Government and NGO Agencies Take Part in Oil Spill Training

A four-day training on oil spill response began today at the Best Western Belize Biltmore Plaza Hotel in Belize City. The workshop is for all key responders to an oil spill in Belize, including government and non-government agencies. One of the major players in the training and in the event there is an oil spill is the Department of the Environment. Chief Environmental Officer at the Department of the Environment, Anthony Mai told News Five that Belize has adequate resources to deal with an oil spill, but there is still added equipment that can be acquired.

 

Anthony Mai, Chief Environmental Officer, Dept. Of Environment

“Belize has a National Oil Spill Contingency Plan that we updated in 2018.  The plan has been endorsed by the Cabinet, so we have a responsibility to ensure that all agencies that are to respond are equipped and are able to respond effectively in the unfortunate event that we would have an oil spill.

 

Marion Ali

Do we have the resources? Do we have the equipment to deal with something of that magnitude if it – and I’m sure that it has happened in the past, but we have bigger and bigger container trucks now and –

 

Anthony Mai

“Sure, so in just before 2018 Belize undertook an exercise using a tool that is called a Retus tool. This tool basically informs a country of their position in terms of being able to respond to an oil spill. When we ran the tool informed us of some of the things that we needed to do to improve. And so the first thing that the tool said is from a foundational, or a basic level, we need to upgrade our National Oil Spill Contingency Plan, and so we did that. It also identified that we need to do a risk analysis, and so we have a risk analysis that we did. The risk analysis look at all the potential sources of oil spill in Belize and it classified the risk in terms of priorities, but it also identified areas along the Belize coast and inland that are significant and priority areas that need to be protected in the event of an oil spill. And so we have all the, I think, technical information that we need. The assessment also looked at all the resources, all the booms, the skimmers, all the equipment that we would have, including personnel, trained personnel. And we recognize then that we do have some equipment, right? But we need more.”