the deep water and coastal environments?

Casualties involving large offshore exploratory and production rigs in deepwater present considerable challenges to commercial responders and government agencies. This panel of experts from commercial salvage and marine firefighting response companies, the offshore drilling industry, and federal government will discuss the challenges and techniques of salvage and fire response on deepwater rigs.

Many new technologies were developed and presented during the DH incident. This session will address how those technologies were evaluated for use during the response. Speakers will also discuss sustainable R&D efforts for the future.

At cleanup sites of active facilities or abandoned hazardous waste sites, mercury presents significant environmental challenges due to it being difficult to treat and because if may exist in various forms. Some mercury contamination sites are also contaminated with oils, radioactive materials and organic compounds that present technical challenges when dealing with the mercury.

This Session provides insight on how different cleanup programs, at all levels of government, can work together to meet the goals of: ensuring the site is properly cleaned up, all the while ensuring that the response efforts and results are properly communicated to the public. EPA works in partnership with state, local and tribal governments, as well as responsible parties when conducting mercury cleanups.

This panel discusses the DH incident and the resulting ICS and what worked, as well as what can be improved for the future in case of another major incident. With multiple state and federal jurisdictions, a myriad of agencies, operations and contractors, this panel promises to be an excellent training tool for how a real-world response develops and the challenges that command faces with so many variables.

Natural Resource Damage Assessment issues will be addressed by the federal and state natural resource trustee agencies with emphasis on updates, issues, and concerns based on the newest developments from the DH incident. With an unprecedented impact on a wide variety of offshore and coastal environments, as well as economic impacts to the human uses of these resources, this will be an information-packed panel of NRDA issues and updates on the best intelligence on protecting and restoring the affected resources.

The DH incident was the first US subsea blowout that brought forth new technologies for estimating flow rates, tracking, and monitoring the path of the oil both subsea and on the surface. This technology-packed panel reviews the techniques, tools and processes utilized for tracking and adjusting response on a major spill.

This session will discuss local issues associated with federal responses to hazmat and oil spills. Local Government Reimbursements (LGRs) for hazardous substance releases (HSRs), Pollution Removal Funding Authorizations (PRFAs) and claims for oil discharges will also be covered.

The LGR Program provides federal funds to local governments for costs related to temporary emergency response actions related to past or threatened HSRs. The PRFA is a funding mechanism used by Federal On-Scene Coordinators (FOSCa) to supply state and local governments with the necessary funding to complete oil spill cleanups.