Unalaska, AK – Staff from the state Department of Environmental Conservation were in town today meeting with local industry representatives about shipping safety issues.

DEC Emergency Response Program Manager Leslie Pearson said that the meetings were about dealing with the "residual lessons learned" from the 2004 Selendang Ayu wreck. In the morning, she and the agency's other representatives met with local processing plant executives to look at how those plants would be able to cope with an oil spill in Unalaska Bay.

"We wanted to make sure the water intakes would be protected," she said.

The processing plants depend on a steady flow of water from the bay for their seafood processing operations. Pearson said they discussed whether the plants would be able to shift to fresh water in the event of an emergency, and what local response capabilities could be developed.

This afternoon, local pilots, city officials and others met with the DEC delegation to talk about Unalaska's broader emergency response systems, including the emergency tow packages the city bought last year. Pearson said one of the challenges now is creating an inventory of the response tools that are scattered throughout the port, and figuring out how to get to them quickly when a ship is in danger.

"You start talking to each operator out here, and somebody's got a container of boom here, a container of boom there, a skimmer there," she said. "So it's a matter of getting it all inventoried, and know[ing] who the contact is, so that way when the bloom goes up you can actually call somebody and get it activated."

Meanwhile, the risk assessments that were ordered for the Aleutians after the Selendang Ayu are moving forward. Pearson said that an inventory of places of refuge in the Aleutians, where distressed ships can be parked and stabilized, has been completed. The National Academy of the Sciences is expected to begin work on its risk assessment for the region possibly as early as June.