Contact information:
Jim Needham
Dean, Community Outreach
Personal Information


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    Pollution Prevention Partnership
    Oil and Bilgewater Recovery

The Pollution Prevention Partnership (P3) provided six of these Oil and Bilgewater Recovery Units to harbors and marinas in the Coastal Bend. This project started in 2000 with a request from the City Manager of Aransas Pass to help with the oil spill problem in Conn Brown Harbor. Jim Needham of P3 investigated and built a coalition of stakeholders to help solve the problem. P3 developed a new portable oil and oily bilgewater recovery unit which can be placed at private facilities. Other harbors and marinas requested units and P3 responded with a series of grant proposals to build six units for Conn Brown Harbor, Fulton Harbor, Port Aransas Marina, and Corpus Christi Marina. Funding was provided by the Coastal Impact Assistance Program, Coastal Management Program, and Coastal Bend Bays & Estuaries Program. The Texas General Land Office has been a key partner and will provide for the treatment and disposal of recovered oil and water. These units provide boat operators a non-polluting way to discharge their waste oil and oily bilgewater. This reduces discharges to area waters and the impact of that pollution.

Facts (source: Texas General Land Office)
• It is against the law to use dish soap to hide oil that has been pumped into coastal waters.
• Dish soap does not make the oil disappear; instead, it spreads the oil throughout the water where the fish and shrimp are swimming.
• Small oil spills can have harmful effects on the marine environment.
• Used motor oil is more toxic than motor oil directly out of the can.
• The larvae of fish and shrimp develop in the top microlayer of water and are sensitive to even low levels of toxic compounds.
• In one million gallons of water, one gallon of oil will kill half of any exposed larvae of fish and shrimp.
• In one million gallons of water, less than one pint of No. 2 fuel oil will greatly reduce the number of plankton - the organisms that form the base of the marine food web.