CSI : national organisation

France has decided not to form a single multi-purpose force to combat accidental pollution in the marine environment: coordination of the existing services was considered as the most suitable means to conduct operations.

Metropolitan France has three seaboards, Channel/North Sea, Atlantic, Mediterranean. The maritime traffic along these coasts is heavy, about 45,000 ships every year in the Channel and 8,000 in the French zone of the Mediterranean. The risk of pollution is important, as is shown by the fact that, during the last two decades, 35 significant cases of accidents at sea have resulted in actual pollution or risk of pollution. Since 1967, eleven major accidents have caused oil pollution on French coasts. Among the most serious accidents at world level, seven affected the French coastline, either by reason of an accident at sea occurring near the French coast (Amoco Cadiz, Gino, Erika, Ievoli Sun) or by an accident occurring in a neighbouring country causing an oil slick to droft towards the French seaboard (Torrey Canyon in England, Haven in Italy, Prestige in Spain). These examples show the vulnerability of the French coast to the risks from maritime traffic.

The French response to accidental marine pollution is organised by the Polmar Instruction dated 4 March 2002, applicable not only to oil pollution but also to discharges of any substance likely to damage the marine environment.The instruction is an update of 2 earliers ones, dated respectively 17 December 1997and 12 October 1978.

It relates to the response of pollution of the marine environment resulting from an accident or damage which involves or may involve an oil spill or a spill of some other product. Three types of measures may be taken to combat this threat:

The national system makes a distinction between the response of pollution at sea and the response of pollution on land. The application of the Polmar Plan (Sea) is entrusted to the Maritime Prefects (Commanders-in-Chief of the Navy) under the authority of the Prime Minister. The application of the Polmar Plan (Land) is the responsibility of the Prefects of the "départements" concerned, under the supervision of the Minister for the Interior. Action undertaken at sea is the responsibility of the Maritime Prefects. Action undertaken in the coastal strip from land is the responsibility of the Prefects of the "départements". The structure in charge of operations comprises representatives of all the Government Departments concerned and appropriate technical bodies, in particular Cedre the "Centre de Documentation, de Recherche et d'Expérimentations sur les pollutions accidentelles des eaux" (Centre for Documentation, Research and Experimentation on accidental water pollution). In view of the number of ministries involved in the response operations, the general guidelines adopted are proposed to the Secrétariat Général de la Mer (Secretariat General for the Sea) which is responsible to the Prime Minister.

The Maritime Prefect is responsible for organising and directing operations at sea, within the boundaries of his own region. When a disaster or a threat of disaster is of a gravity or complexity such that it is impossible to response it by ordinary means, the Maritime Prefect sets in motion the Polmar Plan (Sea), which gives him access to the Polmar fund, under the ministry in charge of the Environment, to finance contracting or requisition expenses of ad-hoc private resources.

The Maritime Prefect reports to the Prime Minister (Secretariat General of the Sea), the Minister for Defence, the Minister for the Environment and the Minister for Transport. The Minister of the Interior and the Prefects of the "Départements" and the civil protection zones which may be concerned are also informed. The Maritime Prefect simultaneously informs the Cedre, the technical advisors and resources of which are immediately placed at his disposal. The initiation and the termination of the Polmar Plan (Sea) are the subject of decrees issued by the Maritime Prefect.

The Departmental Prefect is responsible to the Minister for the Interior both for the initiation and the execution of the pollution response operations.

Every coastal department draws up and updates, under the Prefect's authority, a special Polmar Plan (Land), in close consultation with the local official representatives and users of the marine environment. Each Plan defines the general organisation of pollution response, permitting the mobilisation and coordination of all the available resources. It includes an inventory of the anti-pollution equipment and products available, a list of the zones to be protected as a matter of priority, and plans for the deployment and maintenance of anti-pollution booms. The Plan also provides for the establishment of an inventory of storage sites and centres for treatment of the waste to be recovered.

The special Polmar Plan (Land) is launched by the Prefect, under the authority of the Minister for the Interior, only for exceptionally widespread pollution. Small-scale and medium-scale pollution must be dealt with by the local communities within the context of their general powers as provided in the Local Authorities Code.

The Maritime Prefect directs all response operations at sea. Action is supervised from a command post located at the Maritime Prefecture (permanent headquarters). In order to facilitate the supervision of operations on the spot, an advance command post (operational headquarters) may be installed at the most favourable location. The Maritime Prefect keeps the Prefects of the "Départements" informed of developments regarding any threat of pollution of the coast, so as to allow an early meeting of the team in charge of land response operations.

On land, the Prefect of the "Département" or his appointed representative directs pollution response operations. He is assisted by a team appointed by himself together with representatives of external departmental and regional services. He also has access to the resources of the local authorities and private resources obtained by agreement or requisitioned. Operations are directed from a permanent headquarters (Préfecture) and, if appropriate, from an advance post located in the most favourable situation.

The Maritime Prefect conducts response operations at sea with Navy and Government resources, which action be coordinates at sea. He may call upon resources available from the oil co-operatives owning anti-pollution equipment (e.g. FOST, OSRL). He may request resources available within the context of bilateral agreements (Manche Plan Agreement with Great Britain, Biscaye Plan with Spain) or regional agreements (Bonn Agreement Contracting Parties).

Ailette (Source French Navy)

Pollution response operations on the coast are directed by decentralised State services. The Prefect of the "Département" may request the assistance of the national resources of the Sécurité Civile (Civil Emergency Services) and the Armed Forces. Moreover, he has access to the resources of the local authorities and all those available from government, in addition to private resources, whether by agreement or requisitioned.

