Temporary storage on site

Recommendations on the temporary storage of oil spill waste (on working site)

Recommendations for the temporary storage of oil spill waste

Because oil spills can occur in isolated and inaccessible locations on the coast, or when large volumes of polluted material are generated or if processing is required before disposal, it may be difficult and expensive to transport material directly to the disposal or treatment site and therefore, temporary storage facilities are needed. Advantages of temporary storage are:

• optimising response team efficiency, and
• allowing greater flexibility in the OSW management of flow (buffer role).

It is difficult to pre-designate areas for emergency storage on working sites, therefore it is an issue that need to be addressed as the need arises. Thus it will be important to include in the OSWMP pre-established criteria for site selection and recommendations to comply with.

A temporary storage is:

• an emergency staging area for the immediate deposit of the waste collected and before its transfer to an intermediate, long term storage or if possible directly to a treatment facility,
• a key moment in waste management process for sorting, labelling and quantifying the natures and volumes of waste collected and when possible reducing volumes to be transported by pre-treatment implementation.

Size, number and location of sites will depend on the amount and nature of material collected, and on the number of working sites:

• oily mixtures collected at sea will need port facilities to be unloaded;
• oily wastes from shoreline clean-up will require a staging areanear shore.

Site selection will meet some criteria:

• in port facilities: adequate mooring, unloading facilities and enough space in the port, and
• on shore sites: access to road with a distance as short as possible from the clean-up site and a flat area with enough space away from environmentally-sensitive areas(vegetation, groundwater) and out of reach of the sea, tides and waves.

Temporary storage sites require protection to avoid pollution spreading and environmental contamination, i.e. soil of staging area or pit needs to be protected by watertight plastic liners, rain water or effluent needs to be managed, decontamination area must be organized to avoid the spreading of the pollution due to workers or contaminated vehicles’ wheels.

The duration of a temporary storage site depends on the clean-up operations. The complete removal of oil and restoration of the site at the end of the operations is required to truly end the clean-up operations.

Equipments identified / recommended for the temporary storage of oil spill waste

This Section will provide recommendations for the equipements identified / recommended for the temporary storage of oil spill waste.