Wes Kotyk, executive director of the Ministry of Environment's Environmental Protection Branch, said Thursday his department is continuing its focus on shoreline cleanup and assessment.
"We have people throughout the identified impact area, all down the river," he said during Thursday's daily oil spill situation teleconference with media.
Amongst Husky Energy, its contractors and government, there are well over 500 responding and acting at different components of response and recovery, said Kotyk.
"Even if someone is doing sampling, they have been reporting back if they observe other things such as wildlife impact."
While they may be on site to do a particular job, they are in communication with others in incident command process, he stressed.
Duane McKay, commissioner of Emergency Management and Fire Safety, said the lead on the response to the spill is the Ministry of the Environment, which is working closely with Husky and the Saskatchewan Water Security Agency, involved in the quality aspect.
The rest of the co-ordination is mainly through the emergency operation centre, which is working with all affected communities, whether they have declared a state of emergency or not, he said.
As of Thursday, the City of Prince Albert, the RM of Prince Albert, the RM of Buckland and the Muskoday First Nation had all declared states of emergency.
From an emergency measures perspective, said McKay, the situation in North Battleford is slightly different.
"They are working very co-operatively with their neighbour," he said, referring the proposed agreement for the City of North Battleford to pipe water across the river from the Town of Battleford.
