Page 124 - claims information pack ebook_e

Guidelines for presenting claims for clean up and preventive measures

Disposal
5.24 Clean-up operations frequently result Example
in considerable quantities of oil and oily Clean-up operations following a spill of some
debris being collected. Reasonable costs 2 000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil generates
for transport, storage and disposal of the almost 80 000 tonnes of oily waste. Whereas
collected material are accepted. If it has it might have been anticipated that the
been possible to sell any of the recovered oil, spill would generate approximately 20 000
the proceeds of the sale would normally be tonnes of waste, in fact, the quantity of waste
deducted from any compensation paid.
collected was some 40 times the amount
5.25 Disposal of oily waste materials is usually of oil spilled. There was little doubt that this
controlled by national or regional regulations. amount of waste had been collected since
In addition, in a major incident the quantities the quantity was verified against weigh
of material for disposal can exceed the bridge tickets and from estimates of volumes
capacity of some potential disposal methods, piled up at storage sites. In assessing the
calling for waste to be held at temporary claim for disposal and associated transport
storage sites. However, if a range of options and storage costs the 1992 Fund took the 19
are available within the applicable regulations view that in some places the inappropriate
then, for disposal costs to be reimbursed, use of heavy machinery to remove oil
the most cost effective option should be from shorelines had resulted in excessive
selected. quantities of oily waste being collected. After
detailed investigations it was concluded that
5.26 Efforts should be made to keep the amount
of waste collected to a minimum. Experience adverse weather conditions and the types of
has shown that typically the amount of waste shoreline to be cleaned had led to exceptional
generated can be as much as ten times the circumstances and the costs of dealing with
quantity of oil spilled. A ratio of the amount some 40 000 tonnes of waste were accepted
of waste collected to the amount of oil spilled as reasonable.
far in excess of this factor of ten would signal
the need for a closer examination of the
circumstances that led to an excessive level
of waste and may result in a portion of the
costs of clean up and disposal being found
to be unreasonable.