Protection of Sensitive Coastal Areas in the United Kingdom: From Torrey Canyon to the New Millenium1

Abstract

ABSTRACT The tanker Torrey Canyon grounded in 1967 beginning the era of the major oil spill. The United Kingdom was unprepared for this event. Nevertheless, following the spill, much research was carried out, including methods for the protection of environmental and socio-economic sensitive areas. However, little was done to produce detailed protection plans for such sites. These can save hours of response time, as boom locations, priorities, layouts, deployment methods, equipment requirements, access and temporary oil storage arrangements will be specified. Yet in the United Kingdom, the Shoreline Response Centre (Command Centre) continued to decide these things after the spill had occurred, which was often too late. In 1990, a spill from the tanker Rosebay occurred in the English Channel, off the sensitive South Devon coast. Protection plans were non-existent. This gave an impetus to develop coastal protection planning, which the SW Region of the National Rivers Authority (NRA) commenced. In 1995, it was recommended that this should be extended throughout the United Kingdom to a common standard. Unfortunately, various factors delayed commencement of this work, which was jointly carried out in 1998 by the Environment Agency (EA), the successor to the NRA, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, Marine Pollution Control Unit and the Northern Ireland Environment and Heritage Service. In the meantime, many unsatisfactory plans were produced for the upstream oil industry. The paper reviews this background and describes the new national coastal protection planning guidelines. It also includes completed examples, describes the testing and validation process and describes future plans.