Geotechnical discharge permit proposed

The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, or ADEC, has proposed to issue a general permit for the discharge of pollutants from geotechnical survey operations in state waters of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas. And the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, has issued a draft version of a similar permit that would apply to the federal outer continental shelf of the two seas. The proposed ADEC permit comes as a result of the state taking over from the EPA the permitting in Alaska of discharges into U.S. waters. State waters extend out three nautical miles from the coastline.

The agencies have been coordinating their public outreach for their proposed permits and both agencies have set a deadline of Jan. 27 for public comments. A joint agency public meeting is scheduled in January in Barrow on Jan. 8 and an additional joint meeting in the form of a teleconference will be held on Jan. 10. Public meetings have also been scheduled in Kaktovik and Wainwright.

Oil companies typically conduct offshore geotechnical surveys to characterize the nature of the seafloor in an area of planned drilling or offshore infrastructure construction. According to a fact sheet associated with the proposed ADEC permit, a survey generally involves shallow rotary drilling, with the use of water-based drilling fluids. Unlike in an oil drilling operation, where drilling waste is accumulated on a surface drilling rig before disposal, fluid and rock cuttings from geotechnical drilling generally flow directly to the seafloor as they exit the borehole, the fact sheet says.

A general permit allows a company to conduct a geotechnical survey without infringing the U.S. Clean Water Act provided that discharges from the survey remain within the limits specified by the permit, and provided that the company notifies the permitting agency of its intentions and obtains agency approval of the plan for the survey operation. The proposed permits only allow the use of water-based drilling fluids and permit the discharge of certain fluids such as deck drainage, bilge water and domestic waste water from the vessel conducting the survey.

—Alan Bailey