The Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) is responsible for providing navigational aids throughout the province. These aids guide marine traffic through the dangerous waters that surround the island. Maintaining these aids is time consuming and requires many different divisions of the CCG to work together to provide a quality services while trying to protect the environment.
Over the many years of lightstation operations in the Newfoundland region, a considerable amount of contamination has accumulated on these sites. In 1994 the CCG began cleaning up the lightstation sites by using bio remediation to degrade petroleum hydrocarbons and by removing other contaminants such as battery debris, metallic mercury, and metal/ wood debris.
The CCG also has to maintain hundreds of buoys distributed around the province. In the past these buoys were powered by large lead acid batteries found inside the buoy, but the CCG has now converted all its floating buoys to solar powered units that require very little maintenance.
Another aspect of these buoys that has been addressed by the CCG is the waste produced as a result of painting these buoys. Each year thousands of gallons of solvent waste are disposed of through qualified disposal companies, but in 2002 the CCG implemented a solvent recycling system that has reduced the waste being disposed of by %80.
ii. DFO - Department of Fisheries and Oceans
iii. TPH - Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons
vi. CCME - Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment
2.2.1 Health and Safety Issues 6
2.2.2 Environmental Issues 7
4.1 Solar Powered Lighting System 11
The Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) is an operational and technical support division of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) that is responsible for various levels of marine safety and environmentally responsible use of Canadian waters.
As a part of these responsibilities the CCG has to provide technical and maintenance su...