A Philomath company has some of its employees already working on the scene of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and has about 175 people on standby for cleanup efforts.
Steve Finch, the program manager for NWFF Environmental, said Friday that the company has 10 employees in the Gulf Coast area working on communications, and an 11th employee is scheduled to leave for the area this morning.
Finch said NWFF is a contractor for Marine Spill Response Corp., the lead cleanup company hired by BP. That company, Finch said, is on a retainer with BP. “When this thing happened,” he said, “they called us up.”
In the meantime, he said, NWFF is gearing up to provide “a rather large contingency of people to the Gulf when called upon,” Finch said.
To that end, he said, the company has made arrangements with the Benton County office of the Oregon Employment Department, 545 S.W. Second St. in Corvallis, to try to line up additional workers. (Finch emphasized that people interested in the cleanup work should not call NWFF and instead should work through the Employment Department.)
Finch said the cleanup jobs in the Gulf likely would pay about $13 an hour. Laborers might work on shifts of two weeks on and two weeks off, he said, but that could change as the extent of the work becomes clearer.
Potential workers should take note of one detail, he said: The federal Occupation Safety & Health Administration requires that cleanup workers be certified on proper procedure. The company has instructors ready to do the training, but the two-day class will cost $400 per participant.