The range of operational choices is both wide and restricted, each option being limited by many factors, the response time and the condition of the sea being the most important. These choices may be grouped by type of response :

action at source or near source in order to stop the spill, lighten the vessel or barge, contain the spill at source and recover and disperse it at source,

action in the high seas in order to contain the oil by booms and recover it with pumps and skimmers, trawl by booms/skimmers or surface trawls, and disperse it chemically,

action near the coastline in order to protect sensitive areas of the coast, contain and skim and treat with dispersant in moderation under ecological supervision.

Shoreline response following the Erika oil spill (Source Cedre)

The Limit of use of dispersant (Polmar 50)

The use of dispersants is the subject of recommendations fixing the limits of the zones of use, in terms of the depth of water and the scale of the pollution (10, 100, 1,000 tonnes). The dispersants used are subject to prior approval from Cedre, which publishes a list of products approved in accordance with a procedure which takes account of both the effectiveness and the toxicity of the products

The priority of shoreline pollution response is to protect sensitive sites previously identified in the Polmar-Land specific response plans. Shoreline cleanup is another priority in the NEBA (Net Environmental Benefit Analysis) concept which addresses environmental and economical issues.
The recovery at sea of floating pollutant as well as the selective collection of pollutant washed on the shore are other priorities.

In response to accidental pollution, the French Navy is guided by the Commission d'Etudes Pratiques de lutte antipollution (CEPPOL) (Commission for Practical Studies in Anti-Pollution response) based in Brest, which advises the Chief of Staff to the French Navy.

Anti-pollution equipment for use at sea is stored in various storage and response centres along the three seaboards in Metropolitan France and those overseas. The most important centres are Cherbourg, le Havre (Channel/North Sea), Brest, Lorient (Atlantic) and Toulon (Mediterranean). In all, the equipment comprises over 11 km of booms, 54 skimmers, 64 pumps and 1,400 cubic metres of dispersants which can be made available for pollution response at sea.

Polmar storage centre (Source Cedre)

Apart from the ordinary resources held by all the authorities, 13 Polmar (Land) storage and response centres are distributed over the whole of the French coastline (8 in Metropolitan France: Dunkirk, Le Havre, Brest, Saint Nazaire, Le Verdon, Sète, Marseilles, Ajaccio; 5 Overseas: Saint Pierre, Pointe à Pitre, Fort de France, Cayenne, Le Port).

These centres store and maintain equipment necessary for the response of marine pollution.

They are all managed by the Ministry for Equipment, Transport and Housing - Directorate for Sea Transport, Ports and the Coast (DTMPL) ;

The Centre for Maritime and River Technical Studies (CETMEF) defines and acquires this equipment after trials in cooperation with the Centre de Documentation, de Recherche et d'Expérimentations sur les pollutions accidentelles des eaux (Cedre).

Specialised maritime services or the maritime services of the Directorates for Equipment for the "Départements" (DDE) store and maintain this equipment on a local basis.

A few figures give an idea of the scale of the available resources: 33 km of booms, 140 pumps, 80 skimmers, 370 storage tanks.

These resources are placed at the disposal of the Prefects immediately the Polmar Plan (Land) comes into operation. They may also be made available to the local authorities, on their responsibility and at their expense, by means of agreements and after approval by the Prefect of the Department concerned.

The authorities may also call upon other stocks of anti-pollution equipment available in the autonomous ports (Dunkirk, Le Havre, Rouen, Nantes/Saint Nazaire, Bordeaux, Marseilles), in certain emergency and firefighting centres and in private stores, especially those held by the private oil co-operative "Fast Oil Spill Team" (FOST) based in Marseilles.

Adding together the stocks available within the context of the Polmar Plans (Sea) and (Land) and from other partners (ports, fire stations, the private co-operative), a total of about 55 km of booms, 172 skimmers, 241 pumps, 574 storage tanks (large and small), 426 items of beach cleaning equipment and about 1,500 cubic metres of dispersant are available to the authorities in the event of accidental pollution of the marine environment.

The success of the anti-pollution response plan of action depends on the quality of its preparation and implementation. It is therefore essential that the provisions made by the Polmar Instruction should be tested and the personnel in charge of its implementation should be trained. The Land and Maritime Prefects accordingly organise simulation exercises at sea and on land in order to train both the senior members of the team and the persons responsible for the use of the equipment on land. Plans may be updated and improved through these exercises.

Simulation exercises (Source Cedre)

Five response sections, each of 30 men, have been formed within two Civil Emergency Services training units. These sections are independent, and are capable of very rapid response times. They are able to work without reinforcements for 48 hours in an anti-pollution response operation. Each section has its own pumping, collection and storage equipment, and its own means of transport and liaison.

The Customs authorities are responsible for deploying aircraft using remote sensing techniques to detect marine pollution. For this purpose, the French Customs Coastguard Service has at its disposal two aircraft with several types of remote sensing equipment which can be rapidly brought into service in the event of accidental marine pollution.

The role of these aircraft is to detect oil slicks, to contribute to the scientific assessment of the risk, to response spread of the pollution, and to guide response equipment to the zone.

Polmar aircraft, French Customs

Cedre (Centre for Documentation, Research and Experimentation on accidental water pollution) was formed by the French government in order to improve pollution response technology and to inform the authorities responsible for pollution response regarding this technology.

Cedre may be consulted in cases of accidental pollution at sea, but has no powers to carry out the response operations. If the Polmar Plan is put into action, Cedre places its resources and personnel at the disposal of the land and Maritime Prefects responsible for pollution response, in order to supply all the advice and assistance these authorities may require.