To receive the credit from ecology for performing a required drill, the plan holder shall conduct the following drills within each triennial cycle.
Type of Drill | Frequency Within the Triennial Cycle | Special Instructions | Scheduling Instructions |
Tabletop drills | 3 - One in each year of the cycle | One of the three shall involve a worst case discharge scenario. The worst case discharge scenario drill shall be conducted once every three years. | Scheduled at least 60 days in advance, except the worst case discharge scenario at least 90 days in advance. |
Deployment drills | 6 - Two per year | These drills include notification, safety assessments, GRP and equipment deployments. | Scheduled at least 30 days in advance. |
Ecology initiated unannounced drills | As necessary | This drill may involve testing any component of the plan, including notification procedures, deployment of personnel, boom, recovery and storage equipment, and verification of ecology approved alternative speeds. | No notice. |
Wildlife deployment drill | 1 - One in each three-year cycle. This is an additional drill unless it is incorporated into a large multiobjective deployment drill | This drill will be a deployment of wildlife equipment and wildlife response service provider personnel. | Scheduled at least 90 days in advance. |
Multiplan holder large scale equipment deployment drill | 1 - One in each three-year cycle | This drill may involve dedicated and nondedicated equipment, vessels of opportunity, multiple simultaneous tactics, responses to potentially nonfloating oils, and the verification of operational readiness over multiple operational periods. | Scheduled at least 90 days in advance. |
(1) Tabletop drills: Tabletop drills are intended to demonstrate a rail plan holder's capability to manage a spill using the ICS, the SMT, and WRSP described in the plan. Role playing shall be required in this drill.
(a) During all required tabletop drills rail plan holders shall provide a master list of equipment and personnel identified to fill both command post and field operations roles.
(b) Once during each three-year cycle, the rail plan holder shall ensure that key members of the regional/national "away" team as identified in the plan shall be mobilized in state for a tabletop drill. However, at ecology's discretion, team members that are out-of-state may be evaluated in out-of-state tabletop drills if ecology has sufficient notice, an opportunity to participate in the drill planning process, and provided that the out-of-state drills are of similar scope and scale to what would have occurred in state. In this case, key away team members shall be mobilized in this state at least once every six years.
(2) Deployment drills: Rail plan holders shall use deployment drills to demonstrate the actions they would take in a spill, including: Notifications, safety actions, environmental assessment, land-based tactics and equipment deployment.
(a) During the triennial cycle, deployment drills shall include a combination of rail plan holder owned assets, contracted PRC assets, and nondedicated assets.
(b) Rail plan holders should ensure that each type of dedicated equipment listed in the plan and personnel responsible for operating the equipment are tested during each triennial cycle.
(c) Rail plan holders shall design drills that will demonstrate the ability to meet the planning standards, including recovery systems and system compatibility and the suitability of the system for the operating environment. Drills shall be conducted in all operating environments that the rail plan holder could impact from spills.
(d) At least twice during a triennial cycle, rail plan holders shall deploy a GRP or sensitive area strategy identified within the plan.
(e) Rail plan holders may receive credit for deployment drills conducted by PRCs if:
(i) The PRC is listed in the plan; and
(ii) The rail plan holder operates in the area, schedules on the drill calendar, and participates in or observes the drill.
(3) Unannounced drills: Unannounced drills may be initiated by ecology when specific problems are noted with individual rail plan holders, or randomly, to strategically ensure that all operating environments, personnel and equipment readiness have been adequately tested.
(a) Immediately prior to the start of an unannounced drill, rail plan holders will be notified in writing of the drill objectives, expectations and scenario.
(b) Rail plan holders may request to be excused from an unannounced drill if conducting the drill poses an unreasonable safety or environmental risk, or significant economic hardship. If the rail plan holder is excused, ecology will conduct an unannounced drill at a future time.
(4) Wildlife deployment drills: Once every three years rail plan holders shall deploy regional mobile wildlife rehabilitation equipment and personnel necessary to set up the wildlife rehabilitation system found in the plan.
(5) Additional large-scale multiple plan holder equipment deployment drill requirement. At least once every three years all plan holders must participate in a multiple plan holder deployment exercise. The exercise location will be selected by ecology to ensure all plan holders have the opportunity to get credit based on the areas they operate or transit. This drill is a test of the functional ability for multiple contingency plans to be simultaneously activated in response to a spill. This drill may be incorporated into other drill requirements to avoid increasing the number of drills and equipment deployments otherwise required. This deployment may include the following objectives:
(a) Demonstration of dedicated and nondedicated equipment and trained contracted personnel;
(b) Demonstration of contracted vessel of opportunity response systems and crew performing operations appropriate to the vessel capabilities;
(c) Demonstration of multiple simultaneous tactics which may include, but is not limited to:
(i) On-water recovery task forces made up of complete systems which demonstrate storage, recovery, and enhanced skimming;
(ii) Protection task forces which deploy multiple GRPs;
(iii) Vessel and personnel decontamination and disposal;
(iv) Deployment of contracted aerial assessment assets and aerial observers to direct skimming operations;
(v) Personnel and equipment identified for night operations; and
(vi) Equipment necessary to address situations where oils, depending on their qualities, weathering, environmental factors, and methods of discharge, may submerge and sink.
(d) Verification of the operational readiness during both the first six hours of a spill and over multiple operational periods.