Legislation passed in the spring of 2001 extends the safety net of Alaska oil spill response laws to certain non-tank vessels and railroads. Contingency plans will be required to make sure these businesses are prepared to clean up a spill. Plans will be required for all self-propelled nontank vessels over 400 gross tons that operate in Alaskan waters and railroad tank cars such as the Alaska Railroad.

Regulations and Application Forms
Nontank vessel regulations became effective November 27, 2002. Affected parties have until May 27, 2003 to comply with new requirements.

Technical corrections to clarify the meaning of two parts of the regulations are effective December 13, 2002. Although there is a later effective date for these changes, the department will apply them to all applications, which were due by May 27, 2003.

The regulations were printed in the January 2003 supplement to the Alaska Administrative code, Register 164.

Forms

Click here to download application forms in Acrobat Reader format (.pdf) or Microsoft Word (.doc).

• nontank vessel streamlined plan application: (.pdf) (.doc)
• instruction sheet for completing the new streamlined plan application (.pdf)
• nontank vessel equivalent plan application: (.pdf) (.doc)
• nontank vessel cleanup contractor application: (.pdf) (.doc)
• nontank vessel incident management team application: (.pdf) (.doc)
• nontank vessel response planning facilitator application: (.pdf) (.doc)

Railroad Regulations developments
The Lieutenant Governor filed the railroad regulations on November 14, 2002, with an effective date of December 14, 2002.

DEC held a series of scoping meetings with stakeholders during 2002 to discuss issues associated with its drafting of regulations to implement the new law concerning railroads. These meetings helped the Department to develop review drafts of the proposed regulations. Two formal public review periods were public noticed and the a final draft of the regulations was reviewed by the Department of Law prior to adoption by the Commissioner of DEC. The Department prepared a summary of responses to the comments received on the May 15, 2002 draft.

For more information contact:

Clare Pavia
DEC Division of Spill Prevention and Response
Industry Preparedness Program
410 Willoughby Ave., Suite 303
P.O. Box 111800
Juneau, Alaska 99811-1800
Telephone (907) 465-5283
Fax: (907) 465-5245
E-mail: Clare.Pavia@alaska.gov