An oil tanker collides with a car carrier 15 miles southwest of Portland, Maine, during a winter storm with rough northeast winds, subfreezing temperatures and limited visibility. The tanker’s 1.3 million gallons of oil is disbursed into the ocean, currents sending it down the Maine coast, along New Hampshire and into Boston Harbor before it dissipates. On March 24, after almost a year of preparation involving more than 100 entities and nearly 800 people from the federal government, private corporations, three states and various municipalities, this Spill of National Significance, or SONS, exercise will take place in waters stretching the length of the “spill.”…The exercise drew a mixed response from Evan Carlson of RePower New Hampshire, a clean energy advocacy group. ”First of all, what they’re doing is great and very important, and we believe this is a valuable training exercise, given that we do import so much foreign oil,” he said. “That said, we could make this kind of exercise irrelevant if we didn’t import foreign oil.” ”The Seacoast economy is driven by fishing, tourism and small businesses,” Carlson continued. They’re already struggling. Can you imagine what would happen if there was a spill?”

Read the article at the Portsmouth Herald