Photo taken by Nuka Research of the coast of Grays Harbor.
The Washington Department of Ecology contracted Nuka Research to conduct an oil spill Response Capacity Analysis for Grays Harbor, Washington. The purpose of the study was to better understand response capacity for Grays Harbor if all resources in current planning were deployed for a major oil spill response. The study did not consider all aspects of a response, but instead applied the publicly available Response Options Calculator (ROC) developed by Genwest Systems, Inc. for NOAA to model maximum potential recovery capacity for a base case spill. The ROC considers a variety of inputs, including oil type, wind speed, water temperature, and detailed recovery system specifications.
Additional scenarios were then modeled in the ROC to answer a series of research questions. The report produced presents the results of a series of scenarios modeled to better understand the impact of different factors on a response in Grays Harbor, and acknowledges the challenges of responding in this high current, confined waterway. The Grays Harbor Safety Committee and other stakeholders provided input to the development of the base case and research questions through workshops held in April and December 2018. This study followed on a similar project conducted for San Juan County focused on the San Juan Islands area. Sierra and Alisha were directly involved in this project.
October 2018 – June 2019