Buzzards Bay

An initial version of the Buzzards Bay GRS were developed in 2005 through a MassDEP project completed by USCG Sector Southeast New England Area Committee members and local responders. Between October 2007 and February 2008, these GRS were updated through a partnership between the ten municipalities surrounding Buzzards Bay, The Coalition for Buzzards Bay, Nuka Research and Planning Group, and MassDEP. Additional input has been provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Mass Division of Marine Fisheries, and the United States Coast Guard.

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The Coalition for Buzzards Bay facilitated the presentations, work group meetings, and surveys throughout this process. After presentations were given to local leaders in each community and input from the general public was collected, the first responders from each town were organized into work groups and asked to review and make changes to the existing GRS. Each work group also surveyed the selected locations within their municipality to verify the appropriateness of each strategy. The changes to the GRS included: modifications to oil spill response tactics to better reflect the capabilities of local responders; the addition of new sites not selected in the original Buzzards Bay GRS project; and additional detail added to equipment lists and access point guides for each strategy. A total of 55 locations were selected for GRS strategies within the ten Buzzards Bay municipalities.

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After collecting the data for the GRS updates, the project was passed along to Nuka Research and Planning Group, LLC to reformat the strategies to be consistent with other statewide GRS projects.