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Wednesday, July 13, 2010, CNN’s Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. Correspondent Ines Ferre interviewed Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) who fought to keep the EPA’s ASPECT Aircraft flying. ASPECT (Airborne Spectral Photometric Environmental Collection Technology) is the Nation’s only 24/7 airborne emergency response chemical and radiological mapping program. Dr. Robert Kroutil, the team’s lead scientist, figured out how to reprogram ASPECT’s software to ensure that it detect the difference between oil, oil sheen, algae blooms, and turbulent water. From the air, algae and oil look similar. ASPECT’s new capability to detect oil makes the aircraft invaluable to the efforts surrounding the environmental disaster that BP created on April 20, 2010.

Prior to Rep. Taylor’s leadership in organizing the response efforts for Mississippi, the response was characterized as playing Marco Polo in the Gulf like a bunch of headless chickens.

Leveraging his 13 years in the U.S. Coast Guard where he lead search and rescue efforts and his leadership in the Katrina aftermath, Rep. Taylor’s expertise has ensured that the ASPECT team remain in the Gulf and be tasked with flying the Mississippi Gulf. Equally as important, Rep. Taylor is the reason that the coordination between what was in the air, the ground, and the water has turned into a smoother, cooperative, and effective effort to prevent oil from entering the Mississippi Sound.

At 6 pm Central Time on Friday 12/03/04, the Marcus Oil and Chemical Plant located in southwest Houston, Texas was reported by plant personnel to be on fire.  The plant is a large manufacturer of a polyethylene wax that is used in a variety of consumer products.  Within 15 minutes, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) decided to deploy the ASPECT aircraft from the Waxahachie, Texas hangar to support ground HazMat teams.  The focus of the deployment was to determine the threat of downwind chemical hazards at the site.  Initial observers at the site reported flames several hundred feet high.  The Houston Police and Fire Departments immediately evacuated a 4 square block area around the plant.

Los Alamos was notified by the EPA at the time of the aircraft deployment and requested to support an emergency reach-back data analysis effort to support the emergency responders on the ground and in the aircraft.  By 7 pm, an initial set of hyperspectral FT-IR data was received at Los Alamos and transferred to computers for assessment and evaluation.   The results were evaluated and shipped to a main receiving computer at the EPA in Kansas City.  The incident commander at the site was provided the information of all of the data stored on the EPA computer.

A number of data passes by the aircraft were completed beginning at 6:30 PM on 12/03/04 and continuing until 2 AM on 12/04/04.  The initial results indicated that the chemical hazards were minimal at the site.  However, the aircraft detected significant amounts of ethylene.  Ethylene is a starting product for the Marcus Oil polyethylene wax process.  In addition, significant quantities of sulfur dioxide were detected at a specific point in the facility.  All information was reported to the incident commander with the location of highest concentration.  The sulfur dioxide source was potentially attributed to the combustion of building materials at the plant. 

The response results again confirmed the utility of the ASPECT aircraft for emergency response at a chemical plant disaster.

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