Cape Elizabeth resident Jack Vallely has been anchored in Mobile, Ala., since six days after the epic BP oil spill that continues to plague the Gulf Coast region.
At this point, Vallely isn’t sure when the cleanup job will be done.
“It’s a challenge every damn day,” he said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “I would say the most frustrating thing is that we can’t put a timeline on this. We’ve never seen anything like it.”
No one has seen anything like this, which is why so many have traveled to the Gulf Coast to help — more than 20,000 temporary workers by some counts. Vallely, 58, leads a crew, including 15 from Maine, representing Clean Harbors Inc., one of the nation’s largest environmental cleanup firms.
“I’ll say this,” he said. “The Maine guys are shining down here.”
Clean Harbors, which is headquartered in Norwell, Mass., has 175 locations throughout 36 states, including Maine offices in Hampden and South Portland. Jeff Small, general manager of the Hampden office, recently returned from a 28-day tour in the gulf. Five of his employees are still there.
“I’ll be on another rotation soon,” he said. “Even with this going on, we need to have our offices staffed because we still have contracts locally with customers. If everybody is in the gulf and a spill happens in Maine, that would be bad.”
Vallely, who has been with Clean Harbors for 26 years, is director of site services and oversees employees from New York to Canada. He has been to oil spills before, but this one, for obvious reasons, is vastly different.
“Usually, when you’re in a situation, you have X amount of barrels to clean up, so there is a defined goal,” he explained. “This time we don’t have that. We’re just trying to keep up with it.”
Clean Harbors officials (there are more than 2,000 all told in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana) have been setting up oil containment booms and implementing other strategies to contain the oil before it reaches the shoreline. While the tribulations of the cleanup efforts have been well-documented in the news media over the past two months, Vallely said the work he and his crew have done largely has gone unnoticed.
“There is a tremendous amount of oil that is being skimmed off. I think the proof is there in that we haven’t seen as big an impact on the shoreline yet,” he said.
Small said that when he was there, there was not as much oil reaching the shoreline areas, but Clean Harbors workers kept busy training the many volunteers and inexperienced workers who have been sent to help.
Vallely said he was encouraged by President Obama’s speech Tuesday night.
“It sounds like [BP] is in the process of building a state-of-the-art skimming vessel, which would have a big impact on the material that is floating around,” Vallely said. “The plan is to capture 90 percent of oil within a week, which would be great news.”
Of course, BP has tried many other efforts to quell the spill with minimal success.
Vallely hopes the latest measure is successful.
“We’ve gone through a spell of hot weather and with all the protective clothing we have to wear, it’s been tough on people,” he said.