Southern Councils Join Forces For Oil Spill Drill

Thursday, 10 April 2025, 6:59 pm
Article: Lois Williams - Local Democracy Reporter

If an oil spill polluted the pristine waters of Jackson Bay in South Westland, clean-up crews from the West Coast and Southland would be on the job in a matter of hours.

And they would know what they were doing.

That was the aim of the first joint oil spill exercise on the Coast last week using teams from both the West Coast Regional Council and its southern equivalent – Environment Southland.

DOC staff also took part.

Maritime New Zealand which set up the exercise, says it was designed to test the councils’ ability to deal with a spill in waters far from their bases.

“One of the risks in that very remote part of the country is that it’s quite a logistical nightmare to get there,” MNZ’s training manager Mick Courtnell said.

“So we decided bring the two councils together, get them to share their equipment and capability and find out what they can or can’t do.”

The twenty or so staff were confronted with an urgent (imaginary) scenario to test their skills.

A tanker fuelling a fishing-boat by hose on the Jackson Bay wharf, had somehow fallen into the sea and begun to leak diesel, they were told.

MNZ’s training manager, Mick Courtnell says ideally there are fail-safe processes to make sure that could not happen.

“But there’s always the chance of human error or equipment failure and the goal of the exercise was to get people doing stuff as a blended team, and work with people they hadn’t worked with before.”

The Southland and West Coast teams worked well together on their response strategy, Mr Courtnell said.

Every Regional Council has a stash of oil spill response gear provided by MNZ, but they would have no way of lifting a truck and trailer unit off the seabed.

“We work on a spiller-pays basis so there’d have to be a contract with the tanker owner to organise a crane and divers to lift it out…while we contained the spill with booms.”

Drones could also now be used to detect the spread of an oil spill and its density.

The two council teams had built up a good safety plan on the spot; revalidated their skills and tested all the equipment, Mr Courtnell said.

“There were a couple of minor issues with kit to sort out like flat batteries... and we’ll be recommending that assessing safety risk is a high priority for the future."

Under the Maritime Transport Act, MNZ is responsible for seeing that the country’s 16 Regional Councils can respond competently to minor oil spills in their areas.

“We run 32 checks a year in each region in turn; give them scenarios like the Jacksons Bay one, provide the equipment and train them up.”

The regional responders were people with day jobs with the councils or DOC, Mr Courtnell said.

“So you’ve got people who 20 minutes ago were in the office doing data entry or out in the bush doing pest control.

“And suddenly they’re called out and they have to turn to with their response gear, and in that short space of time you have to get them into team dynamics very quickly.”

The regular oil spill exercises ensured the responders and their gear were safe and still fit for purpose, Mr Courtnell said.

The exercises were funded by the Oil Pollution Fund, from levies on commercial shipping, and came at no cost to the ratepayer or the taxpayer.

“Pretty much all ships visiting our ports pay this levy; it’s also used for navigation, wharf maintenance and stevedores but big chunk is for pollution.”

That also paid for the councils’ oil spill gear and small national team which deals with major spills.

For eight months, Mick Courtnell was MNZ’s on-site commander in Tauranga after the container ship Rena grounded on the Astrolabe Reef in 2011 causing environmental mayhem.

The West Coast was unlikely to see that sort of heavy oil pollution since oil tankers and container ships used east coast routes, he said.

“The most likely scenario for the Coast would be a fishing boat or coastal trader in distress, with diesel and lighter oil spills or possibly a cruise ship in trouble in Fiordland - they use diesel as well.”

For that reaso MNZ kept a stash of oil spill equipment at Te Anau, close to Milford Sound, Mr Courtnell said.

It also stored gear in Westport and Invercargill.

Every regional council had a plan to deal with an oil spill in the more likely locations – including everything from accommodation to vehicle hire and food providers, he said.

"Otherwise it could take days to get people and gear into the area. But the exercises mean people can ease into a reasonably familiar environment because they’ve been there before."

Maritime NZ would be filing a report to its Director and the councils on the Port Jackson exercise.

“If there’s an opportunity to have the two councils work together again, we’ll do it," Mr Courtnell said.

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