The Great Lakes Tow­ing Com­pa­ny proud­ly host­ed emer­gency respon­ders from across the Great Lakes at their Cleve­land Ship­yard facil­i­ty for a U. S. Coast Guard Pre­pared­ness Response Exer­cise Pro­gram (PREP) one-day oil spill exer­cise. Below is a mes­sage from the U.S. Coast Guard Com­mand­ing Offi­cer, J.W. Rus­sell to Greg Thau­vette, Vice Pres­i­dent – Oper­a­tions at The Tow­ing Company.

U.S. Depart­ment of Home­land Security
Unit­ed States Coast Guard

Com­mand­ing Officer
U.S. Coast Guard
Marine Safe­ty Unit Cleveland

1055 East 9th Street, Cleve­land, Ohio 44114

June 17, 2015

The Great Lakes Tow­ing Company
Attn: Greg Thauvette
4500 Divi­sion A venue
Cleve­land, OH 44102

Dear Mr. Thauvette,

Thank you for allow­ing the use of your facil­i­ty for the recent Nation­al Pre­pared­ness and Response Exer­cise Pro­gram (PREP) Full Scale Exer­cise on June 17, 2015. The exer­cise test­ed the North­east Ohio Geo­graph­ic Response Plan’s capac­i­ty to prop­er­ly coor­di­nate a response to an oil spill to pro­tect the pub­lic and the envi­ron­ment. You and Mr. Lind­say Dew hos­pitably wel­comed the stag­ing of the MN DORTHY ANN-PATHFINDER, sev­er­al hun­dred feet of boom and oth­er response equip­ment, and over 80 fed­er­al, state, local, and indus­try rep­re­sen­ta­tives to max­i­mize par­tic­i­pa­tion and facil­i­tate a high­ly suc­cess­ful exer­cise. Your tremen­dous sup­port of this event ensured that all the exer­cise objec­tives were met and also helped agency rep­re­sen­ta­tives gain a pro­found under­stand­ing of pol­lu­tion response in North­east Ohio. Your com­pa­ny tru­ly embod­ies the Coast Guard ideals of team­work, coop­er­a­tion, and mis­sion execution.

Sin­cere­ly,

J.W. Rus­sell
Com­man­der, U.S. Coast Guard
Com­mand­ing Officer