Guest Opinion

Aug 28, 2001

With your help, new planning process will improve oil-spill protection

By John S. Devens, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Prince William Sound Regional Citizens' Advisory Council

We need your help to develop critical improvements in the oil-spill protection system for Prince William Sound.

The improvements are an innovative type of oil spill plan called Geographic Response Strategies. They deal with how to protect specific local resources, such as clamming beaches or salmon spawning streams, threatened by spilled oil. Geographic Response Strategies for Prince William Sound are being developed by a group of organizations that includes state and federal agencies, crude oil shippers, and the citizens' council.

Geographic Response Strategies are important because a key part of dealing effectively with an oil spill — figuring out what to protect, how to protect it, and what response resources will be required — must take place before any oil is in the water, not during the first chaotic hours after a spill.

Last year, Exxon-Mobil's oil shipping affiliate, SeaRiver Maritime, led a very promising test of the idea near the village of Tatitlek, in the northeast corner of the Sound.

Tatitlek residents participated actively in the three-day exercise, and at the end everyone involved seemed to believe it had substantially increased the chances of successfully protecting the targeted sites from an oil spill.

In June of this year, Chevron conducted a similar Geographic Response Strategies exercise in the southwest Sound, near the village of Chenega Bay. Chenega residents also reported that they were pleased with the process.

Now it's time to extend the same protection to other key shoreline resources in the Sound. We are in the process of identifying additional sites where Geographic Response Strategies will be created.

We've drafted a list of candidate sites to start the process, and we are looking for your comments. Are these the most critical sites, or should the list be changed? What ideas do you have for how the sites can be protected from spilled oil pushed in by wind or tide?

You can get the list of sites, and instructions on how to give us your comments and advice, by calling us toll-free at 800-478-7221 or in Valdez at 835-5957 and asking for a "GRS packet." You can also find this information and submit comments on our Internet site, www.pwsrcac.org. The deadline is Oct. 15, 2001.

One of the chief lessons of the Exxon Valdez spill 11 years ago was that citizens need to be involved at every level in the development of the best possible system for preventing and responding to oil spills.

On the response side, the Geographic Response Strategies process is the most promising planning tool I have seen since the spill, but to work best it needs help from people like you — residents of the Sound who know what's most valuable and how it can be protected.

Again, the deadline for comments is October 15, 2001, so don't wait!

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Editor's note: John Devens was mayor of Valdez at the time of the Exxon Valdez oil spill and is now executive director of the Prince William Sound Regional Citizens' Advisory Council. The Council is an independent non-profit corporation that promotes environmentally safe operation of the Valdez Marine Terminal and associated tankers. Its work is guided by the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, and its contract with Alyeska Pipeline Service Company. RCAC's 18 member organizations are communities in the region affected by the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, as well as commercial fishing, aquaculture, Native, recreation, tourism and environmental groups.