DEC completes contingency plan comment period

For immediate release — March 19, 2020
Contact: Commissioner Jason Brune, 907-465-5009

Juneau, AK — The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) closed the five-month comment period seeking input on its oil discharge prevention and contingency plan requirements on March 16. Contingency plans are required for facilities and vessels that store and transport oil.

“We heard there was a need to update and improve our contingency plan requirements, so we asked the public and the regulated community for recommendations,” said Commissioner Jason Brune. “I am excited by the feedback we received. It was important to DEC that we have a transparent process, so the scoping website was designed to provide comments online for the public to review as soon as they were submitted.”

Comments were solicited for DEC’s contingency plan regulations (18 AAC 75, Article 4), as well as the related statutes that authorize the Article 4 regulations. DEC received 128 comments.

“It is not our intent to roll back environmental protections,” said Brune. “If the Department determines there are changes to be made to the regulations, those will go through a fully transparent public process later this year that will include additional opportunity for the public to provide comment.”

The comment period opened on October 15, 2019, and was initially scheduled to close on January 15, 2020. It was held open at the request of stakeholders until March 16 to allow the public additional time to comment.